-Winfield Townley Scott, "Film-Maker"He lay unable to move, unable to waken,
Pinned by his own preference for dream,
Unchallenged by the flesh and blood of day.
Within these films all could be acted out
As he directed, although even here
Sometimes his star refused and froze with fright.
Yet here he clung to what he could not help:
If wakened by it, crawled toward sleep again,
Back to alleys of moonlight, into rooms
Shadowed with shapes of women who received him
With nude complicities.
Sunday, April 17, 2016
Lacan & Godard - On France's Post-Modern Identity Crisis
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14 comments:
French films eat shit .
Created out of their competition with capitalism...
"Daddy, what will I do when the subsidy goes away?"
:P
Sorry to have been so crude. Severe sciatica along with our political plight and immense frustrations with out -dated software has affected my disposition ...
HOWEVER, my opinion of French films, always beloved by the Left and a lot of arrogant, ignorant, militantly untidy "students" from the SICK-sties remains highly negative.
There IS no viable competition to CAPITALISM. It is the best thing that ever happened to the human race, and anyone who would deny that is either insane, severely deluded, or an absolute moron.
I love classic French cuisine, French architecture from Gothic Cathedrals, Chateaux, Formal Gardens, Exquisite Furniture form Versailles on down to Country Cottages. I love the French countryside, French classical music from Lully, Couperin, Loeuillet, Rameau, through Saint -Saens, Fauré, Debussy, Ravel, du Parc, Messiaen, Poulenc, Duruflé, and even Satie.
I love French painting too from Poussaint and Ingres through Delacroix, etc. and the Impressionists
On the other hand French LITERATURE I could cheerfully live without –– with the possible exception of Collette. I've read enough Dumas, pere and fils, Maupassant, Zola, Flaubert, Stendahl, et al. to allow me to form the opinion that a morbid preoccupation with human misery, dark passion, bitter irony, decadence, and inveterate pessimism along with a nearly-complete lack of any quality I could recognize as humor pervades the novels and short stories of France.
The French films I have been unlucky to experience seem to strengthen and extend the mood of lowering gloom, deprivation, cynicism and despair I found in French fiction.
Is it any wonder then that leftists ardently embrace French films?
The Islamaniacs loudly and proudly and assert, "We love death. We are a culture of Death. Will live to kill, maim,destroy, and enslave."
Is it any wonder then that the Marx-inspired Left would express deep enthusiasm –– even reverence –– for morbid, despairing French Films, cynical, iconoclastic French Philosophers and Islamaniacs?
I'm no fan of French film... but I found it interesting that Godard's genius and outburst of cinematic innovation was entirely an entrepeneurial response to the competition of capitalism. Much to mr. ducky's likely disdain, I'd crown Godard one of France's most successful capitalists in the entertainment field of film and cinema.
Had there been no competition from Hollywood, would there ever have been a film noir genre?
...because w/o the Godard reaction to it, there never would have been a French New Wave.
There's "Before Breathless" and "After Breathless".
Much to mr. ducky's likely disdain, I'd crown Godard one of France's most successful capitalists in the entertainment field of film and cinema.
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His films were generally profitable but hardly blockbusters.
In America, the New Wave never reached a large audience outside the east coast corridor.
Thanks for pointing out that article's falsity, ducky. I thought that for all his films, and general fame, the royalties must have been rolling in (at least from France). I was obviously mistaken, as it would appear that all he managed to achieve was to appeal to and capture a "niche" market of intellectuals.
I pity the French Cinema because it has no money. I pity the American Cinema because it has no ideas.
--- Jean-Luc Godard
Nice try by nerd-whatever but an entirely Americanocentric 'analysis'. 'Breathless' is hardly representative of good French cinema.
Much of Hollywood is capitalism at its most efficient, in the Žižekian sense of the word. Much of it is mindless (but infinitely marketable) trash, quite often in the service of the military-industrial complex.
I have little doubt as to the truth of your statements, Gert. Hollywood represents the epitomy of capitalism's "privatization" of knowledge and information through "intellectual property" laws...
Imagine what the Greek world would have been if instead of competing for the "Palm" at Dionysia, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, et al, simply charged "admission" and wrote for money. I always loved Aristophanes' lines in "Plutus" " I will accept them at your fireside, as custom requires. Besides, we shall thus avoid a ridiculous scene; it is not meet that the poet should throw dried figs and dainties to the spectators; 'tis a vulgar trick to make 'em laugh."
Today's Hollywood does nothing but toss figs...
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