Forty years later, he's still pondering the question in Histoire(s) du cinema, his epic rumination on cinema as industry and art. In eight episodes and four-and-a-half hours, Godard struggles between his conflicting perspectives on cinema: on the one hand an industrialized business that cranks out products designed to sell images, consumer goods and an entire ideology, and on the other, a history of images, stories and experiences that haunt the soul and stand with the great works of art.
Histoire(s) du cinema is not, strictly speaking, a history of cinema, at least not in a traditional documentary sense. The title provides the first hint. In French, "histoire" means both "history" and "story" and the (s) suggests the multiple histories and stories involved in any understanding of cinema, not the least of which is Godard's complicated personal connection to film history. From passionate young critic staking out his position in the fifties to maverick director who shook up the staid French industry with provocative films to political commentator and social critic exploring the frontiers of expression and representation, he has been nothing if not provocative. The personal and political are constantly in flux in this collection of eight video essays, begun in 1988 and concluded in 1998, where the Nouvelle Vague legend considers the history of the movies with a typically idiosyncratic style and non-linear train of thought.
Toutes les histories (1988), the first chapter (and, at 50 minutes, the longest), opens with Godard pecking out film titles on an electric typewriter, which chatters to life like a teletype after the completion of each phrase. The first title is "The Rule of the Game" (yes, the "s" is absent) and images, film clips and snippets of audio from Jean Renoir's film are woven through the segment along with stills and clips from dozens of other films spanning the 20th century and artworks from previous centuries. Using simple, pre-digital video editing techniques with hyperactive application, he intercuts and overlaps clips and shuffles images like flip cards while providing audio commentary in a growling monotone and layering the screen in blocks of text - slogans, quotes, asides, puns - that serve as chapter heads, commentary and counterpoint. The subtitles work hard at keeping up and do a pretty good job (from what I can determine from my limited French) but it's easy to get confused by the vast amount of information coming your way, especially as Godard fractures and puns his way through his often ironic textual commentary. Meanwhile we fly blind through the references: neither the clips, the subjects of the stills nor the works of art are identified. It's as much quiz as essay: name that film / director / masterpiece of world art.
The subsequent episodes follow the same patter with variations. In Seule le cinema (1997), the third episode, film historian Serge Daney break Godard out of his usual comfort zone to reflect on his initial engagement with the movies. Godard appears to finally come to terms with one-time colleague turned rival Francois Truffaut and his contribution to the French New Wave appreciation and appropriation of the cinematic past while pursuing personal expression in redefining the present. In the sixth episode, Une Vague Nouvelle (1998), his temperament is almost nostalgic as he recalls in even more personal terms how he first fell in love with the movies and received his education in film history from French Cinemateque founder Henri Langlois. "We had to love it, blindly and by heart." But don't mistake this for Godard getting sentimental. Throughout it all, Godard is at once playful and critical.
The low fidelity of the film clips, all culled from appears to be commercial videotape, is inherent in the original production. The second-generation video quality is a part of the film's texture - it was present on theatrical screenings - and in its way it establishes Godard as a kind of creative pirate. He doesn't simply borrow images and sound bites, he pillages the entirety of film history as material that he shuffles around, shuttles between, fractures, freezes, and deconstructs. The resulting video essay creates has as much to do with how these clips look and feel as contrasted and intercut with other films, creating juxtapositions of style, textures, colors, as it does with the texts themselves.
Histoire(s) du cinema is analysis and deconstruction, celebration and criticism, and it constantly bounces between the ideas of film as art and as industrial creation: truth and lie bound together in the same magic lantern of expression. It's as dense, contradictory and self-reflexive as anything he has made. There are no rules to this game, he seems to be saying, but there is a legacy to be seen, experienced, and acknowledged. In his juxtaposition of films and artists (at one point he even intercuts his own "Alphaville" with Fritz Lang's "Destiny" and dissolves between Jerry Lewis, who he championed from the beginning, with his own portrait), he makes a case for a continuum and connection across eras, genres and national cinemas.
You won't necessarily come away from Histoire(s) du cinema with any practical guide to film history -- in fact, it helps to come into it with a little background, if only to understand his dense, rapid-fire visual references -- but you may come away with a different perspective. Godard isn't making a single point about "the cinema," he's exploring the complexities of cinema as personal expressions and studio creations and he finds beauty in both. Along the way, he confronts his own complicated relationship to the cinema as critic, filmmakers and film lover. How can Godard hate the industrial complex that produces and distributes films and the criticize the ideology inherent in so many movies, and yet love the cinema to passionately when seeing the works of Fritz Lang, Frank Borzage, Jean Renoir, Howard Hawks, Nicholas Ray, Yasujiro Ozu, Jerry Lewis and so many others? In these histories, he pledges his love for the art he has tussled with all his life. Not unconditional love, perhaps, but as close to it as Godard is willing to admit.
The audio clips from film soundtracks are in their original languages, while the narration and titles/texts are in French with English subtitles. There are no supplements, which is too bad given the extras that the French DVD edition carry, but hardly worth complaining about. Frankly, I gave up any hope of this project ever getting an American release of any kind. That this work is now available on domestic DVD is a minor miracle in itself, given the sheer volume of references.
For more information about Histoires(s) du cinema, visit Olive Films.
by Sean Axmaker
