The biggest difference between us here at Cashiers du Cinemart and other popular and unpopular film journals—other than the layout, budget, and lack of clout (we've got the bad writing and snobbishness down pat)—is that you will never (not in a million years—ed.) find us fawning over and touting the genius of Mr. Jean-Luc Godard.
Born on December 3, 1930 in Paris to an upper-middle-class family, the son of a doctor and a banker's daughter, writer for Cahiers du Cinéma, and leading spokesman of what has come to be called the French New Wave, Godard is a real pain in my ass. He had his big moment with Breathless, which was okay, I guess—it was revolutionary at the time with its excessive jump-cuts and junk—and then was adopted as a demi-god of motion pictures.
I'm no expert on Godard. I've managed to make my way through eight of his films and after a while, my patience runs thin. I liked My Life to Live and The Married Woman. There were some cool moments in Pierrot le Fou. But with films like Sympathy for the Devil, Band of Outsiders, and Weekend, I was just unimpressed.
Godard's big thing is to play with the conventions of cinema—I agree, they need to be fucked around with sometimes—but after a while it really gets to be a bore. J.L., baby, I get the joke, I just don't think it's that funny.
Again, it's not even Godard himself that pisses me off too badly (I was steamed after his holier-than-thou Film Comment article a few months back—but it was the most appropriate place for it) but it's the snot-nosed kids that hold him on high in the pantheon of geniuses.
| Filmmakers | Votes |
|---|---|
| 1. Jean-Luc Godard | 15½ |
| 2. Orson Welles | 11 |
| 3. Alfred Hitchcock | 10¼ |
| 4. Jean Renoir | 9 |
| 5. John Ford | 8 |
| 6. Michael Snow | 7½ |
| 7. Kenji Mizoguchi | 7 |
| 8. Howard Hawks | 6½ |
| 9. Carl-Theodor Dreyer | 6 |
| 10. Robert Bresson / Max Ophuls (tied) | 5½ |
Nowadays, praising Godard is more of a political statement. "We agree that the cinema is fucked up and so does this guy, I guess, so we hail you, Godard! We don't know how to break these chains that bind us (and neither did you) so we'll make a bunch of crappy student films and dedicate them to you!"
Please, kids, Godard is definitely someone to be studied and some of the things he did deserve a pat on the back but he is not a divine being.
It's like I said in CdC #2's review of Cliff Roquemore's Human Tornado: if he had been French, Tornado would be praised for its faults as if Roquemore had been making the audience more aware of the mechanisms of cinema, and not screwing up. I'm half-tempted to go back and re-edit Band of Outsiders to take out those little pauses between shots where one waits for Godard to say "go" before the action starts.
When the old boy finally kicks it, you know I'll be going nuts hearing about how he changed the face of cinema and not how he treaded water for the last three decades. If it comes to a vote, I think the epitaph should be, "Stop me if you've heard this one before."
-mw