Postmodernism, Vivre Sa Vie, and Demy’s Quotations

As I reread over Shun-liang Chao’s work with regard to Godard’s Vivre SA Vie, I feel as though Chao’s suppositions are relevant to Demy’s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg.  Though much of Chao’s reading is somewhat irrelevant to a discussion of Demy’s work, particular aspects of this text are reminiscent of the discussion I initiated in my last post.  Specifically, I’m interested in Chao’s suggestion that Godard’s use of the surreal actually brings his films closer to reality: “If the real has been more or less adorned, or rather, ‘faked’ (in Godard’s terms), in classical/orthodox cinema, Godard has the real divested of its decorations and restored to its pre-filmic/photographic condition.  That is to say, he returns realness to the filmic image and sound by making them surreal, in the literal sense.”  As Chao suggests, in a very Heideggerian sense, Godard deprives the viewer of many of the filmic effects for which the audience has become accustomed, thus allowing the images to “disclose” themselves. 

 

Turning to Vivre Sa Vie, Chao demonstrates that Godard has been particularly attentive to this issue.  With regard for the film, Godard divides it into twelve tableaux, “each introduced by a heading describing and/or questioning its content.” Here, Chao argues that Godard prompts a continual reconsideration of the film, as the various conventions he uses draw attention to the artifice of cinema and cinematic devices.  And, though Chao’s examples are sufficient, one can find evidence of such a thrust in many of the other texts we have encountered this semester.  With regard for Godard’s first filmic text, Breathless, one could allude to the dialogue that Belmondo delivers right to the camera in the beginning sequence.  Moreover, in A Woman is a Woman, I’m particularly struck by the scene where Emile, having decided that Alfred will have to impregnate Angela, calls to Alfred from the balcony of his apartment. Instantly, the camera position changes to street level, where it seems that Alfred has been awaiting the call of his friend.  In this very strange way, Godard seems to call attention to the constant availability of characters in more conventional cinema.  Whatever the intended effect, one can see that Godard’s filmic texts demonstrate the type of preoccupations that Chao discusses with regard for Vivre Sa Vie.  And, it seems, one would have to go a little farther than the strict purview of Godard’s work.

 

Though there is room to discuss Chao’s supposition with regard for many French New Wave directors, I’m particularly interested in returning to Demy’s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg.  Here, it seems that something very similar is occurring, but in relation to the mise-en-scene instead of some of the more specific methods that Godard uses.  Most specifically, as I addressed previously, Rosenbaum argues that though Demy emphasizes the artifice of the set, especially through the use of extremely vivid colors, this is only to offset the reality that is actually conveyed through the musical nature of the dialogue.  Thus, it can be seen that Rosenbaum’s argument bears certain similarity to that of Chao.  If Chao is interested in Godard’s use of the surreal to convey a certain reality, might this supposition also be applied to Demy’s work in The Umbrellas of Cherbourg? This is to say that the almost surreal artificiality of Demy’s sets actually serves the purpose of emphasizing what Chao refers to as the real. 

 

What becomes problematic in attempting to take Chao’s reading out of its filmic contexts is that Chao’s reading of the postmodern/modern doesn’t leave much room for transfer.  Whereas Chao addresses Godard’s work as having both modernist and postmodernist tendencies, partially because of the fragmented style, one can see that this assessment doesn’t really transfer over to Demy’s work in the conventional sense.  Whereas Godard’s filmic segments, bookended by intertitles, clearly are in conflict with one another (causing the type of rifts we discussed earlier this semester), Demy’s work seems much less fragmented.  Though it would seem that Demy’s work calls attention to the utter incapability of certain representations – what Chao argues as the natural prerequisite to the postmodern – it is a little difficult to locate the type of indicators to which Chao alludes. 

 

Perhaps, in a strange sense, returning to the mise-en-scene, one can read Demy’s use of vibrant colors as a stand-in for the intertitles one later experiences with Godard.  This is to say that one might read the use of divergent colors as indicative of certain transitions.  If Godard’s text is the model of such a system of fragmentation, it can really only be secondary to that of Demy’s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg.  If Vivre sa Vie is the model than The Umbrellas of Cherbourg is the utter intensification of everything that Godard enacts.  The fragments are smaller, abbreviated by the colorful transitions that occur from scene to scene and within those scenes as well.  Perhaps, in a way, it is surprising that the discussion of the postmodern doesn’t start with Demy’s work, or at least make reference to Demy’s film, especially considering his influence on Godard.   

