Film and money are inseparable, and the problem of creation is the problem of production - Jean-Luc Godard
(Jean-Luc Godard 1930.12.3 - ) in film creation (from classical Hollywood, contemporary art films onwards) and theory He has opened up another frontier in his thinking, and his creative ideas have been clearly revealed with great ambitions, and he has used astonishing creative output to testify each other. To this day, he still continues to create, entering a "undefined" "2000 years later". xx period", in 1985 and Alain Bergala co-edited his self-selected collection "Godard on Godard" (Godard on Godard). ), "Karina era" (60-67), "Maoist era" (68-74), "Video era" (75-80), "80s" (80-89), "Film History Period" (89-98), however, in the few Gundam works that can be watched, the Gundam which is good at playing language games increases the difficulty of subtitle translation, or the book is written directly with word cards and in the background of the film The reference to writing, coupled with the criticism of French culture, political and economic issues, and ideology in Gundam's films, has created a gap in the perception of African-American audiences. The above makes the emergence of a rigorous author research difficult. Colin MacCabe, Laura Mulvey and Mick Eaton try to start with a few themes: money, politics, women and sex, technology and television, but the work they explore only ends in the early 1980s.
Gundam's films are not only completely opposed to the Hollywood film commodity, but also to the creation of contemporary art films. Film theorist Peter Wollen was greatly influenced by Brecht's "anti-film" concept, in an article entitled In the article "Godard and Counter Cinema: Vent d'Est" (Godard and Counter Cinema: Vent d'Est), seven characteristics of "anti-cinema" and mainstream movies are depicted. Peter Wollen's interpretation of "anti-movie" is a consistent and important feature of Gundam movies in many stages, especially the "Kalina Period" and "Eight-Old Period", which are easier to watch in Gundam's works. The spirit of the film. However, in addition to the interpretation of the style/narrative structure in the text, on the other hand, Gundam's thinking on the consciousness of "movie as film" has never been separated from his creative stem. "What is film?", "What does film create?", "How to create?", "How to perceive?" Mépris, 1963), Tout va bien (1972) in the seventies, Passion (1982) in the eighties, Scénario du film 'Passion' (Scénario du film 'Passion') the following year, horizontal The film series Histoire(s) du cinéma (1985-1998), created over ten years, and Our Music (Notre musique, 2004) and Gundam: Nameless (Moments choisis) two thousand years later des histoire(s) du cinéma, 2004) The above works are Gundam's "obvious" reflections and transcendence of film, creation, and history. However, in most of Gundam's other works, the same reflexive traces are hidden from time to time. , deliberately or implicitly mentioned.
Regarding Gundam and its reflexive strategy, among the limited Gundam works that can be seen so far, it is very difficult to see trees and woodlands. A small part" is still quite fun, with Gundam seemingly jumping and chaotic (which simply insults the Gundam movie's height structure), but a possible thread can still be found through text analysis. The following will try to analyze his two works on film creation: "Contempt" (Le Mépris, 1963), and "Passion" (1982), which was created after the era of radical Maoism and the era of video. The two most important systems of the film: literature and painting, thus confirm Gundam's "reflexivity".
Contempt - Movies Are Inventions With No Future
Contempt depicts a playwright Paul (Michel Piccoli) and his wife Camille (Brigitte Bardot) who had an otherwise happy marriage when they met America during the filming of The Odyssey Producer Jerry, but Paul, intentionally or unintentionally, wanted to push his wife to be a producer to gain work success. Camille despised Paul's behavior, and their relationship collapsed. Finally, Camille and Jerry were killed in a car accident, and Paul was Leaving the filming site of "Odyssey", when Ulysses looked out at a large blue ocean, "Odyssey" continued to shoot, and "Contempt" ended with Paul's departure.
"The Odyssey" is a famous ancient Greek epic. It is said that it was written by the blind Homer. It mainly connects the plot of "Iliad". After the Trojan War, when the Greek army returned home, the hero Ulysses angered Neptune, the god of the sea. Shipwrecked and annihilated. Odyssey escaped because of his wit and bravery, but he couldn't find his way home and drifted in the sea; his wife Penelope didn't know the life and death of Ulysses, and faced a tyrannical suitor. Waiting for my husband to return. Finally, with the help of the gods, Ulysses finally returned home to reunite with his wife after ten years of drifting life, and killed the suitor.
