kino raum 3 -- ziegelstrasse 20 -- 10119 berlin -- http://bootlab.org/raum3/ ________________________________________________________________________________ Michèle Halberstadt: Sonntag, 25. August, 21:00 Uhr, Raum 3, Ziegelstrasse 20 How is a film born? What comes first? An Copy Cultures (2): Burn, Hollywood, Burn! image, a sound? Jean-Luc Godard: Eloge de l'amour [DivX] Jean-Luc Godard: First comes a Hollywood befindet sich im Krieg. Das erste Ziel dieses commission that Krieges ist die schnellstmögliche Wiederaneignung der corresponds to an Distributionswege, d.h. das Verbot all jener Techniken idea or a state of und die Zerstörung all jener Netzwerke, die es seit Ende mind I'm in. It's a der neunziger Jahre Millionen von Menschen ermöglichen, commission that I digitale Filme autonom zu verbreiten. initiate. I try to give myself and the Angesichts der Tatsache, dass via DeCSS<1> other person the entschlüsselte und als DivX<2> auf die Datenmenge einer desire to make a CD komprimierte DVDs über Filesharing-Netzwerke wie film. Sometimes, I Gnutella<3> binnen weniger Stunden veröffentlicht und suggest a subject. übertragen werden können, hat die Motion Picture Sometimes, it starts Association of America nicht nur die blosse Diskussion with an idea I can von Copyright-Umgehungen kriminalisieren<4> und das describe in a couple Hacken verdächtiger Rechner legalisieren<5> lassen, of lines and it goes sondern versucht mittlerweile sogar, durch die down well. Implementierung von "Digital Rights Management"<6>- Naturally, there's Systemen ein Verbot sämtlicher Hard- und Software some guile involved, durchzusetzen, die den Computer als Universalmaschine as there is in von einem blossen Abspielgerät für Multimedia-Content everything to do unterscheidet<7>. with production. And finally, it becomes Das letzte Ziel dieses Krieges ist die vollständige something of a Kontrolle der Produktionsmittel, d.h. nicht nur der nuisance, because Widerruf des Versprechens der Computerindustrie, wir then you're stuck. alle könnten in naher Zukunft an unseren "Digital Hubs" What you come up eigene "Desktop Movies" herstellen und weltweit with later has to verbreiten, sondern die präventive Unbenutzbarmachung fit into the aller technischen Mittel, die eine revolutionäre original proposition Umwälzung der digitalen Eigentumsverhältnisse in and the producer Aussicht stellen. "Burn, Hollywood, Burn!"<8> ist längst starts complaining nicht mehr der Schlachtruf von Public Enemy, sondern if you change it. eher der Slogan von Apple. And he can't understand how you Im ersten Teil des Abends wollen wir einige der unten could have come up aufgeführten Abkürzungen erklären, eine Einführung in with such an die technischen, rechtlichen und politischen Bedingungen appealing idea that des Filmekopierens geben und der Kriegslogik des "War turns out impossible against Piracy" bis an ihre möglichen Grenzen folgen. to realize. Im Anschluss zeigen wir eine DivX-Kopie von Jean-Luc Michèle Halberstadt: Godards "Eloge de l'amour" aus dem Jahr 2001, der In the case of this hierzulande noch immer keinen legalen Kino-Verleih film, what came gefunden hat, so dass wir an dieser Stelle - von einer first? Vorführung auf der Berlinale abgesehen - eine Deutschlandpremiere ankündigen können. "Eloge de Jean-Luc Godard: l'amour" erzählt vier Momente dreier Liebesgeschichten Here, it was the und zugleich eine Geschichte des Widerstands gegen die title. I had a vague Filmindustrie der "Vereinigten Staaten von Nord- idea that had a Amerika". title. I had in mind something usually Der dritte Teil des Abends besteht, wie gewohnt, aus known as a so-called Getränken an der Bar<9>, dazu diesmal ein besonders love story; my idea schönes MP3-Set von DJ PowerBook. was to relate it counter- <1> http://slashdot.org/search.pl?query=decss chronologically. <2> http://slashdot.org/search.pl?query=divx Something of that <3> http://slashdot.org/search.pl?query=gnutella idea remains. I <4> http://slashdot.org/search.pl?query=dmca thought of starting <5> http://slashdot.org/search.pl?query=mpaa with the end, then <6> http://slashdot.org/search.pl?query=drm say, four days <7> http://slashdot.org/search.pl?query=palladium earlier, then six <8> http://rolux.net/banners/apple.hollywood.gif months earlier, a <9> (Da ich für einige Zeit nach New York ziehe, wäre year earlier, and so das auch die ca. vorletzte Gelegenheit, gemeinsam on, and conclude zu viel zu trinken... /Sebastian.) with the beginning. I injected some thriller elements later but it turned out disastrous, a nightmare. Then came the idea of dealing