421 Pierrot le fou

[domino harvey]

I smell a thread-split. My five picks would go in chronological order Breathless, Pierrot le fou, La Chinoise, Slow Motion, and Nouvelle Vague.

Every Godard film is worth seeing, some more than others.

[accatone]

I must admit that i don't like commentary tracks at all…never listened to one through a complete film - the reason for this is that i do not believe that you can dig deep enough into a subject while the film is moving on…you can follow the film/images or you can dig into the subject. For me its like reading a book and watching a film at the same time…impossible! Plus, with an artist like Godard, i think the subject is almost (always) to difficult to get by with a sketchy and most of the time spontanious commentary.
This might work for boulevardesque informations like who he was related to at that time but can't give a deeper information on the semiotics of the film, image or sound.
After rewatching ELOGE DE L'AMOUR and discovering a quote from Bataille again i decided to re-read LE BLEU DU CIEL and found that way(!) more enlightening than any commentary track i ever listend to…
For PIERROT, a film i really like for certain shots but that i would not put in my Godards top 5, i recommend his own comment for this/his film in Cahiers #171, October 1965 -Pierrot mon ami.

[cinemartin]

If I'm not mistaken, Cineastes de notre temps did a show about Godard around the time of this film's production. It seems a real shame that this won't be included. Personally I think the extras are a little weak.

[eez28]

If I'm not mistaken, Cineastes de notre temps did a show about Godard around the time of this film's production. It seems a real shame that this won't be included. Personally I think the extras are a little weak.

Well when you look at all the extras that Criterion has put together from all the Godard releases it amazing to me that they keep finding new stuff to use for their new releases. So I'm pretty happy with what they have included here. Anyone have an idea if they are close to exhausting their archival supplements?

[Cronenfly]

I must admit that i don't like commentary tracks at all…never listened to one through a complete film - the reason for this is that i do not believe that you can dig deep enough into a subject while the film is moving on…you can follow the film/images or you can dig into the subject. For me its like reading a book and watching a film at the same time…impossible! Plus, with an artist like Godard, i think the subject is almost (always) to difficult to get by with a sketchy and most of the time spontanious commentary.
This might work for boulevardesque informations like who he was related to at that time but can't give a deeper information on the semiotics of the film, image or sound.

I agree with you up to a point, but I think that a well-put together commentary on a Godard film could be very good in enriching the film and elaborating on its complexities. Of course there would be things that would have to be glossed over, but if it was an A+ track, it could very well be worth it.

Most commentaries are garbage, but the best ones can really illuminate the film and its background, influence, etc. I usually just follow the comments and not the film when I'm listening to a commentary, because, as you said, it's impossible to follow both at the same time (and if you've seen the film already, then focusing on the comments is very feasible).

Video essays are good (and have the potential to better most commentaries), but I think that they have potential caveats just like commentaries do (case[s] in point: the Teshigahara-Quandt ones were wonderfully concise and illuminating, but I found the Rosenbaum/Breathless and the Clean, Shaven ones to just barely skirt the surface of those films). I just hope that the Pierrot Primer is one of the better ones.

[Max von Mayerling]

While I'm not a big fan of commentaries, I can certainly understand why others would feel that Criterion would be wise to give us another Godard with a commentary. That said, I think that if one actually worked one's way through all the supplementary material provided on all the Criterion Godards thus far, I think you'd get quite a developed & wide-ranging exposure to his work, to opinions about and perspectives on his work, and to his collaborators' views and experiences.

I feel that I'm constantly re-discovering Godard (which is part of why I'm so devoted to him), but Weekend, Germany Year 90, JLG/JLG, masculin feminin, and a woman is a woman were all delirious, enlightening experiences for me. I've been spending some time w/ Histoire(s) lately, and it's really blowing my mind, but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone that hasn't already waded into a number of his other films. I can't wait to spend more time with Pierrot, having only seen it once, many years ago.

[Cronenfly]

While I'm not a big fan of commentaries, I can certainly understand why others would feel that Criterion would be wise to give us another Godard with a commentary. That said, I think that if one actually worked one's way through all the supplementary material provided on all the Criterion Godards thus far, I think you'd get quite a developed & wide-ranging exposure to his work, to opinions about and perspectives on his work, and to his collaborators' views and experiences.

Fair enough: you're right that the supplements on the JLG CC releases have been pretty damn good; I hope that a few commentaries pop up in the future, but I won't be sore if that's not the case. I feel that there are some potentially killer commentaries that could be done for JLG's work, but they could also be crap, so who knows.