Demy’s Quotations

Surprisingly, I’m particularly fond of Jonathan Rosenbaum’s reading of the Umbrellas of Cherbourg. Though I wasn’t quite sure what to make of the film initially, especially considering my relative inexperience concerning musicals, I remember being struck by the colorful costumes and décor of the mise-en-scene. Being that I am specifically interested in the role highly expressive mise-en-scene plays in musicals, Rosenbaum’s second assessment of the film seems crucial. As Rosenbaum argues, although he was initially upset with the Umbrellas of Cherbourg as he perceived it as being somewhat of a commercial sell out, it was really upon experiencing French culture that his perspective changed. The realization that actually prompted this reconsideration relates to his eventual experience of the very formal nature of daily physical and linguistic interaction that takes place in France. This is to say that Rosenbaum was forced to consider the film as something quite different than the conventional musical. In effect, the film is simply attempting to draw attention to the dense formality of daily interaction. Thus one must consider the film as demonstrating less of the method of exaggeration than that of quoting; quoting daily activity, most specifically.

If the film is to be considered more of a quotation than an exaggeration of daily life and interaction in French society, than one must read the mise-en-scene much differently than one would with regard for the more conventional musical. Here, Rosenbaum’s summation is quite relevant to an understanding of the way that the vibrant color of many of the sets actually emphasizes what he refers to as the “mundane” reality of the characters: “…but the style can’t be labeled realistic even if one ignores the music. Aiming for a heightened reality to set off the more mundane reality of his characters, Demy and his set designer, Bernard Evein, repainted whole sections of Cherbourg so that the colors would be much more vivid and coordinated than they were in real life; a similar approach is evident in the costumes.” Though I think this observation is warranted, one could take it one step further. This is to say that whereas other musicals dramatize or exaggerate costume, set, and speech, Demy only really exaggerates the first two. The third element, that of linguistic exchange or speech, is really only quoted. In essence, although the dialogue is continually sung, it seems as though this is done, as Rosenbaum notes, with a different end in mind. Though they actually had to paint the buildings in order to give them the vibrancy that the film renders, and dressed the characters in garb that was perhaps a little more lavish than what French people actually wore, as Rosenbaum argues, the formality of singing has some basis in reality.

Thus, it is here most specifically that one can locate Demy’s importance to the French New Wave. If, as was argued in class, a general thematic of the French New Wave is a greater attentiveness to a specific facet of reality (through natural shooting, the use of non-professional actors, etc.), Rosenbaum’s assessment makes it a little easier to see that Demy is actually not really as far of from the French New Wave as one might presume. Though he is dressing up the language and the set a little, he is providing quotations of a certain reality. The buildings and rooms are still those of Cherbourg, and the formality of singing serves to emphasize the complicated nature of daily interaction. With Rosenbaum in mind, it is perhaps a little easier to see why Demy’s work was relevant to the French New Wave and why auteurs such as Godard were interested in and influenced by his work.

Turning back to the Esso gas station that Rosenbaum pays particular attention to, I read something that seems to support Rosenbaum’s general argument. As opposed to reading it as indicative of commercial leanings, or even as pointing to American influence on French society, I am interested in the absence of color in the scenes that take place here. Here, as opposed to other portions of the film, Demy structures mise-en-scene and costuming in order to emphasize the absence of any coloration. Though one might want to read this as being indicative of a certain resolution in plot – that the colorful conflict of the rest of the film has finally come to an end – I think that the scenes that occur here indicate a different type of resolution. It seems that this scene is supposed to reify the film’s basis in a certain contextual reality. This is to say that Demy seems to be emphasizing that despite certain colorations this film is rooted in places and people that are fundamentally real.

Pleasure and Resistance in Godard’s Les Carabiniers

Returning to the post on Godard’s Les Carabiniers (featured on Reverseblog), it seems necessary to devote a little more space to the discussion of this film. With regard for Godard’s early work, the author voices two related and incredibly relevant aims. First, this response argues that although Godard is often lauded as the highly political film-maker that purposely eschews conventional modes of cinematic spectatorship, Godard’s earliest films (Les Carabiniers included) are actually pleasurable endeavors: “A major contradiction of Jean-Luc Godard’s 60s films is that for all their difficulty, abrasiveness, unconventionality, and “distance,” they are largely pleasurable works.” Another major preoccupation of this particular response concerns Godard’s participation in the processes of commoditization. Here, one must ultimately discuss the attention that Godard gives to the imagistic still; to the image as a commodity. Considering that I already discussed the second issue in some detail, I’ll focus my attention on the first aim of this work.

