Seite - 90 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Band 04/02

Revisiting the Relevance of Conceptualism of Godard’s Film | 89www.jrfm.eu 2018, 4/2, 83–113 that is, an open sea, as in Le Mépris (FR/IT 1963) or Pierrot le fou, bearing re- semblance to what Fellini also did in the 1960s, in Satyricon (IT/FR 1969) and Juliet of the Spirits (IT/FR 1965)? Certainly not. In fact, when the artist is guided by the precept with which we opened this discourse, when he creates in concert with his intuition, allowing the work of art to create the artist as much as the art- ist creates the given work of art, he is bound to realize the multiplicity of mean- ings that have become embedded in the semantic substratum of the product of his creation, all without the artist’s explicit intention. In fact, what distinguishes cinema from other forms of art is the infinite diversity of meanings ascribable to every scene and their every element – like in real life, where one sees eruptions of subtle positivism, another might see suppressed bitterness; where one sees lectures in morality, another might see cynicism, and so forth. In fact, one might argue that, in view of this correspondence between cinema and life, celluloid tapes should be obliged to engrain such multifaceted enactments; conversely, a naïve imposition of semantic linearity ought to be considered a cinematic sin par excellence. Oftentimes in addition to semantic multiplicity, there is also the contradiction – for example, the subject of prostitution frequently employed by Godard could be seen as submissive selling of one’s soul to the devil for the sake of acceptance by society or as being enlightened in nature, coinciding with a wish to make everyone content even at the cost of one’s own descent into moral lowlands, the two interpretations being diametrically opposed, the for- mer utterly negative and the latter utterly positive with respect to the life of the protagonist. As if being lured by the simultaneous cursedness and blessed- ness of Sophocles’s Oedipus at Colonus, Godard must have intuitively sensed that the embodiment of contradictions is a sign of greatness, in life yes, but all the more so in arts. Hence, there is no doubt that the repeated resorting to the subject of prostitution was Godard’s way of attacking the streams of Fig. 3: Pierrot le fou (Jean-Luc Godard, FR/IT 1965): Pierrot, the symbol of the artist, is about to blow himself apart, annihilate the artist, and open the path to realization that life is greater than art.