with couples. But by that point all the contracts had already been signed for some time. Naturally, there's always a bit of ruse involved, but not only. It's like the painter who sets off for the woods or the seaside. He'll eventually paint a landscape or a seascape. But the thing is, he sets off. And the idea is strong enough to keep him going. So I thought of these three couples, but almost immediately I stumbled over the adults. I had started with a preposterous story and in the end I thought that I couldn't, one couldn't, describe an adult. Adults can only be dealt with in story form. In the street you don't say, there goes an adult. You say, there goes Paul and there goes Fabienne or there goes a mad killer. You tell a story. With the others, young people and old people, there's no need to. The same goes for painting. When you have a painting of an adult, he's a card player. Only the novel can pull it off. The Red and the Black, The Brothers Karamazov aren't just little storylets, like Julia Roberts movies are, they're real stories. Michèle Halberstadt: Other filmmakers would say just the opposite: "I have nothing to say about young or old people, but with an adult I have a story to tell." Jean-Luc Godard: Yes, that's true, but out of principle I've always chosen to do what others aren't doing. "No one does that, so it remains to be done, let's try it." If it's already being done, there's no point in me doing it as well. Michèle Halberstadt: There's a certain turmoil in being adult... Jean-Luc Godard: Yes, you could write about the film saying that: it's the story of someone who becomes an adult. Besides, his servant says it: "he's the only one trying to become an adult." Michèle Halberstadt: How do you come to deal with the present in black- and-white and the past in color? Jean-Luc Godard: I didn't want to treat it chronologically. In view of my age, I was leaning more toward a narrative film, one that happens through Eglantine and others. I had to give this feeling. So I thought it would be more appropriate to work against the generally accepted idea of showing the present in color and the past in black- and-white, as in newsreels. On the contrary, I wanted to find a way of intensifying the past. Michèle Halberstadt: Is that what gives the impression that the past sheds light on the present? Jean-Luc Godard: No, I think that color is closer to us because it's the present tense of film projection, emotionally speaking. I've always loved Proust's novel. When he speaks of Albertine in the imperfect tense, the reader experiences it in the present. Especially as an adolescent. Michèle Halberstadt: Eloge de l'amour is very structured, more than usual. Jean-Luc Godard: That's because it took a lot of time. It's strange, but there's always been a blank in my films, about an hour into the screening. I find that lots of films slump around this point and since the script is a life buoy, the director pulls out of it by filming the script, but in the process he loses the cinema. Here, there was a blank an hour in. The first part ends at exactly an hour into the film, the blank is there, but this time it's accepted as such and what goes with it is accepted as such, too. That's because of age, and time, too, the time you've spent making the film. The problem was that it was a long, disjointed shot, in several sections, and the mixing was difficult. It was something of a strain. Michèle Halberstadt: Why did the film take so long? Jean-Luc Godard: Because I was a bit lost, but I kept trying to do it anyway. In fact, you have to just do it and then you have to cut later. It's harder in film because it's a very social world, with problems of time, money, people and psychology. So it's much more difficult than, say, with a painter or a novelist, to go: "We'll shoot this, but we know we're shooting to move on to something else; still you have to go through this it's practice. You shoot to practice, not to come up with a good shot. You practice because the game is coming up in two weeks." It's hard to do that, besides you're not aware of it, but later, during editing, you suddenly say: "All this goes and this is all that's left in the end." And this time I said: "It's a miracle!" It's like when I make a good shot in tennis. I don't say to myself, "bravo," I say, "Oh, I could've missed that!" So the film was shot in several sections. In February, then in September. Then in Brittany. At that point, I didn't know what I wanted to do. It was a bit frantic. I didn't really know, but I must have heard something. My vacation in Brittany was