Looking back at the moment when "Contempt" was created: the 1960s with a new significance for the reflection on classical films. In 1963, there were two outstanding works on the subject of the filming process, one was Gundam's "Contempt", and Fellini's "Eight and one-half", the core of the film of "Eight" is the anxiety and imagination generated by the creator's exhaustion of inspiration, interweaving an unfinished film. The title of "Eight and One and a Half" has nothing to do with the content of the film, it only signifies the stagnation of a filmmaker in his creative process; "Contempt" from beginning to end focuses on intertextualite (intertextualite) Crossing, the conflict/mediation that constitutes power, and the critique of the film industry, Gundam uses the historical poetry of "The Odyssey" to correspond to the psychological conflict of the modern couple in "Contempt", making it a true metafilm (métafilm)[2]
In the first shot of Contempt, an important self-referentiality narrative begins. The filming team is in the process of taking technical positions before the official shooting; Gundam's voiceover narrates the cast and crew of "Contempt", replacing the name (text) with voice, and after reading "This film was filmed as a Cinemascope wide-screen stereo movie", Gundam cited Aid Michel Mourlet - not the misplaced Andre Bazin - a succinct quote from a late 1950s article titled "About a Neglected Art": Cinema is an "alternative". People's viewing", which is also "a world in which desires match", through the appearance of the film crew, it points out that the film is illusory and constructed in nature; and another attempt to counter illusoryness is the photographer Raoul Coutard's Equipped with a widescreen-sized camera, turned toward the audience. At this moment, the creator and the audience are connected. The camera that looks directly seems to know that the audience is watching. At this moment, the audience becomes the subject, and the camera is between the film and the author. The film becomes an object waiting to be seen and examined. It is a reactionary subject who begins to self-reflect on its composition (history, story, mise-en-scene, sound, frame and location, etc.) [3].
Raoul Coutard's wide-screen camera marked the beginning of a new kind of spectacle film: in the 1960s, wide-screen became a trend, and the film industry offered a very wide-screen (panavision, 2.75:1), special art color negative (technicolor) , trying to compete with the emerging media of the time - TV, here Gundam expresses its mourning for a dying film tradition with a return to silent film shooting: a single shot, and a fixed camera. Fritz Lang in "Contempt" also lamented "a wide-screen movie for snake-like people, scary actors". The commercial nature of film (Hollywood) makes it a highly sought-after entertainment product. The original novelty, fun, life documentation (Lumière Brothers, Etitnne-Jules Marey), experimental art (Fernand Léger / Dudley Murphy) of silent films gradually receded.
The second scene is an indoor scene unrelated to the first scene. In this group of shots, Paul and Camille are lying naked on the bed, flirting and provocative. When she asks what part of Paul loves her, at the time In the uninterrupted continuous footage on the show, the footage is separated into three different visual breaks: red, white, and blue by filters, thereby throwing a question mark to the audience: what is editing? The image is continuous, but the vision is discontinuous (transition of filters), is this one shot, or three shots?
"Contempt" is Gundam's second work that uses "red, white, and blue" (the first was "A Woman is a Woman" in 1961, and was also used in "Piero the Madman" in 1965), Hong Kong Film Review Ren Shuqi thinks this is a rather "prank" technique. It is a little trick that destroys male voyeurism. Through the sudden change of color, the provocativeness of Brigitte Bardot's nudes to the audience is reduced. After the desire-filled red, it temporarily returns to the normal photographic color, and then blue. Color reduces "provocativeness" to a low point [1]. Brigitte Bardot is a popular French porn star. The producer once requested Gundam to make up for her lack of naked footage, but Gundam treated Bardot's bare footage speculatively and transformed it into the possibility of pure peeping. Undercover", which can be said to reflect the anti-commercialization side of Gundam.
