Jean-Luc Godard Histoire(s) du Cinema 3 (a) Monnaie L'absolu

So here is chapter 3(a) of Jean-Luc Godard's Histoire(s) du Cinema --- La monnaie de l'absolu as translated by me.
One note: The last few pages, a paean to the Italian language is written in the Italian language. I have set that portion in italics (thank you, Aldo Manutio and Francesco Griffo).

This is continued from Chapter 2(b):

http://jdcopp.blogspot.com/2006/11/godard-jlg-histoire-du-cinema-vesalius.html

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Chapter 3 (a)

The Currency of the Uncompromising

for

Gianni

Amico

for

James

Agee

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it begins to be necessary

to draw

the attention of the governments of Europe

to a fact so small

that it seems those governments

have not yet glimpsed it

what fact

right here

a people is being murdered

where

in Europe

this fact, does it have any witnesses

one witness

the whole world

the governments, do they see it

no

nations have above them

something

which is below them

governments

at certain moments

this aberration breaks down

civilization

is in the people

barbarism

is in the governments

this barbarism, is it wanted

no

it is simply professional

what the human species knows

governments are not aware of

this pertains

to what governments

never see

except throught their myopia

the reasons of states

the human species look at

with a different eye

conscience

we are going to asonish

the governments of Europe

by teaching one thing to them

it is that crimes are crimes

it is that ir is no more allowed

for a government

than an individual

to be a murderer

it is that Europe is undivided

it is that all that is done

in Europe

is done by Europe

it is that

if a government of wild beasts exist

it has to be treated as a wild beast

it is that the hour that it is

quite near to us

here, under our eyes

they massacre

they incinerate

they plunder

they exterminate

they slit the throats of mothers and fathers

they sell young girls

and young boys

it is that

the children too small to be sold

they cleave with a saber stroke

it is that they burn families in their houses

it is that some city

Balak for example

is reduced in a few hours

from 9000 inhabitants to 1300

it is that

the cemeteries are strewn

with more cadavers

than can be buried

so that

to the living who hurled them carnage

the dead hurl the plague

which serves them right

we will teach

the European governments

this

it is that pregnant woman are being opened up

to kill the children

in their entrails

it is that there are

in public squares

heaps of female skeletons

bearing evidence of disembowelment

it is that

dogs in the street gnaw on

the skulls of raped young girls

it is that

all of this is revolting

it is that a gesture of the

European govenments would be enough

to prevent it

and that the savages

who commit these outrages

are terrifying

and that the civilized ones

who let them trespass

are appalling

the governments stammer

a response

they have already tried out this stuttering

they say

you are exaggerating

yes, you exaggerating

it wasn't in a few hours

that the city of Balak was exterminated

it was in a few days

they said two hundred villages were burned

there were only ninety-nine

what you called plague

that was only typhus

all of the women had not been raped

all of the girls had not been sold

some few escaped

they castrated the prisonners

but they also cut off their heads

which mitigated the deed

the child that was said to have been thrown

from pike to pike

had been, in truth,

only run through with a bayonet

et cetera, et cetera

but then, why had this people revolted

why a do not herd of men

let themself be possessed

like a herd of cattle

why

et cetera, et cetera, et cetera

this way to talk

adds to the horror

caviling public indignation

nothing more miserable

the mitagation exacerbates

it is subtleness pleading for barbarism

let's call things

by their name

to kill a man in a tract of woodlands

that is called the forest of Bondy

or the black forest

is a crime

to kill a people

in this other woodlands

which is called diplomacy

is also a crime

greater

that is all there is to it

where will it cease

when will this calvary of this

heroic little nation be ended

then they tell us

you forget that there are questions

to kill a man is a crime

to kill a people is a question

every government has its question

we respond

humanity also has its question

and here is that question

it is greater

than India

England and Russia

it is the little child

in its mother's belly

the bible tells us

that before leaving on their journey

Lot's daughters

wanted to look back

one last time

and that they were turned into pillars of stone

now, you film only the past

I mean

that what happens

and there are silver salts

which fix light

no stories

when I invented stories

when I invent nothing

what these stories are about then

that of the battle of Borodino

and the end of the French domination

as told by Tolstoy

that of the battle of Bagdad

as told by CNN

the triumph of American TV

and its groupies

a German Erich Pommer

founder of Universal

today Matsushita Electronics

exclaimed

I will make the whole world cry

in their seats

can it be said that he succeeded

on one hand

it is the truth

that newspapers and TV networks

around the world

show us only death

and tears

but on the other hand

it is just as true

that those left watching television

have no more tears to cry

they have clean forgotten how to see

yes

which story do we want

to suppose we are worthy

of the Charterhouse

and crimes and punishments

this is what David O Selznick

demanded

I want Del Rio and Tyrone Power

in a love story

set against the background of the south seas

the story is of little importance

as long as its titled

bird of paradise

and for Del Rio for a finish to jump

into a volcano

I was alone

lost, as they say

in my thoughts

I had a book in my hand

Manet, by Georges Bataille

all Manet's women

seem to be saying

I know what you are thinking

no doubt because

until this painter

- and I know this from Malraux -

interior reality

remained subtler

than the cosmos

the celebrated and colorless smiles

of da Vinci and of Vermeer

say first off me

me

and then the world

and even the woman

in the pink scarf

of Corot

does not think

what Olympia

does think

what Berthe Morisot does think

what the bar-maid at the folies-bergere

does think