with family. There were too many personal things. I couldn't tell the difference between what was personal and what was the film. I remember that JLG on JLG was a film I shot very quickly because one day I read in the contract: "Delivery in a month." But the film was about me, it answered to me. Whereas with Eloge de l'amour I had to answer to the film, but I realized that I was asking the film to answer to me, and that wasn't clear. So Brittany wasn't easy to get in the can, as they say. Then I acted in Anne-Marie Miéville's film, which did me a lot of good, but we had to put everything off for four months, so the production turned out disjointed. Michèle Halberstadt: You haven't filmed Paris in a long time, not since Masculin Féminin. Jean-Luc Godard: Even before that, it reminded me of the first New Wave productions. It was illegal to shoot outdoors, in the streets and cafés. But we wanted to shoot there, not only because it wasn't done, but especially for emotional reasons. They were places we loved, where we spent our time. Michèle Halberstadt: And it's been a long time since we were last shown Paris in this virtually timeless way. Jean-Luc Godard: The Paris of Eloge de l'amour is modern- day Paris. There's something timeless about it, because it's past is there. You haven't seen Paris in a long time because Paris is no longer used as a film element. Not many people use the setting they're shooting in as an element of the film. Nowadays, if you film a car driving through a Paris street, it's, for example, Thierry Lhermitte who's driving, and he's taking the car to go see Sandrine Bonnaire. Things aren't filmed for their own sake. The location manager doesn't even go out to inspect the set, he sends an assistant. For Eloge de l'amour, we said: we must have Montparnasse, and Seguin Island because I wanted the girl to live in the suburbs. I wanted her to walk home and for there to be a route between the two, so that she and the boy have time to talk. Michèle Halberstadt: But the choice of Seguin Island wasn't innocent? Jean-Luc Godard: It's something finished, the remains of another era, which we won't see once Pinault has repainted it... The image allows us to resuscitate things we no longer think about. It's history. That's what the cinema is about, too. The past behind the present. The background to the present. The young man talks of the empty fortress. In 1968, they called it the workers' fortress... We go back a lot, even as we move forward. Michèle Halberstadt: The film deals with several kinds of resistance. The Resistance of our grandparents, the resistance to America, and, of course, your filmmaking which resists... Jean-Luc Godard: Yes, the artistic act is an act of resistance against something. I wouldn't call it an act of freedom, but an act of resistance. The birth of a child is an act of resistance. He must stand on his own two feet very quickly. Animals, too, have to stand on their own even more quickly than humans. The Resistance of World War II is something we have difficulty finding out about. It comes back again roughly a half-century later, just long enough to skip the generation of the parents. Later, it goes down in textbooks and people's memories. I've always been absorbed by the mid- century, by the Second World War, which were the years of my innocent adolescence, and which I felt guilty about later. Emmanuel Astier once said that there was a brief moment early in the Resistance in which money wasn't an end but a means. I can understand that. If, when you make a film, you manage to create something, and money is a means and not an end, then that's production, if it's genuine. Then come the other sectors, which in France all deserve their names. Language clearly describes the tree terms: production, distribution and exhibition. In Hollywood, there's no more production, all that's left is distribution, which is under the thumb of exhibition and television broadcasting. In television, there's no more production, except a few pockets from time to time, certain sporting events or interviews. Besides, we say wildlife programs, not wildlife film production. We talk of a TV network like we do a food distribution network. When producers like Darryl Zanuck and Louis B Meyer made 40 films a year, they weren't making films on an assembly line. Today it's very difficult. Renault car ads tell it like it is. In the past, they used to say automobile manufacturers. Today we say automobile creators. Michèle Halberstadt: Nowadays, things are no longer enough in themselves. When did we stop seeing things for what they