[grungies]

At last! I've been waiting for a chance to see this one for a long time.

[Andre Jurieu]

Plus, with an artist like Godard, i think the subject is almost (always) to difficult to get by with a sketchy and most of the time spontanious commentary.

Well, I don't think anyone should attempt a sketchy and spontaneous commentary track for a Godard movie. They could wind up injuring themselves pretty severely. Stam appears to have thoroughly prepared himself before his commentary on Contempt and I think the same type of preparation would be required for something like 2 or 3 Things... or Pierrot if the commentary is supposed to be of any real value to the viewer. Then again, I've always been a fan of audio essay commentary tracks, such as the ones offered on Pickpocket and Rules of the Game, and I'm fairly certain the majority of viewers find these types of commentary tracks to be dry and tedious.

[MichaelB]

(and if you've seen the film already, then focusing on the comments is very feasible).

That "if" implies that there are people out there who don't watch the film properly before switching on the commentary!

In all seriousness, has anyone actually done this? And why?

[accatone]

I think people get used to it (commentary tracks) and use them as a true source for an information on the film. Maybe it adds something academic for them to the otherwise "just" watching experience? I can't, seriously, imagen any deeper intellectual information given by an extra audio track. My problem is, same with the internet, that people get used to "konfektionierter" (don't have an english word by hand, sorry) informations and take them for granted - or even worse, play the academic card with superficial arguments based on a not so proper research. Lots of people today may think that knowing the "hard facts" might be enough for a general understanding, but we all know, or should know, that the deeper you get into a subject, movie, book, friends, men, women…whatever - the more you will get out of it! This is, with any subject, always connected to long and often hard learning processes ...

[bunuelian]

So accatone are you saying that commentary tracks are good, because they help understanding, or bad, because they are intellectual crutches for people who don't bother to seek out other sources of information? Your post is a bit unclear, and is bound to draw some reactions that you might not intend.

[accatone]

Intellectual crutches. But i hope people understand that i am not generalizing but just articulating an impression i sometimes have. People often get me wrong here…i should dig a little deeper into the english language subject or even better quit posting on the internet (which / the internet has strange language itself, imo).

[jbeall]

(and if you've seen the film already, then focusing on the comments is very feasible).

That "if" implies that there are people out there who don't watch the film properly before switching on the commentary!

In all seriousness, has anyone actually done this? And why?

I have. My friend got sick, and asked me to sub for his class. I was supposed to talk about JLG's Contempt, but Netflix took their sweet time in shipping the film, and none of the video stores had it. When it arrived, I only had time for one viewing, so I played the French version in order to read the subtitles while I listened to the commentary.

It was an interesting experience, inducing a sort of intense double-consciousness as I tried to engage the film on my own terms while still listening to the commentary. A triple-consciousness, actually, as I was cognizant of the weirdness of the whole endeavor. I don't anticipate trying it again, but it was a trippy experience that didn't require the purchase of psychotropic substances.

[domino harvey]

Intellectual crutches.

This strikes me as anti-intellectual, as though hearing two hours of critical interpretation is somehow less valid than arriving at your own individual take on the film-- films don't exist in a vacuum and the proper contextualization for a film is crucial. Not every viewer can be like me or Oedipax or justeleblanc and be extremely well-versed in Godard's methods and cinematic oeuvre, so the commentary track is an excellent "way in" to the work of cinema's greatest and most complex artist-- a director who can be enjoyed on the surface, but whose greatest strengths become apparent when read and examined closely.

[MichaelB]

This strikes me as anti-intellectual, as though hearing two hours of critical interpretation is somehow less valid than arriving at your own individual take on the film-- films don't exist in a vacuum and the proper contextualization for a film is crucial.

I'm also somewhat bemused as to why audio commentaries are being singled out for this criticism, as though they're essentially different in terms of raw content from articles, essays and books.

But then again, I also disagree that they represent any kind of definitive take - especially given that we're seeing more and more situations where films are released on either side of the Atlantic with different commentaries.

(Trivia question to which I genuinely don't know the answer: which film has had the greatest number of recorded audio commentaries?)

Not every viewer can be like me or Oedipax or justeleblanc and be extremely well-versed in Godard's methods and cinematic oeuvre, so the commentary track is an excellent "way in" to the work of cinema's greatest and most complex artist-- a director who can be enjoyed on the surface, but whose greatest strengths become apparent when read and examined closely.