because the world in brief

the interior world

connects with the cosmos

and with Edouard Manet

modern painting begins

that means

cinematography

that means

forms which progress

toward words

most exactly

a form which thinks

that cinema was first made

for thinking

one will soon forget

but that's another story

the flame will be put out

permanently

at Auschwitz

and this thinking is well worth

a hill of beans

yes, I was alone

lost, as is said

in my thoughts

Emile Zola comes along

with his eternal camera

he concluded Nana with these words

to Berlin, to Berlin

then Catherine Hessling comes along

and forty years

and two wars after Zola

as if by chance

she took the train for Berlin

it was the co-production

with UFA

the last will be Quai des Brumes

but Goebbels will screw it all up

in his eyes

Michele Morgan does not have beautiful eyes

yes, alas

I was alone

thinking that there were still several

on this train

of 1942

one year before

the liberation of Paris

Viviane

Albert, Danielle, Suzy

Junie

while the maquis

of Glieres was going to fall

despite the support

that the youngest of

the dames

of the bois de Boulogne

bore it

with a murmur

there were still several

and probably

I am still alone

imagining that one of the visitors

of these sad nights

of '42

that Gilles

no, not Drieu's

visited Dominique

mistake Anne

and asked

then, do we take it or not

this train of '42

and that their heart beat

beat, beat

yes, I was alone that night

with my dreams

still fifty years later

and they celebrate the liberation of Paris

which means that television

since all government has become spectacle

organizes a grand spectacle

but they don't even decorate

Guy Debord

and since French cinema

has not freed itself from the Germans

or the Americans

there will be no one to film

the doughty and gentle Claude Roy

whose seized the CNC

this citaldel erected by Vichy

and the waves regrouped

by Japanese cameras

will once again

will forget

to bury the dead

as the poet had done

that poetry

should first be resistance

Ossip Mandelstam

evidently

knew

but, it is customary

to ignore the russians

today

all that to say

why

from '40

'44

was there no cinema of resistance

not that there were no films of resistance

on the left, on the right

here, there

but the only film

in the sense of cinema

which resisted the occupation of cinema

by America

in a kind of uniform manner

to make cinema

this was Italian film

this was not by chance

Italy had been the country

which had fought the least

which suffered a lot

but which had betrayed both

and had thus suffered

in no longer having any identity

and if it regained it

with Rome Open City

it was that this film was made

by people not in uniform

this was the lone time

the Russains made

films of martyrdom

the Americans made

films of advertising

the English did what they had always done

in cinema

nothing

Germany had no cinema

no longer any cinema

and the French made

Sylvie and the ghost

the Polish made

two films of expiation

Passenger and The Last Stop

and a memory film

Kanal

and then in the end

they welcomed Spielberg

then, never again

became

this always was

while with Rome Open City

Italy had simply

regained the right

for a nation

to look itself in the face

and along came

the stunning harvest of the grand Italian cinema

but the was one odd thing nevertheless

how had Italian cinema

been able to become so great

since all of them

from Rossellini to Visconti

from Antonioni to Fellini

did not record the sound

with the images

one answer only

the language of Ovid and Virgil

of Dante and of Leopardi

came through

in the images

language of the antique marble of a cathedral

language of the sword and the suffering of sorrow

language that calls from a tower at the sea

language of the sea which brings new faces

language of mountains exposed to all the winds

which speaks of white snow in orange groves

language serene sweet hospitable

language of labor and language for burden

in the market for cloth, jewelry and gold

language of barques and sea-side serenading

language of stars and smiles from afar

language ordered by a man from Florence

who spoke of the heavens to the architect

language new divine universal

our Italian language

language which speaks

of palaces and fountains

language of the inn with wine and prostitutes

language of charm in the courts and in love

language of love which is beatiful in feeling

language which sings along the Arno to the sea

ending at the sands of the American continent

language ideal, generous and sensual

our Italian language

and in an airplane

which flies over the tranquil Atlantic

over the polar course or that in the Antilles

a pink rose colored with blood

spin of the rose

pricks you and you are its lover

and a slender

who defeats in fashion

leads in a red auto

prestigious on the road

so mixed with light and like a headlamp

projected to the moon

the great Italian cinema

the great Italian cinema

language of opera

language of bel canto

which sings with violins

plays with its accent

language of space

and ended in English

of division is cold

and formulaic in French

language of peace

language of culture

of the international

avant-garde

language of mine, of yours

our Italian language

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chaoter 3 (b)continued at:
http://jdcopp.blogspot.com/2006/12/jean-luc-godard-new-wave-nouvelle-vague.html


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Histoire(s) du Cinema Chapter 2(b) Jean-Luc Godard

continued from:
http://jdcopp.blogspot.com/2006/11/godard-histoires-daney-tv.html

Here is the translation for Chapter 2(b) of Jean-Luc Godard's Histoire(s) du Cinema

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Introduction

to

a

veritable

history

of

cinema

the only

the true

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chapter 2(b)

Fatal Beauty

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for

Michele Firk

for

Nicole Ladmiral

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(in Spanish)

You will feel cornered

you will feel lost or alone

will wish you had not been born

had not been born

but you will still agree

with what I wrote one day

think of it, think of it

as now I am thinking

life is beautiful I already see

as to weigh its sorrows

you have friends, you have love

you have friends

a man alone, a wife

turning each to the other

sound like dust, no sound

no sound

(in French)

