what i watched last week

Masculin Féminin (Jean-Luc Godard, 1966). Is it my 60s fixation that makes me like this period of Godard so much? This is the “children of Marx and Coca-Cola” one. Godard has a love/hate relationship with these young people … the pop singer seems shallow, the pop revolutionary seems, well, shallow, but then there’s the legendary interview with Miss 19, a young woman who makes the other people in the movie seem like Sartre and de Beauvoir. She is treated like the “consumer product” the intertitle calls her, and Godard is not in favor of consumer products … she is verbally destroyed in the scene, so much so that we start to feel sorry for her, which may not have been Godard’s intent. The movie in general is harder on the women than on the men, but they are all children of Coke. It’s not a cheery movie. #404 on the They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They list of the Top 1000 films of all time.

JCVD (Mabrouk El Mechri, 2008). Fascinating look at celebrity that forces you to consider that Jean-Claude Van Damme can act. Some critics noted similarities to Being John Malkovich, but since I’d just watched a Godard film, it was there that I saw connections. In fact, after watching Masculine-Feminine, I found myself wondering why no one made “Godard movies” anymore. Well, here’s one.

Night and Fog (Alain Resnais, 1956). Still great, still unbearable to watch. It took me more than 35 years for my second viewing. How you make art out of material like this? I don’t know, but Resnais succeeded. #372 on the TSPDT list of the 1000 greatest films of all time.

Comments

[Robert Gable]

I haven't seen it 20 years but Night and Fog would probably be in my top 10 list. Thanks for the reminder that I need to track it down.