are? Jean-Luc Godard: The problem is that directors take a camera but they put themselves in the camera's place. The camera needs its independence. When they want to do a drawing, and pick up a pencil to do it, that pencil has autonomy. It resists, it doesn't do just any drawing. Nowadays, we take a machine and the drawings come out ready-made. I often look at people, at certain faces, and I think: "I would need a camera to look at that." But when they look at the face of a young girl or an old woman, does that face exist beyond them? The real reverse shot hasn't been found. The Americans, the ones of the north, as she says in the film, soon beat the shot / reverse shot to death, making it into a trivial ping- pong game devoid of all meaning. The director no longer tries to have two people look at each other, listen to each other, think of each other, which is already six possibilities multiplied by six, which amounts to years of film! You can show your worth in a first film, because you have 15 to 20 years of life behind you. Later, for the second film, you only have a year behind you. You can't show your worth. Michèle Halberstadt: Were you aware of that right from your first film? Jean-Luc Godard: It's something I knew, as a critic. I knew that the first film is always too long. Inevitably so. By some kind of miracle, when I was told that 2 hours 30 was too long, I cut an hour. That's what happened on Robert Rossen's All the King's Men. After seven or eight different edits, Rossen told his editor (Robert Parrish): Just use what you like in each shot. He won an Oscar! I did like him, without realizing it... It's hard to see what you're doing, nowadays. Either you are very sure of what you're doing and highly prepared. Or, on the contrary, you start with the sense of a line, knowing that it's this but not that, and thinking that something will work out, even if it has its ups and downs. But then you need a confidant or a partner. You can't come up with all the answers by yourself. You often have to say things out loud. And just as you say it, when you hear yourself say it, you come up with the answer. For instance, on this film, when at the end you hear the lines of the opening, I wondered if we should just hear only Putzulu, or if we should add other voices to his. I asked Anne-Marie and when I heard myself formulating the question, I immediately realized that no, I shouldn't add the other voices. It was precisely the mere presence of another voice than mine that allowed me to understand this. That's the real role of a producer, and it's a role that has virtually vanished today. I think that if a film is a success, even a so- so film, it's because there was a minimum of give-and- take, understanding and complicity among a few persons out of all those working on the film, which got around and was seen by the audience. Michèle Halberstadt: At what point do you know what works and what doesn't? Jean-Luc Godard: If you write: she arrived one moonlit night, it's hard to realize immediately that it's bad. You have to shoot it to understand that it's bad. It happens sometimes. You shoot something, the crew is there, you know it's bad but you can't say, no, we won't shoot this, it's far too bad. You have a certain feeling, and you can't express it, you're not quite sure. The cinema is also a copy of the real world. Sometimes, a take... you do eight takes of a scene, you don't sense that doing eight takes, for whatever reason, is a clinical sign, a symptom. If the film is good, the symptom is correct. Michèle Halberstadt: You like to watch the rushes? Jean-Luc Godard: Not really. I haven't enough complicity with the crew. Michèle Halberstadt: What is striking, seeing you on a set, is the solitude you seem wrapped in. Jean-Luc Godard: Yes, but that's because of my nature. I don't much care for the shooting. What I really enjoy is searching. The conversations I want to have interest no one, I think, apart from a friend. It's something that goes back to my childhood, the fear of boring others with things that don't interest them. So, there's no doubt that I resist my crew, which is my first problem. That's why I was so happy on the set of Après la réconciliation. I was in my place, I didn't need to be spoken to, I was an actor, I listened to others, I had a role to play. Whereas the director is the captain. I sea novels, I've always enjoyed the stories of seconds in command on a ship. They serve as a link, we find out things through them. But there's no one on my films to act as a link. I had something of a link with my maternal