you then

always remember

of what one day

myself

I wrote

thinking of you

there was a short film

the commentary was spoken

by Jean Cocteau

it told

how a film was made

the voice said

the make-up is applied

I have entered covertly

all the stories

which now are mine

how do I tell them

show them perhaps

but when I was born

did I also

enter covertly

in the blood

of my mother

I wanted to be an engineer

I don't even know

if I succeeded in being ingenious

the invention

of the scenario

it is

a lowly book-keeper

for the mafia

it was necessary to put order

into the disorder

of Mack Sennett's

inspirations

and Frederich Murnau's

and Karl Freund's

they had invented

the lighting of Nuremburg

when Hitler didn't yet have dough

to pay for a beer

in the Munich beer-cellars

les mains sales

to have or have not

and the American shot

framed at the waist

that was for the revolver

thus the genitals

but that was for the male

since the females

were always framed

at bust level

and deep in every

love story

bides

always

a tale of wet-nursing

and it was a filmmaker

not a historian

Marcel Pagnol

who discovered the secret

of the iron mask

and at the same time

the origin

of the close-up

the face of the king

on the coin

and the camera-stylo

that was Sartre

who urged the idea

onto the young

Alexander Astruc

so that the camera

fell under the guillotine

of meaning

and it has not recovered

yes

the night has come

another world arises

as if had been abolished

perspective

the vanishing point

and the strangest thing

was that the living

dead of this world

are built

on the world of before

their observations, their sensations

are from before

and the thing exists

only through the name I give to it

poor thing

and that I am

Albertine gone

for long time

I use to go to bed early

I say that

and suddenly

it is Albertine who is gone

and it is time which is regained

and that is because

it is novelist who is speaking

but were it

a man of cinema

if it was needed to tell without telling anything

for example

I woke up from misfortune

cinema is nncessary

for the words which remain

in the throat

and to disinter the truth

Be sure you have exhausted

all which is communicated

by stillness

and silence

oh my homeland

is it thus true

that is the way I imagined you

for so long a time

the end is the screen

which is only a surface

happy country, magical

dazzling

oh beloved land

where thus you are

if an image

looked at apart

expresses something clearly

and it implies

an interpretation

it will not be modified

through contact with other images

the other images will have

no power over it

and it will have no power

over the other images

no action

no reaction

it is definitive and unusable

in the system

of cinematography

films

are merchandise

and films must be burned

I said this to Langlois

but pay attention

with the fire inside

matter and memory

art is like a fire

it is born

of what it burns

can we recall the time

the time in itself

as such

and in itself

no, in truth

that would be an mad undertaking

a tale where it will be said

times passes

it was running out

time followed its own course

history of cinema

never would a man healthy in mind

obtain this for a narrative

history of cinema

when

oh when

when did creation exist

freed of form

when oh, when thus

without destiny

where it was

and it is without dreams

it was not awake, not asleep

was only a moment

a song

a unique voice

not recallable

a smiling appeal

once, there was the child

one day, there was the creation

one day, it will be

a miracle freed from luck

a magic evocation

of a far-away and receding

world

beauty

such as beauty is

and that is why

it is also a relapse

into pre-divinity

and that is why

it is for man