Though I agree that there is some benefit to a discourse that considers Godard’s work as a series of stages or periods of development as opposed to an undifferentiated mass, I’m not really convinced by the argument that the author makes. Although there is great utility in recognizing the inherent differences between each of Godard’s filmic texts –an issue we have been addressing all semester–I don’t think that it is appropriate to discount the affective political potential of pleasure. Perhaps, such discourse is propelled more by my personal interest in resistance as opposed to Godard’s work in Carabiniers. Hopefully though, what follows will benefit a better understanding of Godard’s work.

As was suggested previously, I’m not really interested in discounting the assessment that Godard’s earlier work is more, in a strange sense, pleasurable than later endeavors. Perhaps, as the author argues, it is better to read that Godard eventually attempts to diminish that which viewers typically find pleasurable (i.e. witty dialogue, humorous visual interludes, etc.); that a different approach or methodology comes into being. Here, the critic alludes to the way in which Godard’s long-take of a traffic jam in Weekend completely alienates the viewing audience. Though there is room to read the previous trend in the body of Godard’s work, the aforementioned post ignores the ramifications of such an assessment. Quite simply, it becomes problematic when pleasure and resistance are set in opposition to one another. This is to say that the absence of pleasure should never be considered a natural prerequisite to the subversive nature of a particular text. It is possible not only that particularly effective political texts create or induce pleasure, but also that pleasure is a natural prerequisite to more effective political gestures. In a way, this is to argue the exact opposite of that which is implied by the aforementioned text. As opposed to viewing the most subversive texts as being devoid of pleasurable moments – much in the fashion that Weekend absences pleasure in order to alienate the audience – might it not be more beneficial to consider pleasure as the most appropriate tool for subversion?

This, of course, encourages a dramatic reconsideration of Godard’s very “political” work. It means that one would have to reconsider even the type of progressive periodization that one encounters with this post. One would have to read pleasure and subversion as something other than antithetical.

 

Les Carabiniers and Beller’s discussion of Price and Imagistic Mediation

I know I’m skipping forward quite a bit, but before I return to some of Godard’s other work I must address the latest film that we watched, Les Carabiniers.  It ultimately seems quite unfortunate that we didn’t have enough time to discuss this film in greater detail.   We only really just began discussing the issue of imagistic mediation and the implications that such mediations incur for an audience’s perception.  Following on my last post, as Shaviro’s brief discourse on Barthes’, I want to return to the argument that I presented in class. 

 

Although Jacques Derrida has a pretty interesting reading of Marxism and Roland Barthes’ work in Camera Lucida, I am also particularly interested in Jonathan Beller’s work in The Cinematic Mode of Production.  In specific portions of this text, Beller revisits Marxist notions of image and value.   Whereas Derrida reads Barthes in conjunction with Marx, interpreting that the image produces ghosts or emanations of a particular reality, an argument I discussed in more detail previously, Beller approaches this issue while paying particular attention to a Marxist preoccupation with Price.  Instead of interpreting that images create what Derrida refers to as ghosts, Beller suggests that everything has this quality even before the image.  Beller’s specific point is to say that the price that we assign to different objects or beings predetermines the image.  In a sense, price (as it is directly tied to value) already mediates our experience of an object or being.  Thus, price is the image that ultimately precedes the image. 

 

Though this particular line of reasoning is particularly poignant and serves as an important counter-point to Derrida’s potential misappropriation of Marx, it still remains to be considered what relationship this has to Godard’s Les Carabiniers: What utility is there in considering the film within the purview of this type of economics-based unpacking of the (pre-) image? 

 

As was discussed in class, with Les Carabiniers, there is an almost emphatic emphasis on the documentation of images.  Throughout the film, Godard pays specific attention to various imagistic catalogues.  Significant portions of the filmic text are devoted to the listing of numerous images.  As was argued in class, not only do these images serve the rather simplistic purpose of motivating plot progression – the main characters join the war effort thinking they will eventually have certain rights over the images they collect – but they invoke the issue of mediation alluded to previously.  Here, Godard encourages the audience to consider both what the photographic stills indicate, and the greater artifice of the filmic production.  As I suggested in class, this is more of a self-reflexive gesture/maneuver than anything else. 

