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Jean-Luc Godard’s Week-end, released in 1967, is the last film the director made before France was seized by the student uprising and general strike of May 1968. ... In this sense, Godard’s claim that he does not distinguish between documentary and fiction, (Godard: 1972) and his conviction that "reportage is interesting only when placed in a fictional context, but fiction is interesting only if it is validated by a documentary context," (p. ... In 1967, by the time Godard had filmed Week-end, revolutionary movements in developing – colonized and ex-colonized – countries were active and had often proven successful in their struggle against imperialist oppression. As will be discussed throughout this paper, Godard seems to proclaim in his film that primitive behavior is not a thing of the past, but is occurring in contemporary capitalistic France. ... With these characters, Godard succeeds in provoking us, both via the ideas these personalities expose and in the way in which the filmmaker has edited them into the film. The texts, usually monologues or lengthy declamations, serve to confront the viewer with issues relevant to Godard’s criticism of Western civilization, and France’s Fifth Republic in particular. Moreover, Godard’s use of the elements of film style – camera movement and distance, sound, lighting, acting, editing, and the mixing of images with intertitles – also works to provoke the viewer and to convey the filmmaker’s subversive meaning. As we will see, Godard’s claims that "the method of shooting should match the subject," (Godard: 1972) and "style is a matter of meaning" (p. ...
Through his use of these non-narrative inserts, Godard breaks the linear narrative form, and from a Brechtian perspective, distances the viewer from the fictional story of the film and forces the audience to question and re-address this narrative, with the prospect of provoking the audience to take action. ... (Wollen: 1982) By bringing together different worlds, Godard also achieves distanciatiation of the viewer from the narrative. ... By using several flashbacks from previous scenes in the film, and a flashforward, Godard brings the film together in this sequence. ... As we will see, Godard suggests that primitivism is not necessarily something of the past or something that happens elsewhere, but is something occurring in contemporary France. ... " As we have seen throughout the film, Godard uses titles as a device to separate the film into sections and advance the topics to be treated, much like the chapters in a book. ... Godard’s title of the world divided by three refers to these divisions of civilization. ... In this sense, Godard proclaims a "general equivalent" view of history. ... (3) Godard expressed the importance of capturing his different affinities towards the characters when he stated that, "You mustn’t forget, too, that I do not always maintain the same distance from my characters. ... " (Godard: 1972). ... By separating the reader of the revolutionary text we hear from the image of the menacing man we see, Godard doubles the subversive effect of the shot. ... " (Fanon: 1963)
Godard’s inclusion of Fanon’s discourse in this monologue serves to justify the demand for violence in the struggle for Africa’s liberation. ... Like Fanon, Freiberg encourages the use of violence by the oppressed in their struggle for self-determination (as opposed to the unconstructive and gratuitous way it is used by the French in Godard’s film). ... The role of counter-violence in which they are involved, whether in Bolivia, the ghetto, or on the barricades, is the propagation of this understanding…The students have imported into the West’s largest urban centers the guerilla strategy designed for the East’s rural expanses; one expands the movement by demonstrating the feasibility of action and the possibility of success… (Touraine:1971b)
Just as Godard uses the close-up to acknowledge the significance of the immigrants’ message of revolution, so he employs music as another subversive device. ... In this case, Godard’s use of music works to hinder the spectator from deriving pleasure from hearing her story. ... (4) Through the questions posed by Balsamo, Godard is attacking the patriarchy, and as he juxtaposes this scene with that of the Algerian discourse, he suggests that a revolution is required not only in Africa, but also by women at home. ... The struggle will be long, and freedom will kill freedom…" Here, Kaja Silverman remarks, Godard presents the complications of the legacy of the French Revolution. ...
Another element of Godard’s film worth analyzing is his style of camera movement. ... Opting for this sudden stillness, Godard conveys reverence to the seriousness of the matter treated, and aids (or forces) the viewer to concentrate his/her attention on what is being said. ... (The viewer’s impatience grows as the interminable shot of slow-moving queued cars, people, and wreckage is accompanied by the exasperating, ear-splitting sound of car horns, with which Godard successfully conveys the unendurable way life has become for the modern Parisian. ... The effect of Godard’s inventive camera movement is to integrate the audience with the farmers, the pianist, and the heroes of the film. If Godard is trying to convey a point about the democratization of high art, his choice of camera movement is the right one. ... With this seemingly unmotivated pan, Godard uses the camera movement to reject the man who ignored the assault on his wife. ... By juxtaposing this extremely brutal (stylized) scene, Godard implies that the threat of violence by the militants of the Third World is already taking place in France. ... These fictional characters have appeared earlier in the film, directly condemning the capitalist maladies which Godard exposes throughout the film. ... By including this flashforward here, Godard is confirming the close relationship between the current state of civilization and primitivism. ... " With this disruptive end, Godard is actually transmitting a message of optimism, as he proclaims that the end to a period of corrupt civilization is soon to arrive. ...
(Touraine: 1971 b)
In Week-end, Godard, a year earlier, had done the same. The historical relevance of the film as a recorder and even prognosticator of events is sensibly articulated by Jean Collet when he writes that,
Today, without a doubt, Godard’s most recent films have amply demonstrated their historic necessity. ... In less than a year the hippies of Godard’s "Front National de Seine-et-Oise"…cropped up in the vocabulary of a government official and in France-Soir under the rubric of "criminals" or fearsome "Katangas."
(Collet: 1970)
Godard’s Week-end ends with a black screen and a title in blue letters that reads, "End of Cinema. ... Godard, who in 1968 told Gene Youngblood that what he was trying to do was to "change the world," (6) began a new stage of filmmaking, radically different from his pre-May 1968 cinema. ... (7) Revolution, as defined by Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber, means "freedom to control and to shape your own future," (Servan – Shreiber, Michael Albert: 1971) and in this sense, Godard, as a filmmaker who constantly revalues and transforms his work, could be considered a true revolutionary, regardless of his success or failure in changing the world. ... Considering Godard’s Week-end, a non-conventional narrative, I will analyze the use of the director’s methods (not necessarily Brechtian) for provoking the audience. ... These shots also convey Godard’s closeness to the images portrayed: his sympathy for the revolutionary African, the tenderness for the rebel expressed in her song, and the approval of the action performed by Corinne. ... (back)
(6) Jean-Luc Godard in Gene Youngblood’s, "Jean-Luc Godard: No Difference between Life and Cinema," Jean-Luc Godard: Interviews, ed. ... (back)
(7) Andrew Sarris, "Godard and the Revolution," Jean-Luc Godard: Interviews, p.
Approximate Word count = 7550
Approximate Pages = 30.2
(250 words per page double spaced)
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