a reminiscence

of something

oh, return to the native country

return of the one who no longer needs

to be invited

impossible

to restore the smile

where we were in another time

snuggling quietly

impossible

to restore the smiling embrace

the fullness of existence

of the awakening

or just before the awakening

impossible to restore the softness

where we buried our face

in order that our vision

would not be transformed

by a simple accident

where all was ours

when we were not jaded by it all

oh, return to the native land

oh, universal time

where nothing was mute

to the mute eyes of the child

and where all had been

new creation

oh, music

of the interior and exterior world

beauty, game in itself

a game that man plays

with his own symbol

since it is the only chance

to escape at least symbolically

the anguish of solitude

repeating still

anew

the very beautiful self-suggestion

the flight into beauty

the game of flight

the despair of art

and its desperate attempt

to create the imperishable

out of things

perishable

out of words

sounds

stones, colors

in order that space be put in hard form

for the ages

and though the powerful of the world

built halls for feasting

and yet other halls

filling them with torchlight

and music

surrounding themselves with bodies

and more bodies

and with faces

and more faces

that also was

only a form of sleep

I say not an art, not a technique

a mystery

and, for its resolution

a simple magic potion

to light our

magic lantern

it also, isn't it?

but

the history of cinema

is also tied to that

of medicine

the tortured bodies of Eisenstein

beyond Caravaggio

and El Greco

correspond with

to the first dissections by Vesalius

and Joan Fontaine's

celebrated look

at the glass of milk

does not mirror

a Delacroix heroine

but Pasteur's dog

for all of Kodak's fortune

was made

with x-ray plates

not with Snow White

for yet

since it had wanted

to imitate life's movement

it was normal

it was logical

the the film industry

first sell itself

to the death industry

oh, how many scenarios

about a new-born

about a growing flower

but how many

about machine-gun bursts

because this is what happened

photography

should have been invented in color

it existed

but there you go

at the dawn of the 20th century

the tecnicians decided to reproduce life

so they invented the photograph

but as morality

was still strong

and as on was made

to take away from life

all up to its identity

you wore mourning for this putting to death

and it was in the colors of mourning

black and white

the photo

began to exist

not because of engraving

Nadar's first flower bouquet

did not copy

a Doré lithography

it denied it

and very quickly

to gloss the mourning

the first technicolor took on

the same dominant colors

as funeral wreaths

and Scarlett O'Hara

will tell herself a seond time

that she will think about it tomorrow

of what

of happiness

because it is necessary to wear mourning

but by forgetting it

is it not so

but Madame de Stael

told us how

she wrote Napoleon

glory, sir

is mourning bursting with happiness

glory

sunlight

oscars

festivals

but for 50 Cecil B. DeMilles

how many Dreyers

but I can tell you nothing

which could not be said

of variétés

myself who is only an artist

of variétés
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contimued with Chapter 3 (a)
http://jdcopp.blogspot.com/2006/11/jean-luc-godard-histoires-monnaie.html

Histoire(s) du Cinema -- Chapter 2(a)

This is a translation of the narrative of Jean-Luc Godard's Histoire(s) du Cinema Chapter 2(a) as published by Gallimard. It continues from my post

http://jdcopp.blogspot.com/2006/11/histoires-du-cinema-chapter-oneb-jean.html

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Chapter 2(a)

