ansar-m6
Prologue:
From 1967 and 1979 Godard abandon his new wave roots, and committed himself to producing political films. Of which made certain foreign critics distance themselves from Godard, leaving him rarely discussed and ignored for a decade. This seems to make his post new wave work not canon, Pierrot Le Fou was apparently his last film. But the 80s saw a return to Godard's new wave esque subject matter, rewarding his frequent viewers with intertextuality, and taking over the narrative surrounding his legacy up to that point.In an 1980 interview, televised on the American television talk show: the Dick Cavett show; Godard promotes the first of his post-new wave films "Slow Motion". Cavett begins by asking honestly and softly, "The word comeback has been used to describe this film (Slow Motion), does that word "comeback" offend you in anyway?". Godard tenderly responds with, "In a sense because.. i never went away. Maybe I was pushed away, and to me, i'd rather say that this the reverse of "comeback", a.. what would you say, a come-fourth or go-forth..", with Cavett reiterating, "a continuation". Which is an interesting contextually when viewing First Name: Carmen. Actually to view any of Godard's films requires some understanding of context, as Godard is actually neither mysterious nor cryptic. In Breathless, the use of jump cuts, the characters as reference to Hollywood Noir films: the story, the sound, the edit, the camera, the actors; Godard makes every aspect of his film a character, to highlight and analyze and subvert. In Godard's early work, he sought to subvert every conception of what film grammar was. Context was his gun, the film reel the revolver, the image the bullet. The result is a sort of reflexive idiosyncratic lucidity. Yes I made that phrase up, yes it's super pretentious, but look up each word and combine it, and you'll just get what I mean. Godard makes his films with the atmosphere of the movie theatre in mind, he knows it is his canvas, so the way he expresses himself on this form is almost painterly or symphonic, he projects a thematic cinematic quality, a "Je e sais quoi" that all great filmmakers have. That's an update on Godard up to this point. I'll now break down First Name: Carmen.
Review:
Godard's "Prename: Carmen", with Maruschka Detmers as the titled character: follows a young woman who asks her Uncle, a faux-senile ex-filmmaker played by Godard himself, to help herself and her associates produce a documentary. In the meantime, Carmen and her posse rob banks and plan kidnappings as a means for... crowd funding. On a very casual heist, a handsome security guard attempts to fight off the robbers, but ends up falling in love and running away with Carmen instead. Godard explores love, lust, society, and his reputation all within the intertextual package of Raoul Coutard's (15th and final collaboration w/ Godard) subtle and dreamy cinematography. Godard plays with the idea of his reputation, he plays an old filmmaker outed from the industry. While his niece wants to help him make a comeback, the film that she suggest they make.. seems to play out within this very film, they are in the film talking about the film itself. The documentary she wants to make is the fiction of which is this film, of which Godard directs within outside the film. Is the story of a film another character, one who you can't even gossip about since he's in the room? This is post-modernism btw. Uncle Jean even wonders to one of Carmen's filmmaker friends, over cigarettes and coffee: "You're not making a real documentary, are you?", "I hope that documentary is fiction.". That scene within itself allows Godard to contemplate his own film while he is simultaneously immerse in its frame. I think you get it.He even features randomly cuts to group of orchestral musicians playing the score of the film that was just overlapping the story. They give each other notes, they are in front of an being the frame of the image. Godard shows the character behind the character of his film.Carmen, with the handsome security guard played by Joseph Bonnaffé, folic around in Uncle Jean's condo after the heist, the location she got the green light to shoot the documentary. Again, Godard references himself, a long scene with a couple going back and forth about their ambitions. As Breathless was of foreplay, and Le Mepris of dissolution, Godard comments on the nature of the male and female relationship in general. The elusive femme fatale, the aggressive male courter. Enchantment and disenchantment. Lustful aggression, every push is a kiss. He rips open her shirt, he gets on his knees and lays his head on her tender bare chest, "Why do women exist". She calls him Jo instead of Pierrot, he corrects her, it's Joseph. "If I love you, that's the end of you". Adjacent to jarring cuts to crashing waves on the shore, always moving, glowing, tranquil, full of beauty and terror, like rushes of blood, like sex and heaven.The documentary is now to be shot in a Paris hotel, a nicer one than Patricia's. The relationship dissolves there, Joseph can now only touch the empty static of the television, nothing and no one to turn to. She's disgusted by him, his love was the end of him. Uncle Jean agreed to shoot a casino film when he talked over coffee and cigs with one of Carmen's friends. The posse plans to kidnap a rich father and daughter their. Joseph wants to get in on the plan, but he's excluded, he won't give up on Carmen. The kidnapping fails, Joseph shoots Carmen, lovers are cowards. They are "innocent and guilty", even when all is lost, we will still wake up the next day. New again. Closing:
Two mysteries left with this film. There is this documentary on you tube called "Jean-Luc Godard / Anna Karina" which details their relationship. But also reveals that each of his films from Vivre Sa Vie to Pierrot Le Fou, are subtly and not subtly layered and even revolve around how he fell in not out of love with Karina. Which leaves me to question what the relationship in this film is a reference too.That's as much as I could articulate in words what Godard was conveying in this film at the moment, i've only seen it once. It is one of his most dense and articulate pieces, an incredibly over looked gem. I suggest becoming familiar with Godard's other works and the context behinds those films as well, as this film rewards you with subtle homage, layered with new context. I hate this phrase, Godard's Prenom: Carmen is a tour de force. Be warned, only watch this after your 6th or 7th Godard film, and maybe a documentary, and interview.