In the third scene, there is a meeting in the movie city. Because Paul and Jerry do not speak the same language, they must communicate through an interpreter Fusisca (Giorgia Moll). However, when Fusiska translated English into French/Italian/German, it was a "mistranslation". The translation may be similar to the original meaning, or it may be completely misinterpreted. For example: "I didn't become the king here until yesterday." Translates for "He's made a lot of good movies" or "Here's some great stuff you didn't know about" as "He found the co-star to be a good fit for your script." Also, producer Jerry also made an appearance in a rather theatrical performance, And with a peculiar composition: Jerry is on the stage, while Boll and Virsiska are on the lower edge of the screen, suggesting that the huge power from the capitalists is one of the crises of independent creation. Here, Gundam emphasizes the paradox of language communication with "mistranslation", and may also question the film production of multinational investment. Communication is only a vision, and a power relationship between top and bottom is the true operation mode of film production.
After everyone entered the screening room, the screening of "Odyssey" began. "Odyssey" contains rich inter-referential meanings, and the allusions and statues in it have also become important symbols throughout "Contempt". In particular, Gundam asked Fritz Lang, the greatest German director since the silent period, to play himself in "Contempt": a creator who has gone through silent, sound, and color periods. The question of prototype and reproduction arises dialectically from Frieze Lang, where the real identity corresponds to a fictional character (a director) but is not entirely true (Fri Z Lang stopped writing in the 1960s and never filmed it "The Odyssey"); and the following statues also brought up the problem of indistinguishability between originals/models.
In the process of watching the raw film, Gundam made the viewing of the characters and the scenes in "Odyssey", and the seven statues at the beginning also introduced the main characters of the "Odyssey" epic: the first shot is "Odyssey" The protagonist Ulysses, followed by the protector Minerva, the next shot is Boll's commentary, followed by Ulysses' mortal enemy: Neptune, the sea god. After showing the seven statues (the last one is Homer, the author of "The Odyssey"), we see the part played by a real person: a picture of a naked woman swimming in the sea, she is Ulysses' wife Penelope, The shot cuts to Jerry's overjoyed expression, expressing his love for this shot, and the film ends with a set of shots taken in the studio: Ulysses archery standing in front of a red background, and the arrow crosses Pei who is smiling in front of a yellow background. Neropo, and finally the blue background, Ulysses' arrow shot down his throat.
In this raw film, you can see two interpretations of the original "Odyssey": one is a statue, and the other is a live performance. "The Odyssey" is a representative of travel literature. After the end of the Trojan War, Ulysses spent ten years of adventure and hesitation to return home. On the one hand, it was because of the obstruction of the sea god, and on the other hand, he suspected that his wife would not loyalty. However, Penelope actually waited for her husband for ten years, and this arrow may be interpreted as Ulysses' punishment for him. Contrary to "Contempt", the two finally broke up in the film, but it caused Camille's death, which is not a punishment?
After the screening, Jerry was furious and threw the film all over the floor, questioning, "This is different from the script." Fritz Lang replied: "Because the script is written with words, and the screen appears with pictures." The atmosphere in the screening room seemed tense. , while the characters and the roles they represent: the German director Fritz Lang, who is in exile in the United States, against Jerry, who represents the overbearing side of capitalism, the playwright Paul and the beautiful wife Camille are breathing in their creation and life, and they keep on " The debate on "movie" is not over, it is business, it is art, it is self-realization, it is capital accumulation, it belongs to the author, it is return to industry... In Italian, the famous saying of the Lumière brothers is inscribed: "movie is an invention without a future". In the studio, Jerry's tossing and writing checks are vulgar and ironic. Finally, Lang ends the screening room scene with Friedrich Holderlin's (1770-1843) poem "The Poet's Call": "Until God ceases to help him, can one truly face fear and loneliness", and Phosse When translating the verse, Ka was completely correct (is poetry regarded as the common language of human beings?), and extended the interpretation of the verse to regard the author as God, and put forward the reflection of "the author is not there, so...".
After walking out of the screening room, Camille went to the movie city to find Paul, and Jerry also drove his red sports car outside the movie city. Paul forced Camille to get into Jerry's car in a "non-rejection" way; at this time the movie The poster posted outside the city is the scene of Nana blocking the street played by Anna Karina in the movie "Vivre sa vie" (Vivre sa vie) of up to 62 years. The short life of devoting to love and finally dying, here also heralds the fate of Karmi's final step towards death. By the way, the posters on the wall are all movies from the early 1960s, such as Hawkes' adventure film Hatari (1962), Rossellini's Vanina Vanini , 1961), Hitchcock's "Psycho" (Psycho, 1960) and so on.
