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Revisiting the Relevance of Conceptualism of Godard’s Film |
85www.jrfm.eu
2018, 4/2, 83–113
that3is, by coming up with a dozen-page draft a week before the talk, though
only to shorten it gradually, ending up with one page only on the morning of
the lecture, a single paragraph an hour before it, a single sentence while wait-
ing behind the curtain to be called and then tossing even that single sentence
into the garbage can when stepping out onto the podium? The answer is, un-
doubtedly, Yes, but sometimes. For, sometimes the right structure of the whole
can make up for a rather trivial content and make it timelessly beautiful. Think,
for example, of Powell and Pressburger’s A Canterbury Tale (GB 1944), whose
unique structure is the key to its quality: quiet and sweetly mysterious for the
majority of the movie and then exploding into a fantastic finale in its last mo-
ments, reflecting life more veritably than the classical twist-climax-resolution
form. Henceforth, the conception of an overarching structure wherein begin-
nings and ends would reconnect and fit into each other like a hand into a glove
is desirable, so long as each moment, each brick in it is infused with the spirit
of the moment and given a dose of imperfection that would make it appear
always fresh and new, like a well-improvised jazz tune. For, an utterly perfect
structure is also an utterly lifeless structure, resembling a peak from which one
could only tumble down, when only structures that contain cracks of imperfec-
tions can transmit light through them, bedazzle the viewer and act as a stairway
to the stars, leading to the top exactly because of never aspiring to be on the
top. “Don’t show every aspect of things; allow yourself the margin of indefinite-
ness” was Godard’s explicit precept,4 reflecting his belief in the liberation from
the shackles of ostensible perfectness and the unleashing of infinitely potent
creative powers through the renouncement of the strivings to reach absolute
exactness in expression.
At this point, already, Godard, that relentless breaker of conventions, flirter
with the paradox and master in directing digression and a loss of focus from the
3 Histoire(s) du cinéma: Le Contrôle de l’univers (Jean-Luc Godard, FR/CH 1998), 00:07:00.
4 Histoire(s) du cinéma: Toutes les histoires (Jean-Luc Godard, FR/CH 1988), 00:00:48.
Fig. 1: Histoire(s) du cinema:
Une Vague Nouvelle (Jean-Luc
Godard, FR/CH 1998) –
“It’s about time that the thought
becomes once again what it
really is: dangerous for the
thinker.”3
JRFM
Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 04/02
- Title
- JRFM
- Subtitle
- Journal Religion Film Media
- Volume
- 04/02
- Authors
- Christian Wessely
- Daria Pezzoli-Olgiati
- Editor
- Uni-Graz
- Publisher
- SchĂĽren Verlag GmbH
- Location
- Graz
- Date
- 2018
- Language
- English
- License
- CC BY-NC 4.0
- Size
- 14.8 x 21.0 cm
- Pages
- 135
- Categories
- Zeitschriften JRFM