In this Book

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The artistic impact of Jean-Luc Godard, whose career in cinema has spanned over fifty years and yielded a hundred or more discrete works in different media cannot be overestimated, not only on French and other world cinemas, but on fields as diverse as television, video art, gallery installation, philosophy, music, literature, and dance.

The Legacies of Jean-Luc Godard marks an initial attempt to map the range and diversity of Godard’s impact across these different fields. It contains reassessments of key films like Vivre sa vie and Passion as well as considerations of Godard’s influence over directors like Christophe Honoré. Contributors look at Godard’s relation to philosophy and influence over film philosophy through reference to Wittgenstein, Deleuze, and Cavell, and show how Godard’s work in cinema interacts with other arts, such as painting, music, and dance. They suggest that Godard’s late work makes important contributions to debates in memory and Holocaust Studies.

The volume will appeal to a non-specialist audience with its discussions of canonical films and treatment of themes popular within film studies programs such as cinema and ethics. But it will also attract academic specialists on Godard with its chapters on recent works, including Dans le noir du temps (2002) and Voyage(s) en utopie (2006), interventions in long-running academic debates (Godard, the Holocaust, and anti- Semitism), and treatment of rarely discussed areas of Godard’s work (choreographed movement).

1 The Representation of Factory Work in the Films of Jean-Luc Godard: Reaching the Impossible Shore Michel Cadé Though he has not ignored it completely, Jean-Luc Godard has generally been reluctant to film industrial labour, claiming that this was to him unknown territory. In order to approach it, albeit indirectly, he thus chose to opt for the filmmaker’s labour instead, the latter being also, in a way, heir to the Industrial Revolution.2 Jean-Luc Godard and Contemporary Dance: The Judson Dance Theater Runs Across Breathless John Carnahan This chapter examines convergences between Godard's depiction of figure movement and the aesthetics of contemporary dance, here exemplified by the Judson Church choreographers of the early 1960s. More generally, I attempt to show points of cinematic influence on dance, and opportunities for dance to inform the vocabulary of cinema studies.3 Godard’s Utopia(s) or the Performance of Failure André Habib This chapter describes and discusses Jean-Luc Godard’s 2006 exhibition, Voyage(s) en utopie. It hopes to illuminate an essential dynamic in Godard’s production, i.e. the tension between a utopian vision and a performance of failure, a dialectic that can allegorize the “grandeur” and the “decadence” of his legacy.4 Godard, Spielberg, the Muselmann and the Concentration Camps Junji Hori This chapter highlights unexpected and striking affinities between Godard and Spielberg, with regard to the representation of the Nazi camps, and suggests that Godard’s vehement reactions to Schindler’s List can be read as a defense mechanism against his most haunting object of desire. The author also looks at Godard’s long-standing interest in the figure of the Muselmann in order to illuminate the fundamental difference between two directors regarding the historiographic imagination.5 The Obligations of Memory: Godard's Underworld Journeys Russell Kilbourn Godard’s In Praise of Love (2001) can be seen as a “fragmentary remake” of Jean Cocteau's Orphée (1949), a film “about the attempt to retrieve a lost love”, even as it is “haunted by France's German occupation” (J. Hoberman). This paper reads Godard’s critique of Spielberg’s Schindler’s List (1993) over against In Praise of Love’s engagement with Cocteau’s retelling of the Orpheus myth, positioning the retrieval of a lost love in relation to the legacy of the French Resistance.6 Principles of Parametric Construction in Jean-Luc Godard’s Passion Julien Lapointe This chapter contends that the editing in Godard’s Passion (1982) serves to create repeated stylistic patterns which exist for their own sake, independently of the narrative content. The film is therefore an example of what David Bordwell terms “parametric narration,” a subset of modernist filmmaking which merits further study.7 A place of Active Judgement: Parametric Narration in the Work of Jean-Luc Godard Timothy Long The concept of “parametric narration” (David Bordwell) provides a useful starting point for a comparison of Jean-Luc Godard’s filmic hybrid of avant-garde style and conventional narration with the conceptually based combination of monochrome abstraction and photography that marks the work of Canadian painter Ian Wallace. Breaking the frames of cinema and painting, respectively, both artists create for viewers what Wallace calls “a place of active judgement.”8 Jean-Luc Godard, Christophe Honoré and the Legacy of the New Wave in French Cinema Douglas Morrey The legacy of the Godard over contemporary French cinema is examined by tracing the director’s influence over the work of Christophe Honoré, and especially Dans Paris (2006). Numerous thematic and stylistic parallels are found, but it is suggested that an over-riding warmth and generosity toward the characters distinguishes Honoré from Godard.9 The ‘Hidden Fire’ of Inwardness: Cavell, Godard and Modernism Glen Norton This chapter examines Stanley Cavell's notion that, after A bout de souffle (1959), Godard begins to populate his films with characters lacking in feeling and personality. Denying his characters their inwardness, according to Cavell, is an abandonment of the modernist task of seriously questioning the world and our place in it. Via an in-depth reading of a scene from Vivre sa vie (1962), this chapter argues instead that Godard's modernist legacy lies in his continual scrutiny of the conditions under which an acknowledgement of inwardness is cinematically possible.10 Jean-Luc Godard’s Histoire(s) du Cinéma: Assembling History Through Montage Céline Scemama Histoire(s) du cinéma (Godard, 1998) brings the dead back to the Screen and gives an apocalyptic and hopeless vision of all things. The film's beauty lies in the invention of a form that is able to bring back to the screen all that is buried in the darkness of history.11 Jean-Luc Godard: Dans le noir du temps (2002)—The “Filming’’ of a Musical Form Juerg Stenzl Godard never went for conventional film music. The short feature Dans le noir du temps (2002) is a perfect example of this, as it is structured by a full piano piece by Arvo Pärt, as well as by quotations from his previous films.12 Godard, Schizoanalysis, and the Immaculate Conception of the Frame David Sterritt Godard believes that montage can “make the heart prevail over the intelligence by destroying the notion of space in favor of that of time.” His film Hail Mary shares philosopher Gilles Deleuze’s view of time as a concrete and dynamic matrix that vitally shapes the metaphysics of mind and soul.13 The Romance of the Intellectual in Godard: A Love/Hate Relationship Tyson Stewart This chapter analyzes the cameos featuring real-life intellectuals in Godard's films from the 1960s and emphasizes the value of the filmmaker’s signature method of blending documentary and fiction film. The appearances of Roger Leenhardt, Brice Parain, and Francis Jeanson challenge the public intellectual's sense of autonomy at a time of cultural and political upheaval, but they also dazzle us by achieving spontaneous knowledge.14 Jean-Luc Godard and Ludwig Wittgenstein in New Contexts Christina Stojanova While Wittgenstein and Godard sought to fundamentally redesign their respective fields conceptually and technologically, this chapter brings to the fore the ambiguity of their attitude towards progress, all the more paradoxical in light of the appropriation of their oeuvre by new media theorists and practitioners.

