Histoire[s] du cinéma

M. Godard could never make anything simple because he's too aware of complexity. These six 1/2-hour videos are stories and history, but hardly a detailed chronological history. Cinema was born in the 19th century against a background of narrative painting and literature, and blossomed in the 20th. The films are a study of cinema, to be studied, but they are great to watch as montage of film, painting and photography. Visions, memories of stories, of films, flicker in front of our eyes in strange complex collages: glimpses of Renoir's French Cancan, Demy's Parapluies de Cherbourg, Eisensteins' Alexander Nevsky, the dialogue of Last Year at Marienbad... After all, Godard must have seen (and remembered) more films than anyone else alive.

Beyond that the films feature big characters from the world of film, Howard Hughes (sarcastically), Hitchcock (with great praise: 'Hitchcock succeeded where Alexander the Great, Napoleon and Hitler failed: he controlled the universe'.) & there's a long and very central discussion between Godard and his producer about the project.

Apart from that there are endless shots of Godard + cigar and typewriter, proclaiming things like 'Solitude de cinéma: cinéma de la solitude', all overlaid with the inevitable typographic word-plays. But on the whole, very fascinating. Similar in style to his episode, Dans le Noir du Temps in 10 Minutes Older: the Cello, which condenses the 20th century into 10 minutes of image, using newsreel and scenes from his own films.