Luttes en Italie [1969)

Wherever you are. In the living moment. Entombed by lonely commerce.

If for you it read Lotte in Italia. You understand that Lotte is not a person. Comme Lotte Lenya.

But we have our subject. Cristiana Tullio-Altan says Italian Wikipedia.

What a beauty!

In communism you are not allowed to say, “What a beauty!”

In capitalism you must pay to say, “What a beauty!” Unless it is a lie, in which case it is free. Gratis. Grazie.

Prego…

From the start we have a “choose your own adventure” situation. Francese or Italiano?

We start with French but realize that we will get Italian anyway. This isn’t a Cinecittà production.

We switch to Italian. We were already 3/4 there. Now we merely lack the French interpolations…interruptions.

If you auto-translate the Wikipedia page Lotte in Italia (there is no English equivalent), you will get some bizarre gender dissonances.

Paola is a he?

No, Paola is most certainly a she.

We are too old to write dissertations on the “fertile” ground of transsexual discourse.

It is mostly a trap.

Boring.

As for entertainment, that Wiki translation…”Translate this page” clicked from Google results. A garbled mess.

Althusser.

Leave it to Godard to make revolution sexy. Again.

But this was really a shunning of the movie star world.

Yet, for us, living in absolute despair, it is a moment of hope.

It reminds us how thoughts have shaped history.

And Paola is most attractive in her green military surplus jacket and red wool scarf.

And her white T-shirt. Plain. Ready for work.

The productive force of intellect.

It is time we told you that there will be no wind from the east. No Vladimir. No Rosa.

There is no getting anywhere.

Two separate sentiments.

Somewhere we took a wrong turn.

And many beautiful people took a right turn. It seems.

There is no talking about something so hidden.

So I again reaffirm the gruff beauty of Paola.

We wretched of the earth. Vietnam.

Che Guevara’s Rolex. Right.

We are not meant to know.

Why Das Kapital is not on the endcap at Wal-Mart.

Or Barnes & Noble.

Or anywhere.

An amazing film makes itself with a simple phrase…a combination of terms…through Google’s master search algorithm.

It will change. Depends.

Someday…we fill in the blanks.

The purpose is not to explain, but to get you thinking.

Once you think, there is no stopping that.

And so take stock of the present situation.

How are you treated? Objectification is universal. At least galactic. Reification.

Don’t thing-i-fy me.

And who is the worst culprit?

Oh, to be in a French-speaking country…where one might perchance stumble across Cahiers du Cinéma.

Even if the publication has seen better days, one can go back in time to an era unlived and trace memories unmade.

It is not this cruel world where we are useless.

We learned another way which doesn’t exist. Like the big stage at MGM for la nouvelle vague.

Just a moment to delineate a pain so perfect as to chop our knees off.

We doubt any place for this skill set.

Put “unskilled worker”…

-PD

6 Comments

Pravda [1969)

There are few things more difficult. More difficult. Than divining the truth as it is happening.

Happening? The truth happens. Or is.

We don’t know. Prague Spring. PRAHA.

Did you know that Ceaușescu condemned the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia? Really.

Fascinating. We hear that name and we think bad guy. Maybe. We do.

Youthful errors. I can only affirm the brilliance of this film in absence of French comprehension.

In absence of Italian comprehension.

In absence of Czech comprehension.

In absence of Marxist comprehension.

You will notice the monolithic structures as a Western capitalist on the outside looking in.

On the inside perhaps some saw provisions for all.

Heat in winter. Food on the table. Poverty squelched or shared.

Socialism.

It explains why this film is barely in print. You must remember how radical the Dziga-Vertov Group was.

You either find it brave or you find it disgusting…like the Aden Arabie cell from La Chinoise. Juliet Berto chanting

Revisionist!

…as if brainwashed.

Skoda. Now owned by Volkswagen. How ironic?

Skoda. Founded by two Vaclavs.

There is a 20-year gap in Skoda’s history on Wikipedia. Škoda Auto. My guess is we can thank Volkswagen for “cleaning up” the history a bit. They cleaned a little too well. Now there’s a hole. And it’s noticeable.

Two shirtless fat men. Two Vaclavs? I have no idea. But these gents make it all worthwhile…shoveling dirt in front of a post office. One of the two so impressively hirsute (back and front) as to have a pseudo-shirt.

Socialism was a belief in something. The U.S. lost the Vietnam war. Little debating that. And now Vietnam is socialist (at least in name). Did the globe stop spinning? Of course not.

These are not brave details. I have been much more bold before.

Yet reason.

She was so beautiful as to make us cry.

We stood no chance.

She never smiled.

Not like the first one..

To understand Marx. To understand European socialism. To understand Russia riddle enigma matryoshka. Through the lens of Dostoyevsky. Karamazov. Religion. Culture. Vast expanses of land…

I may be at the end of the world. It may be necessary for me to take a step back.

