TamTam Books News Saturday, November 15, 2003: What? The first straight-forward biography of Jean-Luc Godard!?! Here's a review by Don Boyd in today's Observer. http://books.guardian.co.uk/reviews/biography/0,6121,1085954,00.html Sunday November 16, 2003 The Observer By Don Boyd Godard: A Portrait of the Artist at 70 by Colin McCabe Bloomsbury £25, pp320 According to this illuminating new biography, so nervous was he that Bernardo Bertolucci vomited when he first met the twentieth century's greatest cinematic enfant terrible . His admiration for the French master has not dimmed: in his latest movie, Bertolucci has included a tribute to the great opening sequence of A Bout de Souffle , of Jean Seberg touting the International Herald Tribune as she walks along the Left Bank. Before opening this book, I was apprehensive that it might be too academic; instead, Colin MacCabe's portrait is both refreshing and accessible. Not only did I recognise the artist who has captivated me with thought-provoking and ground-breaking movies like Alphaville , Weekend and Sauve qui peut (la Vie) , but I also discovered many other Monsieur Godards, each of whom gives us a clue as to his strange, complex genius. My first brush with Jean-Luc Godard was at a tiny room above a camera shop near Leicester Square. He was in London to promote his movie featuring a Rolling Stones recording session, One Plus One . A film journalist asked him to tell the packed room what gave him the right to make personal statements in his movies. By way of response, the director urged us to go downstairs into the shop below, buy 10 secondhand movie cameras, some rolls of filmstock, and go out in to Leicester Square and give them to the first 10 people we met. In Godard's view, each happy new owner of this gift would not only have the right to make a film, but a film which would have as much validity as anything he himself had made. Twenty years later, I worked with the director on the set of Aria . He measured up to all my preconceptions: shy, funny, scurrilous, perverse, brilliant, enigmatic, technically faultless and unpredictable. Our relationship started well: tipped off about his financial paranoia, I brought along a banker's draft to give him after he signed our contract. He was both charming and professional throughout our year-long association. Contrary to popular belief, he doesn't take himself too seriously, either. He turned up at Cannes for Aria 's world premiere in 1987 to contribute to a ridiculously surreal TV publicity stunt when all the directors were coerced into a choral rendition, under umbrellas and in blazing sunshine, of 'Singing in the Rain'. MacCabe's comprehensive and informed analysis of Godard's work draws on a variety of interviewees. Their intimate knowledge of Godard's complicated personality balances the author's own complex personal and professional relationship with his subject. We learn that, despite regular diatribes against the values of privileged middle-class family backgrounds, Godard actually had a very comfortable bourgeois Parisian upbringing and enjoyed the considerable love and affection of his family. Later, dogged by a lifetime handicap of being branded publicly as a serial womaniser, he also enjoyed the privilege of a powerful love affair with an extraordinary woman, Anne-Marie Miéville. The biography also offers pertinent insights into Godard's relationships with his peers and collaborators: his friend and nouvelle vague rival Truffaut features comprehensively, as does an analysis of his work with the great cinematographer, Raoul Coutard. There are carefully chosen photographs, a thorough filmography and storyboards. Godard fans, practitioners of cinema and anyone interested in the intellectual and artistic life of the second half of the twentieth century should read this important and entertaining book. Without this man, the movies, and the visual arts in general, would have been infinitely poorer. Tosh // 5:21 PM ______________________ Comments: Post a Comment
What? The first straight-forward biography of Jean-Luc Godard!?! Here's a review by Don Boyd in today's Observer. http://books.guardian.co.uk/reviews/biography/0,6121,1085954,00.html Sunday November 16, 2003 The Observer By Don Boyd Godard: A Portrait of the Artist at 70 by Colin McCabe Bloomsbury £25, pp320 According to this illuminating new biography, so nervous was he that Bernardo Bertolucci vomited when he first met the twentieth century's greatest cinematic enfant terrible . His admiration for the French master has not dimmed: in his latest movie, Bertolucci has included a tribute to the great opening sequence of A Bout de Souffle , of Jean Seberg touting the International Herald Tribune as she walks along the Left Bank. Before opening this book, I was apprehensive that it might be too academic; instead, Colin MacCabe's portrait is both refreshing and accessible. Not only did I recognise the artist who has captivated me with thought-provoking and ground-breaking movies like Alphaville , Weekend and Sauve qui peut (la Vie) , but I also discovered many other Monsieur Godards, each of whom gives us a clue as to his strange, complex genius. My first brush with Jean-Luc Godard was at a tiny room above a camera shop near Leicester Square. He was in London to promote his movie featuring a Rolling Stones recording session, One Plus One . A film journalist asked him to tell the packed room what gave him the right to make personal statements in his movies. By way of response, the director urged us to go downstairs into the shop below, buy 10 secondhand movie cameras, some rolls of filmstock, and go out in to Leicester Square and give them to the first 10 people we met. In Godard's view, each happy new owner of this gift would not only have the right to make a film, but a film which would have as much validity as anything he himself had made. Twenty years later, I worked with the director on the set of Aria . He measured up to all my preconceptions: shy, funny, scurrilous, perverse, brilliant, enigmatic, technically faultless and unpredictable. Our relationship started well: tipped off about his financial paranoia, I brought along a banker's draft to give him after he signed our contract. He was both charming and professional throughout our year-long association. Contrary to popular belief, he doesn't take himself too seriously, either. He turned up at Cannes for Aria 's world premiere in 1987 to contribute to a ridiculously surreal TV publicity stunt when all the directors were coerced into a choral rendition, under umbrellas and in blazing sunshine, of 'Singing in the Rain'. MacCabe's comprehensive and informed analysis of Godard's work draws on a variety of interviewees. Their intimate knowledge of Godard's complicated personality balances the author's own complex personal and professional relationship with his subject. We learn that, despite regular diatribes against the values of privileged middle-class family backgrounds, Godard actually had a very comfortable bourgeois Parisian upbringing and enjoyed the considerable love and affection of his family. Later, dogged by a lifetime handicap of being branded publicly as a serial womaniser, he also enjoyed the privilege of a powerful love affair with an extraordinary woman, Anne-Marie Miéville. The biography also offers pertinent insights into Godard's relationships with his peers and collaborators: his friend and nouvelle vague rival Truffaut features comprehensively, as does an analysis of his work with the great cinematographer, Raoul Coutard. There are carefully chosen photographs, a thorough filmography and storyboards. Godard fans, practitioners of cinema and anyone interested in the intellectual and artistic life of the second half of the twentieth century should read this important and entertaining book. Without this man, the movies, and the visual arts in general, would have been infinitely poorer. Tosh // 5:21 PM