grandparents. Then, too, during the time of the Cahiers du Cinéma. After that, I stopped looking for one. At the Cahiers, when I aired an idea, Rohmer would say: that's stupid, or that's fine. On the set, I have to say what we're doing. It's normal, but it would be nice to have some input from others. But there isn't any. So I think: "You have to give children instructions, because if you don't, dinner will never be ready." Michèle Halberstadt: Is that why you never had children? Because of the overwhelming responsibility that it implies? Jean-Luc Godard: I think so, yes. I felt that I wasn't up to it. I would have been afraid of not being good for them. Michèle Halberstadt: Why do you say you're not cut out for casting your own films? Jean-Luc Godard: I'm not cut out for it because I don't know my motivations well enough, or my relation to the film, when I do the casting. I hire people out of security or personal preference, "if the woman is pretty," but in any case I do it too fast, so as to reassure myself, to make sure the pantry is adequately stocked. I'd seen Bruno Putzulu in Guiguet's Les Passagers. He struck me as truthful. I took him for that. Cécile Camp I chose for her tone of voice. She was very sincere. It was neither simple not pleasant for her. But what came out was fine. She has a beautiful voice when she gets a hold of it. We recorded some sounds by themselves 35 times, like Bresson. Michèle Halberstadt: Is Bresson a model for you? Jean-Luc Godard: A model of conscience. He doesn't put it in his suitcase, like all those Papa Ubus. Michèle Halberstadt: The scene where she talks to Putzulu on the phone is very good. Jean-Luc Godard: After a take like that one, you'd like to see a technician come up to you afterwards or the next day and say it was good. That would help you talk about it or something else. I don't know the technicians. They know everything about me. Who I live with, how much I earn, what I'm thinking about, what I'd like to talk about. But I never know a thing about them, never. I invite them to eat every day for two months. It's my initiative, it comes from a personal desire. But as for them, I wouldn't know whether they had children or not... It's a strange relationship. It's only cinema, you're at peace and yet there's a war rumbling. Michèle Halberstadt: Whereas you like to talk... Jean-Luc Godard: Yes, to argue, in the philosophical sense. But nobody likes that anymore. Often, I'd rather see journalists hate a film and talk about it, because then you have a purpose. Whereas when they say: it was great, it moved me, that's terrible because what's there to say after that? Michèle Halberstadt: Eloge de l'amour is a more serene film. Jean-Luc Godard: That comes from age and also a bit from the contacts I have with Anne-Marie's grandchildren. We're two associates who've been in this profession for a long time, and who've stayed together. When I make a film, the best moment for me is when I'm looking for a clue, a direction. There are possibilities. If you only have one or two friends, it's more difficult. In the past, there were more of us and there was a total confidence. Today, as filmmakers, relationships are rather lacking. But you still can. You have the technical side, which can be reassuring or tortuous, but it exists. It's yours. It's a privilege. You have to deserve it, you have to do things right. Michèle Halberstadt: Sometimes images return several times, like waves breaking on the shore. Is it to slow down the course of things? Jean-Luc Godard: Yes, it's to remain in the time frame. Cinema is an art of space and time, but not the narrative time of an average novel. In films, you have to give, but first of all you have to receive. Audiences no longer give because with television you stop giving. There's only the receiving end. Michèle Halberstadt: In some shots you use the freeze frame, like the start of a shot where you think you're seeing a painting. Jean-Luc Godard: When we did the transfer to 35mm, I liked this fixed image, so we used it a bit. But I use it without being able to say what I'm doing. If I think, this looks like a painting, I don't keep it. If I think, that looks purposeful, then it's no good. But the moment you feel before you can put something into words, the moment when you come up with the idea, you feel happy. Michèle Halberstadt: In writing on the film, Jean-Claude Biette talks about the right to be lyrical. Jean-Luc Godard: Lyricism was something that existed in silent cinema and which disappeared, as if we were ashamed of it. For instance, you couldn't call