Only Cinema

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for

Armand J Caulliez

for

Santiago Alvarez

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When you want

history(s) of cinema

and of television

that can come

only from someone

of the New Wave

the New Wave

maybe the only generation

to find itself

in the middle at once of the century

and maybe of cinema

Cinema

is the agenda of the 20th century

it is the agenda

of the 19th century

but which is resolved

in the 20th century

the luck that you had

was to come

early enough

to inherit a history

which was already rich

and complex

and tumultuous

to have taken enough time

to see enough films

to have formed a personal opinion

of what was important

or less important

in that history

to have developed that thread

You knew however that Griffith

he came before Rossellini

Renoir before Visconti

and the exact moment

of your appearance

in a history

already apt for retelling

yet to be apt retelling

which has been told

we can say

but never retold

but there was yet

enough know-how

and enough passion

to be able to say,

to know that one came

before something

and after something

the fact of being midpoint in the century

like that

constituted its own story

to know what

was to come after you

the only chance to make

history

not because there were too many films

there were very few of them

and less and less

there were very few of them

and less and less

the historian of letters would say

there was Homer Cervantes Joyce

once you said those three

they would include Faulkner of Flaubert

they are very few

I would say ten films

One has ten fingers

there are ten films

Cinema

my idea

that I can express

now

is the only manner

of making

of retelling

of realizing

myself

I have a story

as much as I am myself

that there was

cinema

I would not know that I have

a story

it was the only manner

myself, I owe it that

that side always guilty

or cursed

as Marguerite said

she said

that I was cursed

the only manner

if one can

ever retell

a story

or make a story

and this never happens

they has been no history

history of art

quite a little less

by the French

not by the others

Diderot Baudelaire

Malraux

I put immediately afterwards

Truffaut

Baudelaire speaking of Edgar Poe

is similar to Malraux

speaking of Faulkner

is similar to Truffaut

speaking of Edgar Ulmer

or of Hawks

Only the French

have made

history

they doubted

that they were part of a history

they wanted to know

what history it was

theirs in the grandness

the grandness in theirs

an example

for me

the grand story

is the history of cinema

it is greater

than the others

because it is projected

because it is projected

In a Moscow prison

Jean-Victor Poncelet

officer of engineers

in Napoleon's army

reconstructs

without the help of any notes

the geometric lessons

that he had been taught in

Monge's courses

and Carnot's courses

Treatise

of the Projective Properties

of Figures

published in 1822

establishes a general method

on the principle of projection

used by Desargues

to extend the properties of the circle

to cones

and applied by Pascal

in his demonstration

of the mystic hexagram

so it took

a French prisoner

who was going around in circles

in front of a Russian wall

for the mechanical

application

of the idea

and of the want

to project figures

on a screen

virtually took flight

with the invention

of film

projection

For the child

who loves maps

and stamps

the universe

is the equal

of his wide-ranging passions

oh, how the world

is big

in the clarity of bulbs

in the eyes of remembrance

how the world is small

one morning, we go off

our minds

all aflame

our hearts heavy with rancor

and bitter desires

and we go

following the rhythm of the wave

lulling our endlessness

on the finiteness of the seas

some

joyous to flee

a disreputable homeland

for others

the horror

of their cradle

and some of them, astrologers

drowned in the eyes of a woman

the tyrannical Circe

of the treacherous perfumes