Mmmm…to be intoxicated by something so bizarre, so rare, so taboo, and so unknowable…for now.

It is why Alex Jones’ films fail. They are artless. Had he channeled Godard there would have been no stopping his cinema.

But the spectacle is where James Clapper, much to his own chagrin, realizes that “deceit deceives itself” (to quote Debord).

TPTB have never grasped the coded messages in Shostakovich. Stylometry can only undermine a Snowden email. If that.

Like Dylan I have no big answers.

You will be punished for thinking. That.

Thought crime.

Guillotine.

Guileless in Seattle.

We are getting closer to the truth. Dangerously close.

You will know knowledge hack. Coined term. Here. Like 4’33” Cage.

Life hack. Kryptos.

Somebody forgot to take their medicine.

We can joke.

Did Ezra Pound’s punishment befit his crime? His crime? [DHS] [[VHS]]

Kino Pravda.

Should keep several good intelligence analysts busy for a week.

Several petaflops of drivel occupied.

To not be fucked with.

Moloch in Bohemia.

Practically free.

Just keep the angles which predate Orson Welles. Dziga. Vertov.

The Académie française will never accept. Their loss.

Propaganda will always show blood dripping from fangs…even if blood is dripping from fangs.

We could make a deal. He says.

Petaflops.

Liquidated.

Rights reserved, wrongs reversed.

Elision says stylometry.

Experimental literature.

This is not a film review.

Think on your sins.

Gets to feeling like a powerful shit. Ripe for manipulation.

A lot of things can happen to dog shit.

Flash tits change world.

Sure, you know what’s going on…but you don’t REALLY know.

Two-way mirror of social media. Instant fame.

We’ve been trained to utter scumbag.

” ”

Twice. de Chirico.

Yep. Someone else has caught the scent. Freud cerebral. Marx visceral.

The angles converge. Méliès. Rampling, Charlotte. Trampoline.

I need a love to keep me happy. Keith Richards said that.

It is the most fertile field of Godard study.

This key-logging software is really slowing me down.

Doesn’t matter. We take the stairs.

AIPAC, Carole King, Black Maria?!?

Now you know the key. Of a different sort.

-PD

6 Comments

Le Gai savoir [1969)

Words: 0

Publish. 1:09 AM. Enter your categories below. Bellow. Saul. HTML. HoT MeaL.

Words: 12

The Grand Budapest Hote…

I cannot express this pictogram. CATEGORIES. We must categorize.

Juliet Berto. I’m just warming up. Preview.

Words: 33

1:12 AM. FEATURED IMAGE. Visual. Yes, a film by Jean-Luc Godard.

This DVD could feed a village for a week.

No food on the table. No table.

The plot is one-sentence long (!) on Wikipedia. The Joy of learning.

71 :Words

Trash. Keep on goin’!

Au lecteur:

Current Staus: Saved Draft. Le Gai savoir [1969).

1:15 AM.

How long is a second? Krypton? Cesium?

paulydeathwish

Moi.

Preview Post. Not coming to a theater near you (and certainly not near me).

4/16/2015

My Site. W.

LBJ. Vietnam. Dropping white phosphorus bombs on the silk factories of Hanoi.

Enter your tags below.

Toe.

This film has been a favorite of mine since I first saw it. Like a Bible in the dark. Smirking at how clever.

152 :sdroW

Publish Immediately.

CHANGE STATUS. It’s complicated. In that it’s not complicated. Painfully single.

File Edit View Favorites Tools Help

Windows on the World. Risk Waters.

You ask who died. And who didn’t. Warren Buffett. Charity golf and tennis tournament. Offutt AFB. Morning of 9/11. Nerve center of American nuclear deterrent. We know one WTC CEO who didn’t die because she was invited. Who else was on that list???

I hear the whispers of a young, balding man. Torn in half by war. Risking it all. To edit a film about the Palestinians. And the film lab is bombed. A scare tactic. How dare you support those Muselmanns? Muselmensch.

Disproportionate riposte. Flip script. ~~ABC~~

sWords: 265

1:27 AM

Louis Le Prince – Wikipedi…

Add Media.

Two sentences. I overlooked a period.

Lumumba and Rousseau.

Freud is the head and Marx is the sex. Theory and practice.

Give him enough rope. …

Derrida sideways.

It is the brilliance of the little boy–the touching presence of the crusty old beggar.

In school we learned about Nietzsche, but no one ever told me about Jack Nitzsche.

iPhone. Pronounced “ee-fone” in French. ePhone.

This iswas unknown territory. 1969. 1:36 AM. You’re late. You’re really not taking this very seriously.

Bob Dylan. Jean-Pierre Léaud.