Brotherhood or Wolves a lyrical film... I regret not knowing how to sing, otherwise I think I'd sing a lot. Being lyrical means singing, too. The cinema is a lyrical art form; some moments in editing are like musical phrases. It doesn't take much. It comes fairly naturally to me. Michèle Halberstadt: How did you come to think of Françoise Verny? Jean-Luc Godard: I was looking for someone authentic, who would either use his own name, or be a non-professional. I saw actresses and I felt I needed someone who would find it painful to do, to be part of the story. That's when I thought of Françoise Verny. She'd been one of the queens of Paris literary production, a bit like Lucie Aubrac was a queen of the Resistance. That's what Jean- Henri Roger says towards the end of the film when he talks about his celebrity past. Françoise naturally brings a past to the character. Michèle Halberstadt: And Claude Baignières and Rémo Forlani? Jean-Luc Godard: Originally, I wanted the film to have a documentary aspect. I thought that Edgar could go to Soulages, but Soulages wouldn't hear of it. I looked, then came this idea about the art dealer. I saw a photo of Baignières. I've known Forlani a long time. Finally, only Jean Lacouture played himself. Michèle Halberstadt: You've sometimes worked with name actors. Was that part of the commission? Jean-Luc Godard: Yes, usually. They're name actors but on the decline. So for me they exist. I can believe in them. And they're happy because they sense my interest. They feel a real gaze, a real respect. I have this respect for Johnny Hallyday and Alain Delon. The respect I had for Depardieu has died, because when we started the film, he began to fade away himself. Michèle Halberstadt: The cinema films the mortal. Jean-Luc Godard: Cinema films illness, not good health. When you say that happiness does not make for a story, that's what it means. Television brazently aggravates that. It can do that because we're no longer watching. Michèle Halberstadt: Whereas when you watch films, there's still hope. Jean-Luc Godard: Exactly. You go to the movies to see differently. Audiences go in the hope of seeing something other than what they see in a TV series. But if they go to see Mademoiselle, then in that case... they deserve what they get. Michèle Halberstadt: I've always seen a parallel between you and Serge Gainsbourg. Jean-Luc Godard: I thank you. I'm very fond of Charlotte For Ever. I was thinking of the duality between the work and the person. Michèle Halberstadt: We admired the musician but hat trouble with the public persona. With you it's the opposite. We respect the man more than we look at the work. Jean-Luc Godard: The paths have moved apart. I've remained a memorialist of this profession in all its qualities. I've always liked every aspect of cinema. This world of film, which is the world in miniature. Films come into being at a certain moment, they bloom, they live, grow old, die, all within a brief period of time. No other industry does that. Bring together people who have nothing in common, apart from the boss's will, to discuss and create together. I like this working core, which functions on a life-size scale and projects what it has done on a larger- than-life scale. And it's accessible to everyone. That's what we were just saying. I like to talk, to discuss, but I always end up talking by myself. So I don't see things any clearer because no one answers me. Take journalists. I like to talk about them, about their position or their newspaper, but they don't. You have to talk about specific things. For instance, I'd like to discuss with Serge July, to know why he gives himself a raise. But not to get into an argument, just to discuss things. Michèle Halberstadt: You say that putting Godard on the front page of a newspaper hurts your film. Jean-Luc Godard: That's what I believe. I don't see how that can help the film. I don't understand why they put Zidane's photo on the cover of a soccer magazine instead of putting the ball. For me, when they talk about Godard, I think about my father. Godard was his name, not even, it was his father's name. Michèle Halberstadt: In Alphaville, someone says to Lemmy Caution: "You'll endure something worse than hell. You'll become a legend." Can we say the same about you? Jean-Luc Godard: Yes. What bothers me about that is the discrepancy between this legend, what's shown from the outside, and what's inside me. [interview ripped from DVD] ________________________________________________________________________________ raum 3 mailing list http://lists.minordomo.org/raum3