to not be turned into beasts

they find space and light

and white-hot skies intoxicating

the ice which bites at them

the suns which bronze them

slowly rubs away

the impress of the kisses

uncommon luck

where the goal keeps moving

and, being nowhere

maybe anywhere

where man

whose expectations never flag

to find rest

runs always like a madman

we want to travel

without steam and without sail

being done

to enliven the tedium our captivity

passing over our spirits

taut as a canvas

your remembrance

framed in the horizon

speak, what have you seen

we have seen stars and floods

we have seen sands also

and, in spite of a great many shocks

and disasters not foreseen

we have been bored often

as here

the glory of the sun on the violet sea

the glory of cities

in the setting sun

ignited in our hearts

an unquiet fervor

to plunge into the sky

of enticing reflection

the richest cities

the widest landscapes

never hold

the mysterious attraction

which chance

makes with clouds

and always

desire

gives us worry

we have saluted

false idols

thrones

bejeweled

with radiant gems

elaborate palaces

whose fairy-tale pomp

will be for your bankers

a ruinous dream

garments which are for the eyes

an intoxication

Women

whose teeth

and nails are painted

clever jugglers

whom the snake caresses

and then, and then again

there is the projection

so I say

that it is the great story

because it can be projected

the other stories can onlt be reduced

this short poem by Brecht

I carefully examine

my shot

it is not filmable

because TV reduces

or it projects you, you

but one loses awareness

because it projects

the spectator

while

the spectator of film was attracted

the spectator of television is repelled

but we can have

a memory

of that story

but it is the great story

in order not to forget

the cardinal point

we have seen everywhere

without having looked

from the highest to the lowest

on the fateful scale

the boring spectacle

of immortal sin

bitter knowledge

which we draw from the voyage

the world

monotonous and small

today, yesterday, tomorrow

always

makes us our image seen

an oasis of horror

in a desert of boredom

is it necessary to leave, to stay

if you can stay, stay

leave, if you must

oh death

old captain

it is time

let's weigh anchor

this country bores us

oh death

let's cast off

if the sky and the sea

are as black as ink

our hearts

as you know

are filled

with full of the rays of the sun

Continued :
http://jdcopp.blogspot.com/2006/11/godard-jlg-histoire-du-cinema-vesalius.html

Alain Resnais-10 best films-Cahiers du Cinema-1955 to 1962

The following are a collection of ten best films of the year cited by Alain Resnais in Cahiers du Cinema from the mid 50s to the early 60s.I have color-coded some of the information which I have commented on at the end of the lists.

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1954
1…….I Vitelloni (Federico Fellini)
2...….The Wild One (Laszlo Benedek)
3…….Monsieur Ripois (René Clément)
4…….Okaasan (Mikio Naruse)
5…….The Overcoat (Alberto Lattuada)
6…….Beat the Devil (John Huston)
7…….The Band Wagon (Vincente Minnelli)
8…….It Should Happen to You (George Cukor)
9…….Touchez Pas Ma Grisbi (Jacques Becker)
10……El Torero (René Wheeler)

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1955
(no order)
The White Sheik (Federico Fellini)
Johnny Guitar (Nicholas Ray)
Rear Window (Alfred Hitchcock)
Prehistoric Women(Gregg Tallas)
The Barefoot Contessa (Joseph L Mankewiecz)
Gold of Naples (Vittorio De Sica)
La Strada (Federico Fellini)
Les Mauvaises Rencontres (Alexander Astruc)
East of Eden (Elia Kazan)
The Salt of the Earth (Herbert Biberman)

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1956
(no order)
Senso ( Luchino Visconti)
Il Bidone (Federico Fellini)
Rebel without a Cause (Nicholas Ray)
Night of the Hunter (Charles Laughton)
This Island Earth (Joseph Newman)
La Mort en ce Jardin (Luis Bunuel)
Attack (Robert Aldrich)
A Man Escaped (Robert Bresson)
Der Untertan (Wolfgang Staudte)
It‘s Always Fair Weather (Stanley Donen/Gene Kelly)