 

Turning to the photographic stills with this interpretive framework, one can see that there is a certain purpose in questioning the distinction that Beller makes.  Although I concede that there is room to read, as Professor Shaviro argues, that this film is interested in what it means for people to possess imagistic stand-ins for the actual objects, locations, or beings represented, I am also interested in what Beller’s reading might contribute to the discussion.  This is to say that if Shaviro seems to be getting at the type of mediated emanation that Derrida describes (following on Barthes and Marx – see Specters of Marx), especially as he describes both the relative presence and non-presence of the object/being represented, I am interested in going one step further towards the object/being that is represented.  That is, following on Beller’s line in The Cinematic Mode of Production, I am interested in the image that precedes the actual photographic still; the image of price and value that I alluded to previously.  In order to make this move, I would have to gesture towards some of the scenes that we haven’t yet discussed.  This I will do when I have a little more time. 

Referent and Emanation in Truffaut’s Jules et Jim

This afternoon I was reading through Echographies of Television when I came across an interesting reference to Roland Barthes.  For those that are unaware, Echographies provides a transcription of filmed interviews between Jacques Derrida and Bernard Stiegler.  Though both Stiegler and Derrida provide interesting insight with regard to the implications of certain technological developments, the eighth chapter of their text is probably the most relevant to a discussion of the French New Wave and Truffaut most specifically. 

 

After an extended discussion of phonographies, Bernard Stiegler raises some interesting questions concerning one of Derrida’s more infamous works, Specters of Marx.  Here, Stiegler voices interest in the theoretical foundations for Derrida’s text.  As Stiegler suggests, it is really Roland Barthes that initiates the discourse on the relationship between the specter (phantasm) and the technology of photographic stills.  As Barthes argues, it is the spectral quality of the photograph that serves to distinguish it from any of the visual and imagistic forms that one encounters previous to this technology:

 

I call the ‘photographic referent,’ not the optionally real thing to which an image or sign refers, but the necessarily real thing that was placed before the lens, without which there would be not photograph.  Painting, on the other hand, can feign reality without having seen it…Past and reality are superimposed…The photo is literally an emanation of the referent.  From a real body which was there proceed radiations that come to touch me, I who am here (113).

 

Not to be overly redundant, Barthes is referring to the imagistic still as having a spectral quality (phantasmic), because of the way that presence is tied to reality.  Derrida, for his part, argues that in the future we will all be ghosts, suggesting that the photographic still or even the moving image, which is composed of a series of photographic stills, will exist as the only form of experience.  Though there are other implications of this theory, I am more interested in enacting another reading of Jules et Jim. 

 

With reference to Jules et Jim, I am interested in the scenes where the main female character (Catherine?) is provided as a series of stills in one crucial scene.  This scene features the three main characters sitting around a table.  As Jules and Jim play dominoes, she seems to become upset with the two for ignoring her.  Interestingly, when she moves towards the table, a conversation begins about the faces that she could make.  Though I’m forgetting the specifics of this conversation, I am interested in the stills that Truffaut composes of the female character.  Here, it is almost as if she is posing for the camera.  Then, the movement stops for a few moments, creating as was suggested in previous posts, interesting conflicts between movement and non-movement. 

 

Though I think there is room to read that Truffaut is simply playing with stylistic and formal conventions, and attempting, possibly, to disrupt the audience’s viewing experience, I am also interested in a reading that fits more in line with Barthes’ theories on emanation.  Partially, I am encouraged by the plot of the film and the main characters eventual suicide.  Though I remember many of the details of this film, the stills are particularly memorable.  Perhaps one might read that Truffaut is playing with the idea of death.  Though this statement is a little obvious it is interesting to consider what the female character leaves behind (the photographic stills).  Furthermore, it is also interesting to consider how this seems to be a theme in Jules et Jim.

 

I’m thinking, in particular, of the scene where Jules, Jim and Catherine are going down to the beach.  This is the scene that Shaviro alluded to in class last week.  Along the way, the characters begin searching the sand for trash that has been left behind others.  Interestingly, though the first few shots serve to establish the setting, Truffaut constructs the rest of this sequence by providing a moving close-up of the ground and objects the three are searching.  The camera essentially moves with the three characters down the hill, spotting objects, studying these objects, and discarding them for others to find.  In a way, in this scene, one can see that Truffaut is already commenting on the objects that are discarded or left behind.  He also seems to be commenting on the act of leaving something behind. 

