baracine

Only if you admit that "the language of cinema" seriously went down the drain after the sixties and that this degradation was caused by Godard. People could spend a lifetime arguing against both points.

You've just given me a surreal image I will probably not get rid of without an emergency lobotomy. The idea of "uncultured Midwesterners" packing a theatre to see a Godard film:
(1) defies decency;
(2) goes to prove that snobism is one of the greatest motivational forces in the world;
(3) demonstrates the severe downgrading of American education, reminiscent of Peggy Hill teaching Spanish.

wendersfan

Look, you don't like Godard. We get it. We got it years ago. Stop trying to argue your personal opinion as if it were some sort of accepted dogma that all but a group of the ignorant unwashed who post here have received.

You're wasting your time.

baracine

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Allow me, in closing, to summarize what goes on in this little compilation of Godard's TV appearances 1960-2000:

1. Godard is hit with a cream pie, Cannes Film Festival, 1980s; makes grave pronouncement on the subject afterwards.
2. John Waters pulls a prank testing Godard' sense of humour. (He has none.)
3. Jean-François Stévenin (1985) tells how Godard gave him the brush-off for making a TV movie.
4. During a twenty-year-after-the-divorce reunion with his ex-wife and ex-star Anna Karina (1987), Godard publicly humiliates her by saying he pretty well used her for all she was worth, as Welles used Rita Hayworth. She leaves the set crying and makes fun of him later.
5. (That little shit) Truffaut says: "Of course, he is a great artist but such a horrible man that no one dares tell him to his face."
6. Godard makes several cryptic pronouncements while France's top public intellectuals wonder aloud what the hell he means. Godard admits he doesn't mean much.
7. Godard and the equally sybilline Marguerite Duras congratulate themselves on their success in conveying just what they wanted to say in films. The humour of this will get to you in time.
8. A few minutes of pure narcissism.
9. Godard receives a César in homage to the "New Wave" (1998) and proceeds to bore his audience to tears and embarrass himself for several minutes. I actually saw this cringe-inducing live TV moment when it happened.
10. Godard goes to any TV show that will have him to rant against TV. Could he be the new Jerry Springer?

wendersfan

George Best was a drunk and a carouser and a general waste of oxygen with the exception of 90 minutes every Saturday when he became the best footballer ever to come from the British Isles. What's your point? That Godard is not a nice man? So what? Many of the greatest creative individuals in history have been abominable human beings. Should we re-evaluate Mozart's concerti based on his personal behavior? Perhaps judge Picasso's paintings based on the way he treated women?

Get a grip.

baracine

Very bad example. George Best's accomplishments were measurable in objective terms.

Perhaps if you understood French, you would learn that Godard is a fraud and that (most of) his films are frauds. You and many others were taken in by the theatrical blandishments of his elaborate self-promoting smokescreens. The paradox of his personality - the subject of the preceding compilation - is that he has railed all his life against the medias, but that he has made a very decent living from them, especially when it comes to creating an illusion and projecting an image. His whole life is a lie. But that's supposed to be "OK", because among his myriad pronouncements about himself - his favourite and some say, his only subject - he has often said "I am a liar and a fraud".

Showing the wrong Godard film to a young, impressionable, unsuspecting and uninformed audience is to turn them off serious cinema for a lifetime.

Larry C.

Get them excited!!!!!!!!! Show Scarface, Blow and Cocaine Cowboys... Bring about an ounce of blow and let the party begin!!!!

BambooLounge

I always wondered about this too. I got "into" film fairly late in the game after taking a classics film elective my last semester of high school and being introduced to Marlon Brando (On the Waterfront, then A Streetcar Named Desire...I was sold on cinema). Then I went to college and took an Intro to Film Course senior year and had basically seen 98% of the syllabus already (while majoring in accounting officially, I would watch DVDs and read about film more than study to give myself an unofficial film history major as well). The specialized classes such as Italian Cinema really opened my eyes, but the generic Film 101 type class did not introduce anything new and was filled with people who just wanted to "watch movies."

I'm sure things are different for those in a dedicated film school, but I've found that I can easily hold my own in conversations with those who went to film school. I think it is pretty simple, those who care about film and film history, student or not, do the same things, they watch and read about film. Only one pays money to sit in a specific location to watch specific films while the other people spend that money on DVDs.

As for the director comment, I'm not sure, but can say with certainty that one would not be able to "talk down to" Martin Scorsese.

NoirFan

No Intro to Film class would be complete without at least one short film from Evgeni Bauer - his films were miles ahead of almost anything else being created at the time.

wilky61

Anyway, I'll toss out films that I'd probably use in an Intro Class.
Like I said, I'd want to cater to the audience a bit and offer them some accessible films (e.g., Band of Outsiders for Godard, Mulholland Dr. for Lynch, etc.) And I wouldn't try to overload them with foreign film, just introduce them... 3-4 out of 12 would be enough.


Citizen Kane (cliche for a reason)
Double Indemnity (or Sunset Blvd, with references to other noir)
Bicycle Thieves (with references to other Italian neo-realism)
Rashomon (narrative brilliance)
High Noon (with references to other westerns)
Vertigo (with references to other Hitchcock)
Band of Outsiders (with references to Breathless)
The Graduate (with references to Bonnie and Clyde and/or Rushmore)
Annie Hall (with references to Ferris Bueller)
Blade Runner (with references to 2001 and neo-noir)
Mulholland Dr. (with references to Memento)
Punch-Drunk Love (with references to Godard... probably Pierrot Le Fou)

It appears I don't have any films from the 1990s. If I had to pick the most important film of the decade, I'd probably go with Pulp Fiction. But they've probably all seen that anyway.

Ronnie Dobbs

I took a film Intro Class it was basically divided into script, directing, costume, visual, acting, then documentary, comedy, animation, drama, period, etc.

We usually had about five choices in each of the sections and had to watch one and comment on it. However we could kill two birds with one stone for example by watching Shakespeare In Love which is not only a comedy but a period and costume.

I ended up with Some Like It Hot, Moulin Rouge, Edward Scissorhands, Citizen Kane, American Beauty, Do The Right Thing, I forget what else it was a few years ago.

I did my final on Jaws I believe. But we basically had to turn in four to five page paper every week with two skips. It was more writing than I expected.

wilky61

My personal intro-to-film teacher showed clips and references from at least 100 movies, many of the ones that have been mentioned, but the ones we actually watched were:

Rear Window
Chinatown (fantastic movie, odd choice for noir)
Who Framed Roger Rabbit (great choice, noir connection, more depth than you realize)
The Graduate (cinematography/editing)
The Hudsucker Proxy (great choice, framing/mis-en-scene, a good companion to The Graduate)
Annie Hall (breaking 4th wall)
Minority Report (sci-fi)
Three Colors: Blue (use of light/color for meaning)
Run Lola Run
Heaven (2002)
Swimming Pool (2003)
Koyaanaqatsi (sp?)

I wrote my term paper on the use of filmic techniques that contributed to the satire on contemporary corporate and masculine America presented in Fight Cub.

NoirFan

Most film classes are a waste of time anyways - I took a dozen of 'em, and the only one that taught me anything was on silent film. All you need for a proper film education is a Netflix account, a library card, a region-free dvd player, and a bookmark of this website.