I completely agree. We all have to start somewhere, and a good audio commentary is a better method than most, not least because you can actually watch the film at the same time. I'm a huge fan of commentaries like, say, Roger Ebert's for Citizen Kane, because it offers plenty of stuff for complete beginners to get their teeth into as well as insights that even experts might not have spotted.

[colinr0380]

Personally I love commentaries - if the film is a bit ho-hum or speaks for itself then the commentary is usually similarly dull. The best are for truly great films in which the people doing the commentary have a good understanding of the work and are able to talk through their subject and even expand on it (this would apply as much to someone like David Cronenberg's commentaries as it would to a well researched critics commentary).

Also the truly bad or little known films are usually the ones which most benefit from commentary tracks. For example the hilarious commentary for Uwe Boll's House of the Dead! One of my very favourite commentary tracks is for Last House on Dead End Street in which Chas Balun talks with the recently at the time discovered director Roger Watkins, who talks through his original intentions (a three hour film called 'The Cuckoo Clocks of Hell') and how the film ended up in its final, mangled in the editing and badly dubbed version - it is a fantastic commentary for a film I could barely manage to sit through in its original form once and really proves how worthwhile a good commentary track can be, especially since Watkins died earlier this year. (It also illustrates another feature of commentary tracks, forcing the people commentating to have to explain 'what the hell were you thinking?' as they watch their film - the doe's hoove scene, the Zardoz mask and the section of the film in which the housewife puts on blackface and goes downstairs to be whipped by a midget in front of her party guests being prime examples of such scenes! As usual with these things it often comes down to ilicit substance abuse!)

(Trivia question to which I genuinely don't know the answer: which film has had the greatest number of recorded audio commentaries?)

The most that I am aware of are the six commentaries on the Region 1 Rules of Attraction disc, including one by Carrot Top, who is watching the film for the first time while commenting! (That one isn't very good!)

A close runner up would be Eli Roth's Cabin Fever and Hostel discs with four commentaries each. (Roth's solo commentary on Cabin Fever has the choice anecdote of how he got into film and his early job as an extra playing one of Barbara Streisand's students in Prince of Tides and being egged on by Streisand to express their excitement for the classical music she was playing to them in broader and broader ways until Roth says they ended up having to high five each other yelling "Yeah, Puccini!" )

[MichaelB]

The most that I am aware of are the six commentaries on the Region 1 Rules of Atrraction disc, including one by Carrot Top, who is watching the film for the first time while commenting! (That one isn't very good!)

I didn't necessarily mean on the same disc - I'm thinking of situations like, say, Nosferatu, where I think there are at least three commentaries doing the rounds on three separate releases.

[montgomery]

I'm also somewhat bemused as to why audio commentaries are being singled out for this criticism, as though they're essentially different in terms of raw content from articles, essays and books.

I think audio commentaries are being singled out for this criticism because the lack of commentary is being singled out as a major oversight for this release (Domino Harvey: "No other director benefits better from a commentary track and yet again, we're denied one on Godard's best film") , as if hours of interviews with the filmmaker and actors, a documentary, written essays and a truncated commentary by Gorin (as if commentary that's exactly the length of whatever film it's discussing is the only valid kind), aren't sufficient for those who want insight into the film's "context." One would think, looking at the specs for the set, that anyone would be pleased--it certainly beats the Fox Lorber, it even beats a theatrical screening in terms of supplements. But instead, there's a sense of disappointment because of the lack of commentary, as if it is the most valid method of criticism.

[domino harvey]

To be clear, I wasn't saying I have seen a lot of his films to brag anymore than anyone else here who has an area of interest is bragging, I was merely stating that it's easy for those familiar with the work of the director to decry the need for in-depth supplemental material such as commentaries, but for those just beginning the journey, they are incredibly valuable. Godard is a director who has inspired countless thousands of pages of critical discussion, I think it's naive and egotistical to think that you can watch the film free of proper context and "get" everything it's doing. I'm not saying, underline, that you can't enjoy the film on its own merits and I'm not, underline, saying that anyone not familiar with Godard would be too stupid to see and enjoy the film. That's twisting my words into some sort of an attack on those who haven't the time, energy, or opportunity to explore the man's work, an attack which I think it's obvious I have no interest in making. The more people who see his films, the better. But they're complicated, beautiful creatures and anything that leads to a new viewer walking away with a greater appreciation of what they've just seen, say via a commentary track, can not be a bad thing.

[montgomery]

I apologize for my tone. I've deleted most of my post.

[accatone]

Intellectual crutches.

