Histoire(s) du cinéma (1988-1998) review 2: the extras (1982-2024)

A review should have a beginning, a middle and an end, but not necessarily in that order. With that in mind, let’s start smack-bang in the middle of the extras for Radiance’s Histoire(s) du cinéma Blu-Ray, with 2×50 Years of French Cinema. A 1995 collaboration between Godard and his partner Anne-Marie Miéville, its title confirms that it was commissioned for the same centenary celebrations as the box set’s main event. The question of which Godard shorts are most relevant to Histoire(s) du cinéma must have vexed the people who put this set together. Since Histoire(s) du cinéma is meant to be Godard’s thesis statement about the entire art form, you could make a fair argument that all of his films can be related to it in some way. But 2×50 Years of French Cinema sees Godard in conversation with Michel Piccoli about the anniversary project itself, and as such it allows for an unusually unfiltered look at the opinions Godard held as he undertook Histoire(s) du cinéma.

As with the few interviews in Histoire(s) du cinéma, it’s hard to tell whether this conversation is scripted or not; Piccoli and Godard had previously worked together on Contempt, after all. What matters is Godard’s objection to the central premise of the anniversary, of using the premiere of Train Arriving at a Station to define cinema as a French art. Histoire(s) du cinéma shows Godard was perfectly comfortable framing the movies as a French innovation. In his view, however, this is because film picked up on the political and artistic developments of nineteenth-century French culture, whereas Piccoli says the French government’s official view is that cinema started when the Lumière brothers got a paying audience in to watch a movie. This usefully excludes those experimentalists from other countries who made moving-picture devices before them, like the British William Friese-Greene, the German Skladanowsky brothers and the American Eadward Muybridge. It also means that cinema only began once it could be commercialised, which is an opinion guaranteed to make cartoon steam come out of Godard’s ears.

Godard argues with Piccoli by saying the development of the motion picture cameras itself could be claimed as a starting point for the movies, as well as wondering about the philosophical implications of saying a film that is not exhibited for a paying public is not a film. A version of this idea resurfaces in JLG/JLG – Self-Portrait in December, an extremely melancholy 1993 documentary about Godard as he worked on the early chapters of Histoire(s) du cinéma. Here, Godard fantasises about hiring a blind editor to cut his latest film, so that its premiere audience can claim to be the first people to witness it. There’s something almost Biblical about this idea, an attempt to rid cinema of the shame and original sin that he tracks the development of in Histoire(s) du cinéma. JLG/JLG also shares some of 2×50‘s flaws as well as its fizzing, fascinating ideas. Whether the conversation with Piccoli is scripted or not, it’s clear that Godard sees Piccoli as a worthy adversary. This cannot be said for the younger characters in the films, who are very clearly scripted. They are little short of straw-men, contributing nothing beyond being offensively uncultured or fawningly agreeing with Godard, and the films become much more one-dimensional every time they appear.

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It’s a strange fault, considering Godard’s attachment to Miéville was, in large part, because he recognised he needed an intellectual equal. That shines through most clearly in 1985’s co-directed Soft and Hard, or, to give it its full title, A Soft Conversation on Hard Subjects. The most immediately detectable sign of Miéville’s presence behind the camera is her feminist focus on domestic work, a subject that hadn’t taken up much space in Godard’s work prior to their collaboration on 1975’s Number Two. As she speaks to her husband in their home, other differences of opinion come through. Miéville claims to lack Godard’s youthful immersion in the cinema, and as a result she can find the medium intimidating. On other issues they agree; anyone amused by Godard’s fire-breathing anti-TV invective in Histoire(s) du cinéma will find Miéville is even more vociferous on this issue than he is. Most of all, Miéville is not an uncritical collaborator. She challenges Godard to take his work more seriously and push himself into greater experimentation. From the outside, Godard can look forebodingly serious and experimental anyway. But Soft and Hard makes it clear that he didn’t reach this pinnacle of restless invention by himself.

That determination to find new forms lasted until the very end of his life, as the final film in the set, Scénarios, makes clear. This eighteen-minute short was completed the night before Godard’s death, and its final shot shows the elderly director sat up in bed giving instructions for completing it. JLG/JLG‘s dream of the film as mystery object casts a haunting light on the project. This is a film not even its director witnessed in its finished form, whose layers of meaning will never be explained by him. The cryptic quality of the film, a tendency which some people find infuriating in late-period Godard (or any-period Godard) becomes precious and sad. Yet there is also an accompanying short, Exposé du annonce du film “Scénario”, where Godard reveals a few of the magician’s secrets. We see him explain the thinking behind the finished short’s unusual side-scrolling imagery, and we learn that the project was conceived as a feature-length anthology film. (The fact that the cut-down version is pluralised and the planned longer version isn’t is, presumably, one of Godard’s gnomic jokes) We learn that the original film would have contained clips from Russ Meyer, and one chapter would have been called ‘Fake News’. Most of all, we see a nonagenarian Godard whose lust for novelty and risk-taking is undimmed. There are several moments where he admits he doesn’t know how part of the film will work yet, and when asked why he’s planned one particular effect he cries “It’s not been done – that’s all!”

Ever since his return to narrative cinema with 1980’s Sauve qui peut (la vie), Godard preferred to create these video ‘pitches’ rather than a written script. It means that all of his films have, in effect, an accompanying short, even if the film wasn’t actually made. This is the case with Letter to Freddy Buache, a celebrated short in which Godard responds to the titular producer’s offer to make a film about the Swiss city of Lausanne by making a film about not wanting to make a film about the Swiss city of Lausanne. As with the conundrum of the un-exhibited film in 2×50, this immediately raises the question of whether Godard has fulfilled the commission or refused it. It also offers a glimpse of something that is only intermittently visible in this collection, which is Godard’s sense of play and mischief. If you’re on his wavelength, his films can be a lot of fun. This doesn’t necessarily chime with Miéville’s belief that he needs to take himself more seriously, and his most straightforwardly entertaining film – 1964’s Bande à part – is one he was later dismissive of. Yet Scénarios includes a lengthy reading from that very film’s script, a last laugh before dying.

After all this, it would be absurd to ask for anything more, but Radiance have supplied it anyway. There is a typically pugnacious talk-show interview with Godard from 1993, an interview with his colleague Bernard Eisenschitz describing Godard’s working methods at the end of his life, and two valuable video pieces by Michael Witt on the Histoire(s) du cinéma project. It might sound ridiculous after I’ve spent three whole reviews going through this box set, but there is far, far more to say about Histoire(s) du cinéma than I’ve been able to fit in here, and Witt is as good as anyone around at teasing that extra context out.

GRAHAM’S ARCHIVE – HISTOIRE(S) DU CINEMA