Taking a Breather from "Breathless"
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/movies/2010/12/breathless-daniel-cohn-bendit.html
by Richard Brody
December 9, 2010
In 1996, Jean-Luc Godard went to Strasbourg to present a première
screening of his film "For Ever Mozart" (one of the stars of which,
Bérangère Allaux, was studying at the drama conservatory there). Last
Friday, which was Godard's eightieth birthday, the Frankfurter
Allgemeine Zeitung published an extraordinary interview with Daniel
Cohn-Bendit, "Mein Freund Godard" ("My Friend Godard"), by Verena
Lueken, in which the former political activist of May, 1968, who has
been a member of the European Parliament (based in Strasbourg) since
1994, discusses his more than forty years of personal connections
with the filmmaker. In this interview, he discusses the night in
Strasbourg when he moderated the public discussion with Godard that
followed the screening*:
We watched the film, and the spectators didn't understand it….
During the discussion, they were really rough on it. They were
disappointed, they were angry, and they really tore into Godard. Then
I made the mistake of my life. When I saw that things weren't going
well, I said, "Look, you've got one of the greatest directors in the
history of cinema in front of you, and you're just sitting there and
grumbling, rather than trying to understand. Godard made the greatest
film of all time! It's called 'Breathless.' " With which Godard went
on a rampage and yelled that he wished that this film didn't exist,
that it was the worst, most awful film that he had ever shot, and
that if he had the power to do so, he would destroy every single
print of it, so that nobody could bother him about it anymore.
I see his point. "Breathless" isn't at all a bad movieit is truly
greatbut it is the movie that many viewers and even critics keep
expecting him to remake. Although, two weeks ago, I had the
gratifying experience of hearing the audience applaud at a screening
of Godard's 1987 masterwork "King Lear" at Film Society of Lincoln
Center, I also heard from people who had seen Godard's 1980 film
"Every Man for Himself" at Film Forum (it played there Nov. 12-25)
and compared it unfavorably (and, in my opinion, did so wrongly) to
Godard's work of the nineteen-sixties. The frustration he expressed
was utterly justified, and the hyperbole, sublime.
The interview is remarkable throughout, and at times quite beautiful.
Cohn-Bendit discusses his recent meeting with Godard (whom he
interviewed, earlier this year, for the French magazine Télérama) and says,
I had the feeling that there is something very precarious in his
relationship to the outer world…. His whole life, he has tried to
find a balance between his public persona and his solitude, and in
the past twenty years there's no more balance. He has gone far into
solitude. He pontificates in his films, he wants to explain the world
to usand we want pictures of Godard. That is the misunderstanding
between the world and him.
I hope that the entire interview will appear in English translation;
it's an extraordinarily perceptive one.
*Cohn-Bendit mistakenly says that the film in question was "Je Vous
Salue, Sarajevo"but that is a two-minute-long film. The feature film
"For Ever Mozart" that was the subject of the evening's discussion
also deals with the war in Bosnia, by means of fiction.
.
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