"The cinema is truth 24 frames-per-second" - Jean Luc Godard.
“Cinema is the most beautiful fraud in the world.” - also Jean Luc Godard."Cinema is truthful about what it shows, what it wants you to see. Cinema lies in what it does not." - umm... yeah that's me.
Add this one:
ReplyDelete(sic) "In Cinema we assemble a series of lies and in the process reach a higher reality" - Abbas Kiarostami
About that third quote -- your own improvisation based on the first two -- c'mon, give cinema a break! Isn't it "the director’s prerogative, what he wants to show" (as a great man once said)? So I say we lay all the blame on Godard...the guy's own ambivalence as to what cinema really is (or isn't), is the cause for the inconsistency, methinks.
ReplyDeleteOr maybe, he spent a lifetime grappling with it and did finally find out the truth and loved it and laughed at himself, making the second statement, in retrospect.
As Steve Martin's blabbermouth inspector Clouseau says in The Pink Panther, "A woman is like...is like...is like... an artichoke! It takes some work before you get to her heart." And perhaps so it is with cinema (if only in a Godardian sense -- yes, coming from someone who's not even seen one film of his, ha!) -- all facade on the outside (to keep folks busy peeling layer after useless layer...with most people probably becoming too tired peeling, getting nothing in return and giving up, perhaps just when they're one or two peels away from the), oh-so-true-and-tasty heart on the inside!
Well, the whole quote was "Cinema is truth at 24 frames per second. Every cut is a lie." Given the average shot length in the movies, I'd say Godard didn't really contradict himself :-)
ReplyDeleteIn some way, he does make sense. One of the most involving movies I've seen is Richard Linklater's Before Sunset, which is essentially a 90 minute conversation between his leads with long, unbroken takes lasting several minutes.
I used to have that quote as the subtitle on my blog, before I changed it to the one from The Jazz Singer.
~ramsu