 

In a very simple way, I am interested in the process of reading that which has been left.  In the case of the female character it is the photographic stills that seem almost as a disjunctive filmic memorial to the character.  In the case of the trash that has been discarded, this is the only estimate we have of the people that have gone to the beach previously.  I know there is more to make of this so I will have to return to the subject a little later.   

Metaphor in Jules et Jim

Though I agree that there is room to read into Truffaut’s exclusion of a feminine perspective in Jules et Jim, I am ultimately reluctant to proceed with the atypical feminist critique.  Partially, my disaffection for this type of reading results from my understanding of where such a move or critical gesture might take us.  Specifically, I am most disconcerted with the move to read Jules et Jim through the theoretical purview of Laura Mulvey, as it seems certain students were tempted to in class.  Though Mulvey was undoubtedly important to a particular time period and a very specific historical context, I’m afraid that by going down this route we might be heading into extraordinarily reductionist territory. Though a more concise feminist framework might contribute to a rewarding reading of the film, I prefer that we look a little deeper than the interpretation (assumption) that woman is ultimately subject to the scopophilic tendencies of the male characters and male audience.  Instead, it seems more beneficial to consider something different than a model of feminine exclusion.  Here, as I suggested in class, perhaps we could read Jules et Jim in terms of a series of rather complicated metaphors.

 

Specifically, I am interested in Truffaut’s refusal to give the body any attention in this film.  Unlike other endeavors, Shoot the Piano Player most specifically, Truffaut forbids the presence of flesh in this film.  Perhaps one might argue that this fits in with the text being a period piece, though this seems a rather dissatisfactory conclusion.  Instead, I like to read this absence as being extraordinarily purposeful.  Unlike his other films, film which draw attention to the body for purposes of critique or otherwise, Jules et Jim even denies the body of the female.  Not even during romantic scenes are we given any physical demonstration.  Though the characters are intimately familiar with each other physically, as the audience we are left quite ignorant of their bodies.  In a way, I think that this ties in nicely with a reading of the bodies as both absent and metaphoric, simultaneously.  Now that I have gotten to the absence, I must turn to the metaphoric…

 

Reading the film as a series of complicated metaphors is amusing if not informative.  I think that the film necessitates this type of reading, especially through its emphasis on geography.  Here, I’d like to suggest, as I argued briefly in class, that the main characters are all indicative of places.  Jules is from Germany whereas Jim is from France.  Already, one can see that there is an interesting history of conflict (noting World War I and II), that accompanies this comparison.  Interestingly, turning to Catherine, one can see that she is representative of both places and no place in particular.  She enjoys moving from location to location, and speaks German as well as French.  That she is every place and no place seems to align with her absence physically.  Perhaps, one can read that she is representative of the European landmass at large.  She is ultimately representative of one of the most contested geographical landmasses worldwide.  That this is a viable reading is emphasized by the amount of men that ultimately attempt to garner and control her love. 

 

Partially, I am interested in this reading because it ties up with a certain awareness of space that I am particularly fond of.  Though contradictorily, this film also seems to forget space at the same time.   By this rather confusing assertion, I meant that while Truffaut delivers a story interested in a multiplicity of places (France, Germany, references to Canada), he also absences the culture and landmarks that are ultimately representative of these places.  This is to say that, in direct contradiction to many of the other films of the French New Wave, this film does not seem interested in iconography or popular images such as the Eiffel Tower or the French café.  Though places are referenced, the apartments and other settings we find ourselves in could be anywhere and everywhere all at once.  In Germany, there is no recognizable shot of Berlin.  But then, what is this indicative of?

 

I think that there is room to read this as a complicated part of the plot progression; that these representations drive the narrative.  Here, one might argue that the men are warring over the woman, and that the changes in place represent changes in the state of the sexual situation.  Though this reading seems to make sense, I think there is something more to what is going on in this film.  Ultimately, these observations seem far to accessible and convenient to not be of some related import to an understanding of this film.  Ultimately, I’m not as interested in why she kills Jim at the end or why Jules condones/allows his love affair, as I am in why the aforementioned representations arise.  Hopefully, I’ll have the chance to write a little more on this later.   

Truffaut’s Stranger

Following on my last post on appropriation and juxtaposition in Truffaut’s Shoot the Piano Player, I thought it would be interesting to continue yesterday’s discussion of “the stranger.”  Specifically, I’m referring to our discourse on the woman violinist that we first encounter in the office building.  If we are to compare this film and Godard’s Breathless, considering that this film seems to be a response to Godard’s work, one might discuss the woman as the stranger.  Of course, this characterization arises in relationship to her dead-end presence in the film.  This is to say that Truffaut devotes remarkable attention to this character, but only for a few moments of relatively unexplained time. 