My love is smiling by the sea. She has gone away. Cruel.

She stares at me from a different time.

He is an old man now. Wild Strawberries.

Shall we try again?? D’accord…

Batman. The Incredible Hulk. Spiderman.

She keeps dozing off. Tap tap. Perks up. Dozes. Again prodded. But when she slumps left (her left)…a caress. It works the same. She opens her eyes. More painful-eyes studying. Some sleep with one eye open. I read until only one eye cooperates. And then no eyes. Off to processing sleep.

Mao was still prominent. But this is where the great art of montage was first born…continued and epitomized in Histoire(s) du cinema. 3.8/5. My ass. Rotten tomatoes…Léolo.

Ou Ou Ou

So what you’re saying is that this review is a failure.

Three moles on left side of face.

No one in their right mind is asking.

Mon martyre. Montmartre.

Jean of Ork. nanu nanu

Tannu Tuva.

What ever happened to Richard Feynman?

Don’t call me Shirley. Andrew Card.

To enjoy a cigar by the water.

Une poignée de gens

Words: 538.

Attack on language. Send reinforcements.

2:05 AM

ending transmission

-PD

9 Comments

2 ou 3 choses que je sais d’elle [1967)

I am at a loss for words. But through your peripheral vision you can tell that I didn’t stop writing after that statement. No, in fact…you can tell that I conversely became quite verbose. So therefore the figure of speech was misleading. Perhaps that is why Godard came to distrust language. Who is Jean-Luc Godard?

And what does it matter? This rhetorical device propels my analysis, yet the reader is more or less free to comment at the end of the article. More or less. Derrida. Deconstruct at the weakest link in the logical chain. Find where the text contradicts itself. It is like a pivot chord in a musical modulation. Napoleon would charge with all of his forces. More or less.

The reason I express myself in this way is because, for me, film criticism is akin to ekphrasis. Therefore, poetry. As much as we want to be historians or scholars or social scientists, we must accept that we are really just poets. Just.

Finally a title which meshes with my theme. It’s not my theme, yet I have chosen it. Vertigo. It rejects diacritical marks…just as Shirley cards rejected the negro. Godard realized this in Africa. Filming. The film had been optimized for white actors.

With all of these tangents it is a wonder that anyone makes it to the end of these ekphrastic rants. Rambling rants. Off-topic. Hot topic. Napalm. Curtis LeMay. Stone Age.

It occurs to me that I could very well play the reactionary, yet conscience intercedes. Pax Americana. No. I cannot justify it. I will leave it to the Navy…”a global force for good.”

It was wise that they finally discarded such a ridiculous motto. Perhaps no one was buying it. Sell war. Buy war.

It is easy to get caught up in all of the James Bond gadgetry and thereby forget Vietnam.. Forget Iraq. Forget Afghanistan. Libya. Syria.

For me there is no difference between the Brookings Institution and the American Enterprise Institute. Pepsi and Coke. Perhaps one is a little worse than the other. They fundamentally define one another. A dialectic. Hegel. Kant. Fichte.

If I know one thing, it’s…a thesis. If you knew better, you’d…antithesis. Bon. C’est tout. …ou 3: synthesis.

Jean-Luc Godard dropped out of the University of Paris. It is credited as his alma mater on Wikipedia. The Sorbonne.

This was before Hanne Karin Bayer became Anna Karina: Godard’s first wife and leading lady. But now we have Marina Vlady. Made in Russia.

I get a text. Putin missing. I had seen. DEBKAfile. Approximately one million spots lower than my website on Alexa.

No, they will never give up on trying to impose order on the chaos of Finnegans Wake. It is sheer egotism. And I am the antithesis: no plot, no characters.

And what of the synthesis? Yes, you must reread and rewatch to uncover the nuances. Godard’s oeuvre is one long statement. Miss a film and you’ve missed a chapter of his life–a phrase in his grand statement. Certainly. Certainly. Maybe.

“The comic book and me, just us, we caught the bus.” From the basement Bob Dylan nailed it: modern life as comic book. Obverse and reverse. Godard and Dylan.

All I have is cat food. You have seven minutes left. Three left.

Anny Duperey looks perfect…perfectly empty…staring off into space…smoking the ubiquitous cigarette. The Shirley card loves her. She shines. She is radiance. Might she be the next! big! thing?

It is with a heavy heart…that I relate that no, indeed, rather, Juliet Berto…for some time.

And thus our grand unstated theme: cancer. Like the hideous sound of jungle helicopters–desert jets. Division. Long division.

Juliet Berto won’t be reading this in any traditional manner. She passed away in 1990 at the age of 42.

In 2 ou 3 choses que je sais d’elle, she made her screen debut.