This strikes me as anti-intellectual, as though hearing two hours of critical interpretation is somehow less valid than arriving at your own individual take on the film-- films don't exist in a vacuum and the proper contextualization for a film is crucial. Not every viewer can be like me or Oedipax or justeleblanc and be extremely well-versed in Godard's methods and cinematic oeuvre, so the commentary track is an excellent "way in" to the work of cinema's greatest and most complex artist-- a director who can be enjoyed on the surface, but whose greatest strengths become apparent when read and examined closely.

Agree 100% with the last part of the last sentence (sorry, i do not know how to "quote" certain parts of a post). But there is something really strange in the first part of this sentence… I don't know, maybe i haven't read any of your publications and maybe you, Oedipax and justleblanc are actually household names on the Godard subject on an at least national level…and maybe you live close to another and really have intellectual exchanges through some cultural "buisiness"…i don't know - but i would never ever come up in the internet and say that i am a smart "godard schooled" intellectual…that was my impression of that quote! Maybe i got that wrong, because i am not an english native speaker, than forget about this post!

When i say that i personally don't like commentarys i do not say that people who actually listen to them are stupid! This brings me back to the "subject" intellectualism - For me, the possibilities are so limited if you just talk about what commentarys say, because they quote from different sources so you just get second hand information (like with the internet) - but if you want to get into Godard, expecially late-Godard, its impossible to get a deeper understanding of the subject without having profound background information. Imagin a commentary track on the Histoire(s) - this would be the biggest joke ever! If Godard juxtaposes paintings to images of the balkan war while quoting Hugo - you might say: Wow, this feels or looks good and really deep or whatever. But if you don't have a clue about Hugo or the immense importance of the Balkan War for Europe - you will not be able to understand Godards motivation. This is not able with second hand infos! I know that i don't have a Godard posse watching my back in this forum - nor would i claim to be well-versed in Godard, but i must say i am interested in all this subjects and try really hard to get into it - and as far as i treat history with at least the same interest as Godard, i can say that it needs more than a commentary track…

[domino harvey]

I was just mentioning three Criterion board members who I knew frequently weighed-in in Godard threads. Again I wasn't bragging and I didn't meant to start a pissing contest or impugn their good names by mentioning them in my now highly-contested comment. Golly!

[MichaelB]

But instead, there's a sense of disappointment because of the lack of commentary, as if it is the most valid method of criticism.

I know, and I agonised for literally years over the issue of commentaries on the BFI's Jan Å vankmajer box because I felt that the DVDs would somehow feel incomplete without them. I made two serious attempts at commissioning them, and even started drafting a script for one of the films myself - but I eventually came round to the idea (which I still stand by) that certain films really don't suit commentaries at all, and ended up bunging the research material in what ended up as a 56-page booklet.

And what Å vankmajer and Godard have in common is that their films are exceptionally dense, allusive and multi-layered, almost defying you to come up with a verbal encapsulation that's timed to coincide with scenes in the actual films.

[Oedipax]

A commentary track is a compromise, but even so, I find them quite valuable in the best cases, and if nothing else usually entertaining. For me it's worthwhile just to have a second look at a film purely on the level of images, regardless of what the commentator might be saying at the moment. Of course, one could just mute the sound and get the same effect. But I do notice things when 'watching' commentaries that are sometimes lost in the narrative flow when I'm engaged with a film otherwise.

I think it's exciting to see that some critics are now branching out into the realm of the video essay for DVD extras - Tag Gallagher, for instance, on the Ophuls films, and more recently Jonathan Rosenbaum on Breathless. Of course, Godard got there before everyone, but I hope it's a trend that continues. Just look at Thom Anderson's Los Angeles Plays Itself and you'll see the extraordinary potential, at least if copyright doesn't kill everything.

Something like Godard's own 'commentary' on Full Metal Jacket, where he plays Kubrick's film against images from Santiago Alvarez's 79 Springtimes shows that there's a lot more work to be done than simply speaking over the tops of images, and involves actually doing something like montage. Godard said it himself, perhaps the best way of commenting on images, or doing criticism, is through the same medium of images.

Imagine a commentary where the commentator had the ability to pause the image, or to go back and play again a certain shot or cut that had particular importance. It's not always as readily apparent in longer films, but very quickly one can see the absurdity in something like Adrian Martin's commentary on Vivre sa vie - that is to say, there's so much to be said about the film that it's a race to fit it all into 85 minutes! But a heroic effort nonetheless...

Edit: By the way, you can watch the Godard/Kubrick/Alvarez clip here on YouTube.