 

As I argued in class, if one returns to Godard’s Breathless, one encounters the continual presence of strangers in nearly every shot.  Here, I am making explicit reference to the people that the film captures on the street, not any of the actors that are directed by script, narrative, or Godard’s production staff.  As the film progresses, there are many extended shot sequences that capture random people gawking at the camera or looking intently at the main characters of the film.  This is a characteristic of the French New Wave at large, as many films were shot at real locations, thus allowing random people to be captured by the scope of the camera.  Part of this results from the attention/response the French New Wave gives to issues of artifice more generally (i.e. the artifice of the set). 

 

In direct contrast, Shoot the Piano Player seems to be a much more constructed film than Breathless.  This is not to say that Truffaut refuses natural settings, but rather, that these settings seem at the very least to be a little more controlled.  Quite simply, it seems that Truffaut is exerting more control over the various extras that the camera captures.  This has very specific implications for the level of stranger presence that the audience perceives, dramatically reducing the main character’s encounters with the unfamiliar.

 

Thus, returning to the sequence that was initially mentioned, perhaps one might argue that the woman represents Truffaut’s inclusion of the stranger.  Perhaps, one might argue that the woman represents Truffaut’s understanding of the stranger; of a different type of stranger possibly.  Whatever the case, it seems quite apparent that Truffaut is ultimately providing some level of filmic discourse on this issue.   

 

If I was to pursue one of these readings, I would have to go with the woman as a different type of stranger.  Though her presence seems similar to the random people that one encounters in Godard’s film, a crucial difference seems to be her inattentiveness to the machinery of the camera.  Instead of looking at the camera as do the extras in Breathless, she always seems intently focused on some detail off and behind the camera.  It is the strange attentiveness that she gives to this one focal point that really cues the audience in to something dramatically different. 

Appropriation, Juxtaposition, and the Rift in Shoot the Piano Player

As I noted briefly in class today, part of my interest in Shoot the Piano Player and the French New Wave more generally, is that the style of Truffaut and other directors is somewhat reminiscent of Burrough’s cut-up texts.  Though I think the connection between the two is quite obvious, I’m also aware that many of you may not be familiar with Burrough’s or his highly influential work.  Considering that any effort to explain the former will be much lengthier than this post allows, I’ll focus on the latter instead.

 

Essentially, at some point in Burrough’s extended writing career he began constructing his works by assimilating numerous fragments from other author’s texts.  In order to avoid the obvious legal perils of copyright infringement, Burroughs only extracted sentences up to a certain length.  After “borrowing” various different sentences, Burroughs would construct his own narratives (one can be assured he wouldn’t call them that).  The most notable of these works, The Soft Machine, The Ticket that Exploded, and Nova Express, comprise a trilogy that was released in the early to mid-sixties (1962-1964).  Here, Jeff Rice, former professor at Wayne State and author of The Rhetoric of Cool: Composition Studies and New Media, describes Burroughs work the best:

 

“A more explicitly pronounced writing strategy than Baraka’s definition of cool, Burrough’s cut-ups appropriate language, text, image, and ideas in order to fashion critiques of media and ideology…Burroughs situates the cut-up as a new media method shaped by various emergent technologies: film, tape recorders, and, of course, computers” (Rice 57).

 

Before I return to Shoot the Piano Player, it is worth noting that Rice references Burroughs because he exemplifies the various methods of new media writing that Rice argues should be taught in university settings.  Rice divides his text into five sections, each section centering on a discussion of one aspect of digital writing that students need to be familiar with.  These strategies include appropriation, commutation, nonlinearity, imagery, and, most importantly, juxtaposition.  Returning to the film, the importance of at least two of these five aspects of digital writing will become more evident.

 

As was remarked upon in class today, Piano Player often incorporates a really strange format. Professor Shaviro suggested that this is because Truffaut is mixing and playing with established genres (film noir especially).  Here, returning to Rice’s text and the Burroughs comparison, one might argue that Truffaut is appropriating materials.  He is appropriating the different styles of comedy and drama that one encounters looking briefly back through film history. 

