Waiting For Godard

Here's some praise by Mike D'Angelo for A Woman Is A Woman, and Jean-Luc Godard in general. I can't partake in the enthusiasm. Godard's run of films from Breathless (1960--not 1959 as the article states) to Weekend (1967) were, and are, arthouse favorites, but I find them wildly overrated. There are some interesting moments and ideas, but overall they're a pretty boring lot. Godard makes plenty of bizarre moves, but his inability to tell a story (even if he's above anything that bourgeois) makes for considerable longueurs.

It's not experimental films I oppose, it's clumsy, amateurish staging mistaken for significant "comment" on whatever it is the critics feel is being commented on. If you want to try alienation effects, you need a lot behind them to pull them off.

D'Angelo picks out a scene from A Woman Is A Woman (one of the more memorable ones, actually) where the two lovers carry around a lamp and argue with each other using book titles. He praises it to the skies, but just watching the excerpt reminded me of how long this whole movie felt.

D'Angelo arguies that Godard is so original, no one is copying him. Oh, so that's the reason. Here's how he puts it:

...there’s the angry fight conducted entirely via book titles—an idea so original that, in fairness, it’s hard to imagine how anyone could be inspired by it without just ripping it off.

While I sort of the like the metaphor of people arguing with books, since so many prefer to quote others than argue for themselves, I must say that using other media to communicate isn't that uncommon in movies. And right now I'm reminded of a meet cute in Employees' Entrance (1933) where the couple communicate to each other through the titles of sheet music.

I'm not saying Godard isn't original. It's just that novelty is no guarantee of quality. Actually, one of my favorite films of his is a later work (after his 60s run), Tout Va Bien (1972), which is probably more experimental, and explicitly political, than his earlier stuff. I guess if you're gonna do it, do it.