Tristesse. Sadness. Yes, Godard was right. It is undeniable. Things have not gone well for capitalism. He says neo-capitalism, but I say neoconservatism. It is not quite antithesis. It is already synthesis. Beginning, middle, end. [Not necessarily in that order…]

-PD

2 Comments

Masculin feminin: 15 faits precis [1966)

I don’t write about the film, I write about me. I don’t write about the film, I write about the world. No. I write about the film the best I can. I am on a mission to start every sentence with I…from now to the end of eternity. Not quite.

I don’t know what pops up in your reader. You know about the reader? Tell me about the reader, Charles… Yes? And??? Right. The reader writes. Correct!

We are some macro-blogging mofos. Four times I wrote it and four times it autocorrected to micro. And so the stupid hyphen. Just like the titles. Diacritical marks are the first to go in totalitarian societies. Then the dollar words. Soon, all words which might express inefficient, ineffective concepts such as tenderness.

Now we are rolling. Give the anarchist a cigarette!

D’accord…

Allors…

Jean-Pierre Léaud was the Jason Schwartzman of the 60s…or vice versa. And while we might think primarily of Truffaut, here we see Léaud in a truly penetrating role.

Chantal Goya. She plays the ice-cold bitch pretty well…completely meretricious, vacuous, etc.

And then we run into red hypertext “links” for Catherine-Isabelle Duport and Michel Debord.

Yeah, we all know: the children of Marx and Coca-Cola. Could have been. Tarzan vs. IBM. Could have been. The ape and the onion. Mercury Rev.

Well, yes: it could have been. Today. Particularly dreary. All week. Usually I embrace it. Pretend like I’m Liam Gallagher in Manchester. But not today. Not this week. Only shadows in the night gets it right.

It’s a bummer. I’m too old to be young. Too perverted to be romantic. Too romantic to live. Etc. Etc. Etc.

And yes: I catch the aspect ratio. I yell Trotskyite. Not really, but parallel. I detest the cowardice…when I myself am a basket-case. It’s ok. We are human.

We remember Marx and Coca-Cola, but we forget James Bond and Vietnam. We forget the military-industrial complex.

Let me tell you how it happened. I lay down as always with my sea-foam-green (eau-de-nil) headphones ready to continue my reflection on the great oeuvre. And my computer doesn’t cooperate. It’s as if I have conjured the spirit of JLG. The sound outraces the picture. Chaplin-fast to Notre Musique-slow. The waves come crashing in. Ingmar is hijacked and ridiculized.

Translation: my computer won’t play the disc. After 15 minutes of relatively good play, it jerks and stops and pauses and reloads in an endless loop. It’s like as a kid with that De La Soul CD…I’d physically pick up the player an inch and let it drop down. Somehow it would catch. It was just that disc. No, not this time.

I have cared for this film like a child. It is one of many baby Jesuses in my Jodorowsky stable. Manger.

And so I traveled far to rewatch this. Fifteen paces maybe. 15. So what?

Et allors?

Pauvre Wikipedia. Lion-wannabe. Quick! Call Tim Rice and Elton John. Pathetic.

Yes, she keeps abreast of the pop charts. Cashbox. And he likes her type of breasts. Why not say it?

And isn’t there anything else you like about me? Well, Miss 19, there’s not much more to like. A Big Mac and a pair of Nikes and you’re happy.

Yes, Seymour Glass. I’m sure he just backed up too far on the balcony…trying to get all two of them in the picture…in Florida…like Richard Manuel.

Duport eats a bananafish. Marquis de Sade. Such a perfect day. Cassis and mineral water. And Orangina for Marlène Jobert. Perhaps. Who cares.

You can tell a redhead even in black and white. She should have been more famous. Eva Green’s mom.

yé-yé all day long

Mozart

the orchestra is fantastic

clarinet concerto

middle movement

Paul. Again with the Paul. It started tentatively in Vivre sa vie. And then Paul Javal. Contempt. In the name of the father. And now again without Christian name like Le Chiffre. James Bond and Vietnam. Same complex. Inferiority. Military-industrial.

With that I am at 666 words. Ed Sanders decides to consult Harry Smith on how to levitate the Pentagon. Exercise the demons. Nothing like a demon with love handles. Give ’em a good workout.

B-A-C-H. Psychotic fugue on the Mashed Potato. Dee Dee Sharp.

What other kind of fugue is there?!? Jonny Greenwood would surely tell you it’s reversible. Amnesiac.

ménage à quatre

bullshit

intellectual parlor games

Wikipedia

I know. I know. Hawaiian. Quick! Vite!

caméra-couteau

probing, probing

like Tony Parker

pass the goddamn ball

I’m not sure you want to know. I am a lip-reader. Baudelaire. Au lecteur. Samuel Fuller. Les Fleurs du mal. No one under 18 admitted. Strictly no admittance. 778 words and I haven’t gotten to the film.

-PD

11 Comments