Page - 105 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 04/02

104 | Vuk Uskoković www.jrfm.eu 2018, 4/2, 83–113 lata, IND 1964) walked leisurely across her little Calcutta palace with binoculars in her hands, or the way the young maid from de Sica’s Umberto D (IT 1952) ran errands and opened the window shutters in that old house where dreams of past ages were smeared over the musty walls, if not in the overly flagrant way David Lynch had Sherilyn Fenn move in Twin Peaks51, as if through a dream of a kind? How come that Godard admired the Little Tramp more than any character that has ever walked across the movie screen, labeling him “the greatest of all”,52 yet refused Chaplin’s idea that the poetry of movement paired with music for the soul is the essence of the art of cinema? Could it be that he who asked us to “make sure we use everything we communicate using silence and stillness”53 failed to implement this point because his anarchistic convictions prevented him from directing with an iron fist, failing to motivate with the authority and the charisma of an Orson Welles, producing as a result somewhat lukewarm emotions on the set? Or, in contrast, could it be that the frequent affectedness of his actors on the screen was the consequence of his directing them too ex- plicitly, oftentimes requesting specific gestures without evoking the right emo- tion in the actor, thus opposing the directing style of first his comrade, then his nemesis, Francois Truffaut, who would typically tell Jean-Pierre Léaud to simply imagine immersion in a specific social context and then allow the proper action to be spontaneously elicited before the camera, without explicit instruction. Now, the question is whether Godard’s symbolic messages would have gained a greater strength had they been coupled to a greater degree of emotionality. Or maybe his message of revolt against everything tied to the modern age and the idea that society and language must be chains that shackle the human spirit and diminish its inner potential would not be transmittable had Godard done so. On the other hand, the large-scale release of one’s art implies one’s com- pliance with certain social standards, even if they govern the circles of social 51 Twin Peaks (David Lynch / Mark Frost, US 1990–1991). 52 Godard 1968, 202. 53 Histoire(s) du cinéma: Fatale beauté (Jean-Luc Godard, FR/CH 1997), 00:11:30. Fig. 11: Vivre sa vie (Jean-Luc Godard, FR 1962): Nina watch- ing Dreyer’s Joan of Arc (La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc, FR 1928) in the dark of the Panthéon cinema. The watcher becomes the watched that is the watcher that is the watched. Every book is thus written by a scribe; she writes the book, but the book, in turn, writes her, too.