charlybrown
I just watched again Prenom Carmen after many years, and now as the first time I watched it 30 years ago, I don't know what I have watched. The director knew he was considered a great of its kind, and may be he wanted to cross over in the excess to provoke the audience. With this film, Godard seems, for some reason angry with self-righteous and critical of his work, he wanted to make fun of everybody deliberately turning an incoherent and ugly film. There seems to be successful, in fact he has divided the audience among those who, regardless, have a positive opinion on this film still calling him a genius, and others who consider a waste of time to have watched this movie. Or, we are simply light years away from understanding Godard. (sorry for my English).
aimless-46
Cutting to the chase I can't imagine many viewers actually enjoying "First Name: Carmen". It is an ugly film with uninteresting sets, muddy documentary-style color, and silly to boring acting. Maruschka Detmers is on screen most of the time, often involved in the most non-erotic erotic scenes this side of "Bloody Mama"- shave those eyebrows baby!I kept feeling that I had seen this film somewhere before and finally I realized that I had it confused with another film. But this confusion illustrated how the extremes of the "film style continuum" actually meet and form a circle. And to my surprise Godard's new-wave creation closes this circle by linking up with the movie I kept being reminded of: Hillary Duff's "A Cinderella Story"; although they come at their more moronic qualities from opposite directions. Godard manages to purge Bizet's "Carmen" of all its beauty, energy, and suspense. Duff's adaptation of "Cinderella" succeeds in purging all the beauty, charm, and suspense from the classic "Cinderella". Both films star equally tired and vaguely repellent actresses, the slug-like Duff and the "I have hair in more places than Josh Harnett" Maruschka Detmers.They have virtually identical plots: Carmen wants to make a film-Sam (Duff) wants to attend Princeton, but neither has the money. Carmen attempts a bank robbery but is foiled by a guard-Sam applies for a Princeton scholarship but is foiled by her wicked stepmother (played by Stiffler's mom). Carmen meets Joseph during the robbery and they flee to her uncle's apartment barely avoiding capture-Sam connects with her anonymous cyber soul mate at the Halloween dance and flees to her fry-cook job just in time to avoid being caught. Carmen goes to a luxury hotel where they stage a film as a pretext for kidnapping a guest-Sam goes to a pep rally where the cheerleaders stage a play as a pretext for disclosing her identity and breaking up her budding romance. Carmen's kidnapping caper is foiled by the police-Sam's evil stepmother's inheritance scheme is foiled by the discovery of a secret will. Carmen goes out mumbling some expressionistic stuff to the bellboy-Sam's new boyfriend chooses Princeton over USC.Godard became famous by ignoring the established conventions of narrative, communicating visually in an ugly documentary style, and spending very little money during the production phase of his projects. The problem with his approach is that very few real and potential viewers can even hope to connect enough for these personal political essays to communicate anything. Duff's film's are too shallow to communicate anything substantial but they do connect to their audience of pre-teen viewers. As for "Carmen", run out and find me a pre-teen to explain the film to me, I can't make head or tail out of it.