 

What this means for the viewer is exactly what Rice suggests in Rhetoric of Cool.  With the style of the cut up text and the act of appropriation more generally, interesting juxtapositions occur.  As Rice argues, by placing different styles in direct conflict with one another, such as what occurs during the sequence at the beginning of the film, significant and beneficial rifts occur.  Here, of course, Burrough’s work becomes of interest again.  As Rice argues, “there are few writers in 1963 more concerned with conflict and writing than William Burroughs” (Rice 86-87).  Though Rice is interested in 1963 for reasons relating to the so-called birth of composition studies, one can see that this date still bears significance considering the proximity of Truffaut’s work as well. 

 

But then, what exactly does this conflict do for the viewer?  What is the utility in producing juxtapositions?

 

Rice suggests that this type of conflict challenges the models of writing and composing that we assume are “authentic.”  Perhaps, following on this line, the point is to disturb notions of the authenticity of production, an issue that we have already discussed as it relates to the artifice of the set.

Truffaut seems to be emphasizing the dead end.  Instead of producing a film that neatly works through each particular narrative thread, Piano Player disturbs notions of resolution even before the end of the film.  Think about the scene with the hooker where there is the implication that “Charlie” is enamored with her.  Though she appears later in the film as she is watching his kid, Truffaut really refuses to follow the initial suggestion any further, directly contradicting the audience’s expectations.  At the beginning of the film, as I suggested in class, you have a chase scene interrupted by a brief dialogue about love, which is again interrupted by another type of chase. 

 

In addition, Truffaut seems to take pleasure in juxtaposing stylistic features as well as narrative conventions.  Here, one might reference the strange silent picture shot that interrupt the shot sequence when the gangsters are describing the transaction with Charlie’s boss.  This occurs again when one of the gangsters references his mother.  I don’t think that the appropriate move is to read ideology in this so much as the aesthetic effect of juxtaposition.  The mixing of two different styles creates sizeable rifts that disturb the viewer at the very least. 

 

Whatever Truffaut’s purpose for the rifts that he creates, one can see that this is a definitive characteristic of this film, serving to differentiate it in interesting ways from 400 Blows.     

 

 

Resnais and Proust’s Memoire Involontaire

Returning to Resnais’ work in Last Year in Marienbad, one might argue that Alessia Ricciardi’s reading of the French New Wave becomes particularly relevant.  Though Ricciardi’s text “Cinema Regained: Godard between Proust and Benjamin” is specifically concerned, as the title suggests, with a new reading of Godard’s filmic endeavors, a few sections of this response are particularly relevant to the issue of memory as it relates to Resnais’ texts.  Here, I turn to Ricciardi in the hope that his discourse on involuntary nature of filmic memory will benefit a more informed understanding of Resnais’ thematic concerns.

 

In one crucial section, Ricciardi focuses on Godard’s presentation of memory in Histoire(s) du Cinema.  For those that are unfamiliar, Histoire(s) is a dense four hour long filmic endeavor that was eventually released in conjunction with a multi-volume book attempting to reconstruct twentieth century history and significant developments in film that occurred during this period: “Playing the role of Virgil, Godard guides us on our meandering way through an inferno of images while commenting in voice-over on the past as if from beyond the grave” (Ricciardi 644).  As Ricciardi argues, a predominant thrust of these two works is an attempt to engage with the new resources of memory that film contributed to the twentieth century.

 

With regard to Godard’s interest in memory, Ricciardi makes the more specific claim that this film maker/theorist refuses the idea of film presenting what one might consider a collective memory.  Instead, as Ricciardi suggests, Godard seems to favor an understanding of filmic memory that is similar to Proust’s “Memoire involontaire.”  This is to say that memory is not recalled by the will of the audience, but rather, as “involuntary reminiscences”:    

 

If memory is the broad, manifest theme of Histoire(s), Godard in particular wants to show how cinema alters our very conception of memory, transforming it from the faculty of willed recall into a ghostly element of involuntary reminiscences.  On this score, he demonstrates to what extent the medium of film possesses a Proustian aspect: movies return to haunt us according to the logic of the involuntary. Indeed, he argues cogently that our memory of film consists of the emotional shape of certain images, not their phenomenological content (Ricciardi 645)

 

Though Histoire(s) du Cinema was released much later than Last Year in Marienbad, thus dispelling the notion that Resnais was influenced by this theory, one can read that the film enacts the type of involuntary reminiscences that Godard is interested in.  This becomes most apparent in the extended scenes where various different memories of a single event are delivered to the audience. In these scenes, an involuntary remembrance occurs.  The audience is thrust through several different versions of the historical narrative that the main character is attempting to recall, thus experiencing several different narrative incarnations of each interaction that takes place.  In fact, it is as though the main character himself effectively represents the type of audience to which Ricciardi alludes.  Throughout the film, Resnais gives the impression that the main character is charged with a series of memories that he can hardly control. 