Table of Contents

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  1. Cover
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  1. Title Page, About the Series, Copyright
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  1. Contents
  2. pp. v-vi
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  1. Illustrations
  2. pp. vii-viii
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  1. Foreword
  2. Douglas Morrey
  3. pp. ix-x
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  1. Acknowledgements
  2. Douglas Morrey, Christina Stojanova, Nicole Côté
  3. pp. xi-xii
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  1. Introduction
  2. Nicole Côté
  3. pp. xiii-xxvi
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  1. Part I: Godardian Legacy in Film, Music, and Dance
  1. 1. Jean-Luc Godard, Christophe Honoré, and the Legacy of the New Wave in French Cinema
  2. Douglas Morrey
  3. pp. 3-14
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  1. 2. Jean-Luc Godard: Dans le noir du temps (2002)—The “Filming” of a Musical Form
  2. Jürg Stenzl
  3. pp. 15-36
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  1. 3. Jean-Luc Godard and Contemporary Dance: The Judson Dance Theater Runs Across Breathless
  2. John Carnahan
  3. pp. 37-50
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  1. Part II: Godardian Politics of Representation: Memory/History
  1. 4. The Representation of Factory Work in the Films of Jean-Luc Godard: Reaching the Impossible Shore
  2. Michel Cadé
  3. pp. 53-66
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  1. 5. Godard, Spielberg, the Muselmann, and the Concentration Camps
  2. Junji Hori
  3. pp. 67-80
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  1. 6. “The Obligations of Memory”: Godard’s Underworld Journeys
  2. Russell J.A. Kilbourn
  3. pp. 81-98
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  1. 7. Jean-Luc Godard’s Histoire(s) du cinéma Brings the Dead Back to the Screen
  2. Céline Scemama
  3. pp. 99-124
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  1. Part III: Godardian Legacy in Philosophy
  1. 8. Jean-Luc Godard and Ludwig Wittgenstein in New Contexts
  2. Christina Stojanova
  3. pp. 127-142
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  1. 9. Godard, Schizoanalysis, and the Immaculate Conception of the Frame
  2. David Sterritt
  3. pp. 143-156
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  1. 10. The “Hidden Fire” of Inwardness: Cavell, Godard, and Modernism
  2. Glen W. Norton
  3. pp. 157-168
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  1. 11. The Romance of the Intellectual in Godard: A Love–Hate Relationship
  2. Tyson Stewart
  3. pp. 169-182
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  1. Part IV: Formalist Legacies: Narratives and Exhibitions
  1. 12. Principles of Parametric Construction in Jean-Luc Godard’s Passion
  2. Julien Lapointe
  3. pp. 185-196
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  1. 13. “A Place of Active Judgment”: Parametric Narration in the Work of Jean-Luc Godard and Ian Wallace
  2. Timothy Long
  3. pp. 197-216
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  1. 14. Godard’s Utopia(s) or the Performance of Failure
  2. André Habib
  3. pp. 217-236
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  1. About the Contributors
  2. pp. 237-240
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  1. Index
  2. pp. 241-246
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