When Camille got into Jerry's car and left, the main melody of "Contempt" sounded, and Paul was running behind. On the way, he met Fusisca and asked, "Where are they going?" At this time, a non-narrative was suddenly inserted. The shot of Neptune: Neptune, this is the shot of "Odyssey" in the screening room just now, it should be a kind of "marking" here - from here, the next segment enters a kind of symbol and highly dialectical with the lens Structure.
When Paul arrives at Jerry's garden half an hour late, Camille blames him unhappily for leaving her alone with Jerry. When Camille stood up and refused to listen to Paul's defense, Gundam used six short scenes that were not connected in the plot (even out of text) as Camille's recollection; Paul tried to please Camille but was coldly responded, and also used six short shots. Shots, in response to previous Karmi's montage. These two montages become a recombination of conflicting summaries. Camille is female: an emotional rupture, while Paul is male (with Bol and Jerry in the shot), representing the beginning of a new relationship (metamorphosis). Paul then entered the room and was caught by Kamy while flirting with Fusiska, and the two of them met for the first time at this time. Afterwards, the two were about to leave. Camille complained to Paul that he didn't like Jerry's words and deeds after walking out of the garden, but Paul was indifferent. The next scene was the statue of Minerva (the protector), which satirized Paul's loss of protecting his wife. obligation
After the two left Jerry's garden, there was no scene in the original "Odyssey" until Paul and Camille had a crucial break: Paul forced Camille and Jerry to go to sea during the filming of "Odyssey", and once again The statue of Neptune appears, but this time the protector Minerva does not appear, because Camille has completely despised Paul, complaining that he "can't protect her any more", and finally Camille, like Penelope, jumped naked Into the sea, swimming like a mermaid; in a conversation between Paul and Fritz Lang, he once thought that in the Odyssey, Ulysses did not come home because he knew that his wife no longer loved him, and Buddha Rizlan believes that Penelope despised Ulysses, so Ulysses' way of regaining her love was to murder her suitor, but death would not solve the problem. Just as at the end of Contempt, Jerry and Camille end their lives in staggering circumstances, leaving only "goodbye" and "take care" cards to say goodbye to Bol, Homer's Odyssey ends with tragedy ( Ulysses sailed away in his later years), while Gundam's Contempt is a process of reality/emotional disintegration.
If a dividing line is drawn on the creation chronology of Gundam, it should be drawn before "Weekend" in 1967. Most of the works in this period are mockery or experiments on traditional genres or film shooting concepts, and there are more explicit/slightly loose ones. Narrative structure, occasionally playing Gundam's "tricks" such as jumps, unrelated cuts, and sudden silences. However, such rigorous citation of scriptures as "Contempt" seems to be a rare exception in Gundam's early works.
Full text at http://breeze1985.pixnet.net/blog/post/18763749
Notes:
1. Peter Wollen: Counter Cinema Anti-Cinema vs. Mainstream Cinema
1. Narrative Opacity vs. Narrative Transparency: The Systematicity of Narrative Disintegration
2. Estrangement vs. Identification
3. playback (representation) vs. transparency (Transparency)
4. Single vs. Multiple Narrative Narrative Han Han
5. open vs. closed: Intertextual an open field, with respect to the closure - a uniform, of the eyes
6. trans Entertainment vs. Entertainment: movie experience is considered a collective production / consumption
7. real, imaginary relative to: [1] exposed to the mysterious story of the film is
compiled from Robert Stam, "film theory interpretation" appears Brecht, P.204-205, Yuanliu, 2002, Taipei
2.3 Sun Songrong, "This Movie Haunted City - Gundam's "Reflexive" Strategy", Fa Movie Appreciation No.132, P.9
Supplements the first shot:
Frame Sound / Narrative
1-1 Fixed static
actors moving from the depths of the picture to the camera
"Contempt" is in technical position
Gundam's voice - over narration "
Contempt " cast and crew names and shooting background 1-1 Photographer Raoul Coutard points the camera in the film Gundam's footage (looking directly at the viewer through the lens)
quotes Bazin (deliberately misquoted):
Cinema replaces our gaze, the world we wish for a more integrated world. And Contempt tells such a story.
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