(All images: from camera)
This week we were asked to look at an aspect, or treatment of Image and Text, in greater detail, ours being the 12 tableux of 'Vivre Sa Vie', by Jean Luc Godard, with particular regards to the use of subtitling and voiceovers, in its treatment of text in different forms. Below is the original presentation that a group, including myself, Scott English and Debbie Leane, gave:
'Jean-Luc Godard has been referred to as the most controversial film-maker of the post war period.
Although considered a pioneer of the French New Wave, over the decades his approach to film-making underwent many shifts in emphasis, subject and construction.
Godard was particularly affected by the may 1968 Paris riots, which influenced a change in direction within his film-making that has been described as the shift from ‘pleasure to the polemic’, that has naturally divided critics and writers ever since.
For example, Nina Hibbin deplored the placement within such films as ‘Sympathy For the Devil’ and ‘British Sounds’, of ‘his little ideas against the big problems’, leading to a kind of, ‘pedantic intellectual purism’, that many critics have described as simply boring, when compared to the sensuality of Godard’s earlier work.
Nevertheless, the way in which Godard viewed himself and his work, remains interesting regardless of how the film was received. In his video introduction to ‘Passion’ (1982), Godard presents himself as simultaneously in control of the film, as well as under the film’s control, with the screen as a blank page, or beach without sea, ‘I create the waves’.
The script becomes secondary to the film: ‘there are certain given facts, the camera makes the probable possible’, and there is an idea of a film pre-existing, with director only there to make the ‘invisible visible’.
Vivre Sa Vie (my life to live), made in 1962, tells the story of a young shopgirl, in 12 parts, or tableaux. Short of money, she turns to prostitution.
The 12th tableaux, known as the ‘oval portrait’ is the closing chapter of the film. Perhaps the most complex and dense section of vivre sa vie, it best illustrates Tom Milnes definition of Godard’s work as ‘film essays’.
1. The opening shot of the chapter is just text, and appears as a direct reference to silent cinema, with a description of the scene before it happens, this perhaps could lull the viewer into a false sense of security, by appearing to give them the knowledge of what will happen before the scene unfolds. However, as the tableaux progresses, we soon realise that in fact, whilst the text is not necessarily inaccurate, it can only give a brief overview of events, with nowhere near the same level of detail as film. So maybe Godard is highlighting the limitations of using text as a descriptive tool within moving image, something he alludes to in the statement, ‘rather than talk, I’d rather see’.
2. References to silent cinema continue as the tableau progresses, interchanging between subtitled silence and diagetic narration. The deliberate reference to silent cinema appears in direct contrast to the subject matter of the film, the lead characters discuss trivial everyday subjects like the rain and whether they were going to go out as they dance - almost in imitation of the excitement and frivolity of early silent cinema. To the viewer this appears as a contrast to the subject matter of the film and the tragic circumstances that Anna Karina finds herself in.
3. Juxtaposed between the scenes of silence we hear a diagetic narrative from Edgar Alan Poe’s ‘Oval Portrait’ read by a young man. Whilst the text being narrated seems initially unconnected to the plot of the film Godard deliberately manipulates the direction of the camera work to suggest connections and links between the two.
4. Other possible references within the film:
Hollywood reference – shot of car and gangsters
Self reflexive - queue at cinema suggestion of the process of film making and film watching
Arc de Triumph – reminder of location (paris) perhaps a reference to the empire/napoleon or social values of France.
Hades & Sons – sinister choice of name, lord of the underworld'
