Jean-Luc GODARD et La Chinoise
June 22nd, 2008 | by Gautam |
“Il faut confronter les idées vagues avec des images claires (The Vague Ideas must be confonted by the Clear Images)“
Most of the film takes place inside of a lush apartment where all five of the principal characters live. The five of them are: Véronique (Anne Wiazemsky), Guillaume (Jean-Pierre Léaud), Yvonne (Juliet Bertro), Henri (Michel Semeniako) and Kirilov (Lex Di Bruijin). Véronique and Guillaume are in a relationship, Yvonne is a small-town girl who occasionally indulges in prostitution for financial reasons, Henri is the quietest in the group who defends the movie Johnny Guitar (1954) and finally Kirilov is a highly disturbed student with suicidal tendencies.
They convert their apartment into a student revolutionary camp where they study the ideals of Marxism-Leninism all day long, often taking turns in presiding over a ’study’ session. They are often joined by other students of similar interest working towards a ‘revolution’. The apartment is mostly decorated in primary colours with a strong emphasis on the colour red. There are aggressive quotations and slogans pasted all over the apartment, almost as if to make sure they are never forgotten by the inhabitants. There is also a lot of Pop art found in the apartment, some of them mostly black and white images that have been coloured in with felt pens.
Godard takes his time in establishing all the characters and the environment that they live in. This aspect of the film, I feel calls for a lot of patience from the viewer and I truly believe only the most dedicated of the cinephiles would find it enchanting enough to keep watching as Godard slowly unravels his seemingly aimless plot. Godard switches back and forth between two important narrative techniques in this film. The premier emphasis of the narrative is in addressing each of the characters directly into the camera, almost like an interview. Sometimes, the viewer can even hear the faint voice of Jean-Luc Godard off-screen posing a few questions at his subjects and indeed there is a fantastic shot of Raoul Courtard filming these “interviews”. The second narrative technique is the traditional cinematic technique of recording the characters while they converse, walk around and do the things that they do. Godard cleverly juxtaposes both these seemingly unrelated techniques with colourful typography to create somewhat of a collage.
A Warning of the Events to Come?
The overtly political nature of the film and the fact that it involves students contemplating the usage of violence to achieve their goals clearly struck a sense of prophecy when in 1968, the streets of
Cinematic Techniques
Apart from the narrative structures and the restlessness that we’ve already discussed, Godard employs the use of his traditional methods that he often uses in his films that are shot in colour. Much like Contempt (1963), this film is drenched in rich colour and lush contrast with an emphasis on the colour red. Raoul Coutard and Godard work very differently in their collaborations with Black and White films and Colour films. In the Black and White films like Breathless (1959) and Bande A Part (1964) they use a lot of handheld camera, natural light and exterior shooting while in their colour films they use long side tracking shots and precision lighting.
One of the most beautiful scenes in the film is a long tracking shot from the balcony as the camera stops each time to peep through three windows consecutively as one of the students presides over the meeting. Another very interesting scene in the film is the aforementioned segment where Véronique is having the conversation with Francis Jeanson in the train against a window as the train stops and resumes every now and then.
Perhaps, this is a film that I will never fully understand but that does not mean in anyway that it is a bad film. It is really a very brave effort from a fearless director who played an important role in re-defining the aesthetics of cinema forever. I would like to hear more opinions on this film, please feel free to leave your comments and let me know what you think.
By nitesh on Jun 28, 2008
The sequence where Jean Pierre Leaud wipes out the names of each great man he admires only to be confronted and left with Brecht speaks volume regarding the nature of the film and Godard’s basic dialectic. I think it’s important to understand that the film came in at an important juncture (a year before the May 1968 event) and little before Goddard’s final proclamation and adieu to filmmaking: Weekend. La Chinoise is more a formalist experiment in true Godardaidan form, since it’s seriously marks his departure from his beloved Hollywood heroes into more of his strand into political commitment and Maoism. Some things like his thematic color use of primary colors: red, blue and white, that he largely owes to his influence to the abstract painter Nicolas De Stael, and even the lateral tracking shot you talk about, frequently used in his films, often flattens the surface and creates a certain void- the loss of space(deep).From La Chinoise Godard completely moved away from his idea of having any form of necessity to tell, something one could witness slowly forming in his in former works before this film. For eg: As you put.
Sometimes, the viewer can even hear the faint voice of Jean-Luc Godard off-screen posing a few questions at his subjects and indeed there is a fantastic shot of Raoul Courtard filming these “interviews”. The second narrative technique is the traditional cinematic technique of recording the characters while they converse, walk around and do the things that they do. Godard cleverly juxtaposes both these seemingly unrelated techniques with colourful typography to create somewhat of a collage
This particular Godardian tract can be seen in development form the early stages of his career, I presume due to his fascination with not only Rossellini but also Jean Rouch, a la “Cinema Verite”. One of the fascinating usages of this particular self-reflexive, brechaitan technique can be witnessed in Masculin and Feminin during the interview of the Miss Paris. It is like Godard from this film onwards and his return in the 80s to narrative cinema (according to pure Godard standard) slowly shifted his quest for doubts, images, and obviously plenty of philosophical musing, but the underlying fact was that in 60s it was playful and resonated with the overall nature of counterculture, but by the 70s and return to 80s its somewhat all seemed to hard to take. In this context La Chinoise is a remarkable film since it documents the overall nature and preoccupation of the culture.
As the late and great Serge Daney wrote in his essay on GODARDIAN PEDAGOGY:
School, we said, is the good place (where you make progress and from which you must move on) as opposed to the cinema (the bad place where you regress and never move on).
But,La Chinoise brought in the movement for Godard and less for Cinema( since it has never quite moved on) , and remains and important and landmark film.
By Gautam on Jun 30, 2008
Thank you Nitesh for sharing your thoughts with us! I appreciate it very much!
By L D D on Jan 13, 2009
More than any other film, La Chinoise represents Godard’s attempt to destroy cinema by reducing it, in Brechtian spirit, to pure text. From one perspective, Godard’s cinema is so brilliant precisely because he was so uncomfortable with the illusory power of the image and so much at home, in Brechtian spirit, with text. I think more important than trying to understand a “message” or “theme” in La Chinoise is the appreciation of the film as an act of reading. No matter what the political stance of the film–and there may not be one (i.e. there may not be JUST one), given that any text is polysemous and can be read in multiple ways–the film forces us to read it rather than view it. In this respect it is unlike any other film.
By Gaurab on Jan 19, 2009
I liked the movie but could not get the facts in the end. Firstly the girl mistook in killing . Was it just a fiction or reality?
Secondly what was Godard trying to tell by showing one old woman and a girl knocking and then undessing inside a glass box?
By John on May 19, 2009
Gaurab: I took it to mean that the young man (and French youth generally) being torn between his mother (and the politics that such a figure represents) and the whore (likewise).
By s on Jan 18, 2010
This film took another meaning for me once I read about the Situationist International movement in Paris. I always felt like I didn’t understand what Goddard wanted, in terms of how should we look at the characters, and this helped me realize that I was looking in the wrong places.