Tag: Jean-Luc Godard

Film, Psychogeography

Libidinal Circuits

Jean-Luc Godard always had an interest in the relationship between politics and the spaces it influences. The topographies of modernity happened to coincide with his sharp turn towards cinematic political questioning, in films such as Tout Va Bien (1972), La Chinoise (1967), and Week-end (1967), looking in particular at a factory, an inner-city flat/Maoist commune, and a busy roadway. These spaces provided more than a backdrop for Godard’s political arguments: they seemed to actually … Continue reading Libidinal Circuits

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Film

Alain Robbe- Grillet: Six Films, 1963-1974 (BFI).

This review contains minor plot details. When a body of work is inherently made up of intricately layered themes and hidden caches of ideas, surmising the work as a whole can be extremely difficult.  This is never more prescient than in the BFI’s release of six films by French film writer and director, Alain Robbe-Grillet; a seemingly missing link in French cinema of the 1960s … Continue reading Alain Robbe- Grillet: Six Films, 1963-1974 (BFI).

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Film, Film Music and Sound

Sounds of the City – Defining the Metropolis in Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window (1954).

In spite of being set in the most cramped of city-based fictional areas, Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window (1954) successfully presents the bustling aesthetics of a whole metropolis while managing to retain an almost claustrophobic isolation.  In the film, Hitchcock presents a temporarily wheelchair-bound photographer who becomes obsessed with a neighbour. He suspects the unusual man to have murdered his wife.  Rear Window presents a number … Continue reading Sounds of the City – Defining the Metropolis in Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window (1954).

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Film

Classe Tous Risques (1960) – Claude Sautet (BFI)

In spite of working wearily outside of the French New Wave movement, Claude Sautet’s debut feature, Classe Tous Risques (1960), cannot help but evoke the cinematic environment bursting forth around it.  While it may seem crass to spend time discussing more well known work in an article about a director whose work has been largely ignored outside of his national audience, it should also aim … Continue reading Classe Tous Risques (1960) – Claude Sautet (BFI)

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Film

Alphaville (1965) and the Absurdities of Cinema – Jean-Luc Godard.

Jean-Luc Godard’s Alphaville (1965) was one of the first pieces of non-Anglo American cinema that I watched.  It may have been diving in toward the deep end in some regards but something became very striking about the film as its running time trickled by. It said more than other dystopias, noirs or sci-fi but this “more” wasn’t to do with anything that could be described … Continue reading Alphaville (1965) and the Absurdities of Cinema – Jean-Luc Godard.

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