 

What then are the implications of such a reading?

 

Perhaps, one can argue that a specific quality of the French New Wave is an attempt to eschew the pretenses of memory presentation.  This is to say that whereas most films, in some sense, disguise the involuntary nature of memory recall by offering the audience the illusion that will or volition is of some effect, films of the French New Wave are intimately preoccupied with such falsity or deception.  Returning to the issue of artificiality, it might be said that filmmakers are laying memory bare, for what it is in filmic form; a series of instances pre-prepared and drawn up on the film reel at marked meter.  This, of course, has specific ramifications for the audience’s perception of the film.

 

In the case of Resnais and Last Year in Marienbad, memory overload devastates plot, intentionally leaving any sense of traditional narrative patterning in shambles.  The greater irony is that frustrations with the film’s disassociation with reality arise in relationship to filmic actions that actually lay bear the artifice or reality of film’s effect on memory.    

Last Memory of Marienbad

Although we know that Resnais is interested in memory, we still need to discuss exactly how this plays out in Last Year at Marienbad. Personally, I delight in the utter complexity of this film; the labyrinthine nature of space as it is shaped by subjective recall.  Here, there is little pretense of the camera being a medium of reality.  To paraphrase a small portion of the main character’s extended monologue, though the building that they stay in looks linear and straightforward from the outside, the interior presents somewhat of a challenge.  Here, I might suggest that Resnais seems to be referring, in very self-referential fashion, to the way that memory complicates space, presence/non-presence, interaction, movement, etc.  Of course, these are all themes that Resnais addresses and emphasizes throughout the film.  But what of the gestures that Resnais makes?  Though I think that it would be foolish, as Shaviro suggested, to attempt to find a linear narrative/pattern, I still think that we should be invested in careful consideration of how much of the film is constructed via memory.  Here, I’m partially interested in Shaviro’s discussion of the film as memory in and of itself. 

 

First though, I turn to the construction of space and movement by means of memory.  Here, I’m interested in the rather redundant and mundane interludes that occur throughout the film; the portions of the film that deal with empty spaces and still people.  As I suggested in class, my reading of the film hinges on a conception of memory as being, in the strictest sense, related to (perhaps, inhibited by) perceptive scope.  This is to say, I’m interested in what the character fails to remember as much as what the character wishes or is capable of remembering. When objects and actions lie outside of the field of experience (i.e. one’s sight, smell, hearing, etc.), our memory of them, or rather, absence of memory, contributes to interesting constructions. These constructions, of course, are based on assumptions that we make as to what people are or aren’t doing, and what different rooms look like, or feel like.  Much of this is based on past experience.  Thus, as I suggested in class, the audience is often given privy to that which lies outside of the scope of the main character’s immediate perception.  We are given privy to repetitions and scenes that absence movement. 

 

Resnais’ seems to be gesturing towards a film that remembers space.  Last Year in Marienbad continually oscillates between the intimacy of the rooms in which the two characters meet and delimited outside space.  Here, returning to the idea of space as remembered, one can see that the camera is also oscillating between what is more intimate or familiar to the main character – what he remembers most clearly – and that which remains somewhat of a mystery.  Or perhaps, one can read this as a matter of priority.  When participating in the act of memory recall, the camera seems to emphasize that the characters that move are of more importance than the characters that remain still.  This is to say that certain parts of the memory are going to be of more importance than others; that the woman is going to be more animated than random guests that the main character encounters.  These guests only move when there is a brief moment of interaction between the main character and the other patrons. 

 

I’m also interested in a reading of this film that views the whole production as a memory construction in and of itself.  Perhaps, as I suggested in class, one can read that there are two different memory processes occurring here.  Though it is obvious that the main character is attempting to explain a past encounter, one might also read that there is yet another memory/series of memories of the event.  Perhaps, one can read these two memories as being in some degree of conflict.  Perhaps, the film in and of itself is contradicting what we perceive as the main character’s perception of the events that transpired.  Possibly, the camera is giving us information to the contrary.  Here, one can read that the camera is motivated by a certain impulse.