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

.

Chapter One(b)

A History Set Apart

.

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

.

.

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