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1957
1......Le Amiche (Michelangelo Antonioni)
2......The Wrong Man (Alfred Hitchcock)
3......La Casa del Angel (Leopoldo Torre Nillson)
4.... .A Face in the Crowd (Elia Kazan)
5......The Forty-first (Grigori Chukhrai)
6......Nights of Cabiria (Federico Fellini)
7......The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz (Luis Bunuel)
8......Funny Face (Stanley Donen)
9......Sait-on Jamais (Roger Vadim)
10.....Love in the City (7 sketches- 7 Italian directors)
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1958
Les Amants (Louis Malle)
Il Grido (Michelangelo Antonioni)
Kanal (Andrej Wajda)
Lettre de Sibérie (Chris Marker)
White Nights (Luchino Visconti)
The Pajama Game (George Abbott)
Dreams (Ingmar Bergman)
Touch of Evil (Orson Welles)
South Pacific(Joshua Logan)
Une Vie (Alexander Astruc)
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1959
Tales of Ugetsu (Kenji Mizoguchi)
Wild Strawberries (Ingmar Bergman)
Moi, un Noir (Jean Rouch)
Pickpocket (Robert Bresson)
The 400 Blows (Francois Truffaut)
Rio Bravo (Howard Hawks)
The Tiger of Eschnapur (Fritz Lang)
Head against the Wall (Georges Franju)
Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock)
The Fabulous World of Jules Verne (Karel Zeman)
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1960 --- no list
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1961
Description d'un Combat (Chris Marker)
L’Enclos (Armand Gatti)
Lola (Jacques Demy)
La Morte Saison des Amours (Pierre Kast)
La Notte (Michelangelo Antonioni)
Paris Belongs to Us (Jacques Rivette)
La Proie pour l'Ombre (Alexander Astruc)
Shadows (John Cassavetes)
Une Aussi Longue Absence (Henri Colpi)
A Woman is a Woman (Jean-Luc Godard)
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1962
Cleo from 5 to 7 (Agnes Varda)
Ride the High Country (Sam Peckinah)
La Denunciation (Jacques Doniol-Valcroze)
L’Eclisse (Michelangelo Antonioni)
Les Honneurs de la Guerre (Jean Dewever)
Jules And Jim (Francois Truffaut)
The Trial (Orson Welles)
A Very Private Affair (Louis Malle)
Vivre sa Vie (Jean-Luc Godard)
The Children’s Hour (William Wyler)
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Rene Wheeler was for anyone who saw Bertrand Tavernier’s Laissez-Passer the character selling shoelaces who about an hour into film Jean Aurenche meets on a Paris sidewalk whom Aurenche brings to Continental studios to co-write the Fernandel film he has been assigned. El Torero is one of only three films that directed. An earlier film of his Premières armes was credited according to the one user comment on the IMDb by François Truffaut with influencing him. Wheeler also collaborated on the screenplay for Rififi chez les Hommes which was highly regarded by the staff at Cahiers du Cinema. Wheeler also worked on some films that were disliked by those critics such as Les Salauds vont en enfer and Méfiez-vous fillettes. Wheeler would once more in the mid-60s figure in some yearly Cahiers ten best lists. He co-scripted Le Journal d'une femme en blanc with Jean Aurenche for director Claude Autant-Lara. Jean-Luc Godard rated that film third for the year 1965 and Jacques Rivette also listed the film.
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Resnais seems to have had a taste for science-fiction programmers. The July 1956 issue of Cahiers du Cinema contains this notice beneath its Conseil des Dix: “If too few of our “counselors” have listed Forbidden Planet’(Fred Wilcox) for us to have it appear in our table, Jean Ferry, Alain Resnais, and France Roche recommend the voyage to you."
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I am assuming that Resnais meant this film even though it is not listed as being released in France until March of 1957, three months after the issue of Cahiers that this list appears in and not the short film La Sel de la Terre directed by Georges Rouquier that had been made in 1950. At his time, the magazine did not list the director of the film when they published the yearly ten best lists.
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The selection of these musicals would seem to foreshadow the later turn in his career.
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Histoire(s) du Cinema -- Chapter 1(b) Jean Luc Godard

This is translation of Chapter 1(b) of Jean-Luc Godard's "Histoire(s) du Cinema". It continues from

http://jdcopp.blogspot.com/2006/11/histoires-du-cinema-chapter-one.html

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Chapter One(b)

A History Set Apart

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for

John Cassavetes

for

Glauber Rocha

.

.

"Be sure that you have exhausted

all which is communicated

by the stillness

and the silence"

Robert Bresson

Notes on Cinema

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.

