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

.

Introduction

to

a

veritable

history

of

cinema

the only

the true

.

.

chapter 2(b)

Fatal Beauty

.

for

Michele Firk

for

Nicole Ladmiral

.

.

.

(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