HisStory of Cinema: The Post-1968 Films of Jean-Luc Godard
 Jean-Luc Godard is arguably one of the most innovative and influential filmmakers in the history of cinema. In a career that spans nearly 50 years, the iconoclastic director's elevation from New Wave enfant terrible to poet laureate and philosopher king of the cinema has delivered an astonishing and astonishingly diverse body of work. This fall, we are excited to continue Wisconsin's first major Godard retrospective with a focus on Godard's triumphant return to 35mm filmmaking after nearly a decade experimenting with didactic video art. With film prints culled from archives on both sides of the Atlantic, our series spans a period over three decades long, beginning with the seminal year 1968 and ending in 2004.
All films in French with English subtitles.
Co-sponsored by the Center for European Studies and the Center for Interdisciplinary French Studies, and supported by the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Saturday, September 15, 7:30 p.m.
One Plus One (Sympathy for the Devil)
France, 1968, 35mm, color, 100 min.
In French with English subtitles
Directed by Jean-Luc Godard
With the Rolling Stones, Anne Wiazemsky, Clifton Jones
At the band's request, Godard agreed to film the Rolling Stones. Footage of the Stones rehearsing "Sympathy for the Devil" is intercut with staged scenes featuring a Black Power group and "Eve Democracy" (Wiazemsky) in Godard's attempt to demonstrate that even members of rock'n'roll bands are laborers in a Marxist struggle.
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Saturday, September 15, 9:20 p.m.
Sauve qui peut (la vie)
France, 1980, 35mm, color, 87 min.
In French with English subtitles
Directed by Jean-Luc Godard
With Isabelle Huppert, Jacques Dutronc, Nathalie Baye
The relationship between money and sex is investigated through the entwined stories of a prostitute and a couple in the midst of a break-up. Godard's first theatrical release since 1971's Tout va bien, Sauve qui peut (la vie) remains a very experimental work, and demonstrates his mastery of film sound.
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Saturday, September 29, 7:30 p.m.
Passion
France, 1982, 35mm, color, 88 min.
In French with English subtitles
Directed by Jean-Luc Godard
With Isabelle Huppert, Hanna Schygulla, Jerzy Radziwilowicz
Flanked by an array of international art cinema heavies, Radziwilowicz plays a film director desperately trying to finish his film, each shot of which is a reproduction of a painting masterwork. Raoul Coutard won the 1982 Technical Grand Prize at Cannes for his cinematography.
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Saturday, September 29, 9:10 p.m.
Prénom: Carmen
France, 1983, 35mm, color, 85 min.
In French with English subtitles
Directed by Jean-Luc Godard
With Maruschka Detmers, Jacques Bonnaffé, Myriem Roussel
Footage of the Quatuor Prat ensemble rehearsing Beethoven (not Bizet) is inserted into this cops-and-robbers story of the relationship between a policeman, Joseph, and his prey, Carmen, who pulls a bank heist with a group of terrorists. Dubbed a "Western" by Godard, Prénom: Carmen won the Golden Lion for Best Film at 1983's Venice Film Festival.
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Saturday, October 20, 7:30 p.m.
Je vous salue, Marie (Hail Mary)
France, 1985, 35mm, color, 107 min.
In French with English subtitles
Directed by Jean-Luc Godard
With Myriem Roussel, Thierry Rode, Philippe Lacoste
Condemned by the Catholic Church as sacrilegious, Je vous salue, Marie situates the Immaculate Conception in modern-day Switzerland. The angel Gabriel arrives by jet to alert Marie, a teenager committed to abstinence, and her boyfriend Joseph, a cab driver, of the coming miracle. Accompanied by Anne Miéville's short, Le Livre de Marie.
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Saturday, October 27, 7:30 p.m.
Nouvelle vague
France, 1990, 35mm, color, 90 min.
In French with English subtitles
Directed by Jean-Luc Godard
With Alain Delon, Domiziana Giordano, Jacques Dacqmine
France's treasure, Delon, stars as a drifter picked up by a fabulously wealthy woman (Giordano). Godard returns to the tracking shot as a stylistic structure for the philosophical conflict that develops between the wandering man and the aristocratic woman within the rigid class structure of her estate.
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Saturday, October 27, 9:10 p.m.
Détective
France, 1985, 35mm, color, 95 min.
In French with English subtitles
Directed by Jean-Luc Godard
With Johnny Hallyday, Alain Cuny, Jean-Pierre Léaud
French pop superstar Hallyday plays opposite Fellini favorite Cuny and Godard veterans Brasseur and Léaud. The interests of four "families" (the Chenals, the Mafia, a pair of hotel detectives obsessed with a two-year-old murder, and a boxing promoter and his associates) collide in this film that Variety compared to Grand Hotel.
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Saturday, November 10, 7:30 p.m.
JLG/JLG - auto-portrait de décembre
France, 1995, 35mm, color, 62 min.
In French with English subtitles
Directed by Jean-Luc Godard
With Jean-Luc Godard, Geneviève Pasquier, Denis Jadót
Shot on 35mm for television, JLG/JLG eschews the tropes of autobiography but remains a deeply personal work. Slowly, from a voice on the soundtrack and then a shadowy, distant figure, Godard eases himself into view in this self-portrait that Steven Holden called "a humorous and melancholy reflection on the state of cinema and the world."
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Saturday, November 17, 7:30 p.m.
Eloge de l'amour (In Praise of Love)
France/Switzerland, 2001, 35mm, color, 97 min.
In French with English subtitles
Directed by Jean-Luc Godard
With Bruno Putzulu, Cecile Camp, Jean Davy
A director decides a woman he once knew is perfect for his film, only to learn of her death. In a flashback, he recalls their initial encounter at the home of two Holocaust-survivors selling their story to Hollywood. Godard creates a striking contrast between the two periods, switching from black-and-white 35mm to color DV.
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Saturday, December 1, 7:30 p.m.
Notre musique
France/Switzerland, 2004, 35mm, color, 80 min.
In French with English subtitles
Directed by Jean-Luc Godard
With Sarah Adler, Nade Dieu, Rony Kramer
Godard returns to the Balkans with this film modeled on Dante's three kingdoms. Two ten-minute segments (the dissonant found-footage assemblage "Hell" and the lyrical "Heaven") bound the hour-long "Purgatory," a writer's conference featuring JLG himself. J. Hoberman called Notre musique "the most lucid and affecting of the master's recent films."
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Saturday, December 15, 7:30 p.m.
Histoire(s) du cinéma (Parts 1A, 1B, 2A, 2B)
France, 1988-1998, Beta, color, 148 min.
In French with English subtitles
Directed by Jean-Luc Godard
Godard launched his epic video project for French television in the late 1980s and continued it over a decade. A history, many histories, a story, many stories - Histoire(s) du cinéma is neither entirely a historical nor personal account of cinema, though it is both those things. To call it a video "collage" would be an exercise in understatement: Godard densely packs layers of sound and image into each shot for a stunning visual and aural experience.
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Sunday, December 16, 4:00 p.m.
Histoire(s) du cinéma (Parts 3A, 3B, 4A, 4B)
France, 1988-1998, Beta, color, 114 min.
In French with English subtitles
Directed by Jean-Luc Godard
Our two-evening presentation of Histoire(s) du cinéma continues with the last four "tomes" of Godard's video history, perhaps his greatest creative contribution of the 1990s.
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