What has passed through cinema

and left its mark

can no longer enter elsewhere

but for me, first, mine

my story

and what I have to do

with all this

all this clarity

all this obscurity

sometimes at night

someone whispers in my chambers

I turn the television off

but the whispering continues

is it the wind

or my ancestors

history of solitude

solitude of history

the film was projected

and men

saw

that the world

was there

a world

almost yet

without history

but a world

which recounts

but so that

in the venue of uncertainty

it establishes idea and sensation

the two great stories have been

sex and death

stories of beauty in sum

beauty, make-up

in the end

cinema is not part of

the communications

industry

nor of show business

but of the cosmetic industry

of the industry of masks

which itself is

only a subordinate branch

of the delusion industry

history(s) of cinema

which through this returns to show business

it can not otherwise be explained

except that cinema

in its inheritance from photography

has always wanted

to be truer than life

I was saying

not an art, not a technique

a mystery

history of solitude

solitude of history

Assassins and Voleurs

the last film of Sacha Guitry

soon, each morning

he will no longer need

to go to the market

where delusion is sold

soon, he will no longer align himself

so joyously

alongside the sellers

I recorded this dictum of Brecht's

and I asked Fritz Lang

to speak it to Brigitte Bardot

and I called the film

Contempt

At the very start

the story of two brothers

they could have been named lampshade

but they were named Lumiere

and they had just about the same reel

since that time

there are still two reels

to make films

one which fills

and one which empties

as if by chance

in video

they called the reel on the left

the slave

and that on the right

the master

it is because one last time

night gathers its strength

to vanquish the light

but it is from the back

that the light

will strike the night

first

most gently

as if it did not want to frighten him

that whispering

that man had already witnessed

a long time ago

oh so long ago

well before man existed

the whispering begins anew

a film projector

is bound

to remember the camera

and that cinema is an industry

of escapism

only because it is first

the only place

where memory is slave

heir of photography

yes

but by inheriting

this history

film did not inherit only

its rights

to reproduce a part of the real

but above all its obligations

and if it inherited from Zola, for example

it was not l'assommoir

nor la bête humaine

but primarily from a family album

in other words from

Proust and Manet

And to go from the beginning to the end

of the immense book

of how man has violated

nature beyond hope

to sow there

the power of their fiction

to go from Giotto to Matisse

and from Madame de la Fayette

to Faulkner

less than one-fifth the time

would be needed than

to go from the first locomotive

to the one that became

the TGV

Cinema

like Christianity

is not founded

on historic truth

it gives us a recital

a story

and tells us

now: believe

not, grant this recital

this story the faith which suits history

but believe

whatever happens

and this can only be the result

of the whole of a life

you have there a recital

don't become involved with it

as towards

other historical recitals

wie zu einer anderen

historischen Nachricht

give it a place

as no other

in your life

laß sie eine ganze andere Stelle
in deinem Leben einnehmen

that is to say

that cinema

that to say

that cinema has never been

an art

and even less a technique

from the arrival of the train at the station

or feeding baby

right up to rio Bravo

the camera never changed

fundamentally

and the Panavision Platinum

is less advanced than

the Debrie 7

with which Andre Gide's nephew

left on a trip

to the Congo

white shadows

technicians

will tell you

this is not true

but it should be remembered

that the nineteenth century

which invented all techniques

also invented

inanity

and that Madame Bovary

before being made as a porn cassette

had grown up with the telegraph

so not a technique

nor even an art

an art with no future

the two brothers

had straight off gently alerted

first, not even one hundred years later

we see that they were right

and it television has realized

Leon Gaumont's dream

to bring the spectacles of the entire world

into the shabbiest

of sleeping chambers

it is by reducing

the giant sky of herdsmen

to the height

of Tom Thumb

meanwhile

the Saints-Simoniens

he was named what, the founder

infantile

the Baron Enfantin

and if they dreamed of the Orient

they did not call it this

the silk road

nor the route du rhum

they will call it the railroad

because, along the way

the dream became hard and mechanized

and afterwards

we have badly misunderstand them

they said no future

that means

an art at present

an art which gives

and which receives before giving

let us say

the infancy of art

and this is the twilight of the 19th century

this is the beginning of transportation

in common

and it is the dawn of the 20th

this is the beginning of the treatment

of hysteria

it is old Doctor Charcot

who opens for the young Freud

the doorway to the dream world

and it was his to find the key to fantasy

but what is the difference

between Lilian Gish

on the ice floe in the storm

and Augustine at the Saltpetriere

but even worse was trumpeted

in the absence of God

not only had the gods

and God

defected

but the splendor of the divinity

has been dimmed

in the history of the world

the time of the night of the world

is a time of distress

since it becomes narrower and narrower

it even becomes so narrow

that is not even any longer able

to accept

the default of God

as an a default

one or two world wars

will then serve

to corrupt

this state of infancy

and then for television

to become

this imbecile and sad

adult

which refuses to see

the hole where it was born

and so restricts itself

to childishness

because this is what happened

at the dawn of the twentieth century

the technicians decided

to reproduce life

so they invented the photograph

and the cinema

but as morality

was still strong

and as they prepared

to remove from life

everything even its identity

they wore mourning

for this execution

and it was in the colors of mourning

in black

and in white

that cinema came into existence

Poets

are those mortals who

chanting solemnly

are intuit the traces of the fled gods

and stay on these traces

so tracing for mortals

their brothers

the way of return

but who

from these mortals

can uncover

these traces

they belong to the traces

of being often imperceptible

and they are always

the legacy of a summons

scarcely anticipated

to be poet

in a time of distress

is then

singing

attentively

on the trace

of the fled gods

here is the reason

that in the night of the world

the poet speaks the sacred

Followed by Chapter 2(a):

http://jdcopp.blogspot.com/2006/11/godard-histoires-daney-tv.html