When watching Godard’s film, I can’t help remembering and bringing up a moment that was confusing and a little jarring for me to watch. I am not referring to the scene in which Paul’s day ends with a man stabbing himself, but the scene immediately proceeding that. This moment, in summary, begins in a laundry shop, and Paul is telling a story about what just happened to him to Robert. In a typical Hollywood movie, this conversation would be about the stabbing that it followed, but it was not. It was about an entirely different story, and an entirely different subject. Godard wants you thinking about this moment separate from the previous moment. This new piece of cinema is hoping to invoke a completely different reaction, completely different set of emotions as the last scene. Sure, the entire movie arrives to one major theme or question that the filmmaker is trying to make, but I believe that Godard is trying to say that the path to that theme or question is the filmmaker’s choice, and that worrying about plot or audience pleasure is only going to take away from the strength of the filmmaker’s reason for the film.
You can make this case about the moment in the laundry room without even regarding the previous scene. Up until this point, Godard’s shots had been very long, uncut shots of people’s faces as they had conversations with their peers. We never were able to look away. Here, we see Paul pace and walk around, telling this story. While I felt we never actually missed any part of it, every sentence or two would be interrupted by a cut of the camera. These cuts weren’t introducing any sort of time change, except for maybe a second or two, as Paul would be a few steps and a few words ahead of where he was. The story itself is not what is important to Godard at the time. What’s important is viewing one of our characters as he attempts to recreate, in entertainment and in emotion, something that happened to him that he felt worthy to say. His choice to cut up the scene, while it makes the rest of the shot less structured and less “pleasurable”, it better creates the type of feeling both a viewer of Paul’s story, and Paul’s consciousness feel as he tries to retell his experience.
This moment struck me as important as well! I like your interpretation of this scene as Paul's attempt to re-create an event, to give it voice and an entertainment value. And, Paul struggles to do so. I also wonder if it mirrors a distracted listener who only catches bits and pieces of someone else's story? I'm not sure Godard wants us to be distracted listeners/viewers, but his techniques sometimes encourage this (even if unintentionally). I often find myself reflecting on a past scene while I should be paying attention to the present one.
ReplyDeleteI also think it is important that you mention the oppositional emotional responses created by two juxtaposed scenes. I wonder if Godard's effect works the same way as Eisenstein's theory about intellectual montage (imageA + imageB = ideaC). But, instead of just thinking about the images as individual entities, maybe we should be thinking about the emotional reactions as separate, and clashing, responses which, when joined together, create a new emotion overall. I have never thought about this film in that way...your topic could make for a really interesting essay if you want to develop it.