Oh My Godard, What a Deal

In these recessionary times, we're all looking for good deals. And while I often snicker when I hear the cultural backwater that is San Francisco referred to as the "Paris of the Pacific", I was pretty pleased that last week when our humble Castro Theatre hosted the first screening in the U.S.A of Jean-Luc Godard's (ironically) Made in the U.S.A. Sadly, travel prevented me from catching the screening, but I suspect a Criterion DVD is just around the corner.

And, speaking of Godard, our local rag The Believer magazine has just released their 2009 film issue. This magazine is really hit or miss, but this issue is worth its $10 cover price for the magazine alone, but inside is an amazing little jewel of a DVD dedicated to Godard in the U.S.A. There are two Dick Cavett interviews, an interview of him on the beach in a bikini in Del Mar with Alice Waters, and several other extras.

I got my copy at the 826 Valencia store for $8.26 (go figure) including tax.

And while I was out on Valencia, I was thrilled to see that Dog Eared Books had several copies of the dear old Horizon magazine, a periodical published from the 1950s to the mid-1970s. This arts quarterly -- like American Heritage magazine -- arrived boxed and in a hard cover. I almost teared up as I thumbed through the familiar pages of this magazine that was on coffee tables of several of my relatives as a child and formed many of my early impressions about art, taste and aesthetics. How fitting that two issues featured favorite artists of Catalonia -- Gaudi and Miro.

We can't put a price on things that bring us happiness, but having Horizon and Godard on a Saturday afternoon is pretty close to bliss.

Know Your Necessities

"Take care of the luxuries, and the necessities will take care of themselves," a certain, fey friend told me once. She also spoke of the "conspiracy of the weak over the strong." I'll lead it to you to ferret out her alleged source of those quotes and determine if you agree.

All I can say as that one of the obvious, positive balancing acts that comes with the passage of a certain number of years is the reversal of defined and attainable and valued necessities. Booze, boys, fast cars and other fleeting pleasures seem to be replaced by increasingly extravagances that were once defined as bland and assumed presences that now have greater nuance and price tags -- shelter, clothing, food, even water that comes in its many variations.

Shelter, in fact, can take on such a starring role as I've enjoyed Alain de Botton describe in his book The Architecture of Happiness, its title suggesting that design and form extend to far more abstract and defining aspects of life than just four walls and a roof.

He takes time to wax poetic on Casa Malaparte in Capri, a structure that in Godard's Contempt some might argue upstaged Bardot who is now a 70-something, wrinkled, hobbling racist while the villa has far outlived its Fascist creator, Curzio Malaparte. It stands today, looking ever youthful and pristine, apolitical and in harmony with the Meditteranean.

As Botton explains:

With its proud isolation, its juxtapositioning of ruggedness and refinement its unblinking, hardy defiance of the elements, and the aesthetic debt it owed to Ancient Rome on the one hand and Italian modernism on the other, the house did indeed pick up on key traits of Malaparte's character. Fortunately for visitors, however, it turned out not to be a slavishly faithful portait of its owner in all of his faces -- a difficult prospect for any house, certainly, but particularly so in Malaparte's case, for that would have necessitated the inclusion of pretentious furnishings, dead-end corridors, perhaps a shooting range (he was a Facisct until 1943) and a few broken windows (he liekd a drink and then a fight). Rather than reflecting the author's many foibles, Casa Malaparte, like all effective works of idealisation, assisted its gifted yet flawed proprietor in orienting himself towards the noblest sides of his personality."

Is it telling that I live in a long, skinny Edwardian with rich-hued rooms filled with remnants of travels and past lives in other parts of the world, anchored by two rooms with a wall of curving windows as their centerpieces -- one looking out on the bustling, sometimes tawdry corner of urban life, the other glimpsing onto a pristine garden filled with lilies, sterling silver roses and succulents.

Film Type

When I went to see Contempt at the Castro (which I'd love to make a film about called Contempt at the Castro) recently, I was struck by how much Godard's films are about typography. I've revisiting a number of his films ever since, and this theory has proven true as he advance through the '60s, perhaps no more pointedly than in Weekend which must be 30% typography even before subtitles. They are often purposely arbitrary, abstractly concrete, concretely abstract. They demand us to look at them typographic entities, imparting mostly pointless information such as what time of day it is and how fast the car is going.

Godard figured heavily in my early film education even in junior high school when I made my sister take me to Janus films on her college campus while she went boutiquing. I started with Cocteau but was soon drawn more to Truffaut (who tending for fairly fancy but sparsely used script) and Malle. During spring break of my sophomore year, I went to see Truffaut's The Story of Adele H. during my spring break when other kids were going to South Padre Island. Sitting in a packed theater in Austin, Texas, I was agile enough in French at the time to haughtily ignore the subtitles. But it felt like an entirely new language to me, so decidedly not North American though much of it was set in Canada. I thought it even had its own smell. I've not seen it in 30 plus years, and my copy of it arrived this week, making me wonder how it will touch me all these years later. Will it have the same smell.
Around the same time I heard screenwriter Joan Tewkesbury, who was being held up as the hottest new screenwriter in Hollywood with Thieves Like Us and Nashville under her belt. Here was a writer with verve and integrity. When asked what she would write about if she had no restrictions, she said that it would be a film about nothing but a green beam of light, and the entire audience went "Ah..." with the synchronization and blast of a Godard inter-title. Tewksbury went on to direct and write Doogie Howser, M.D. and Felicity.

In Godard's Masculin féminin: 15 faits précis there is a Ford sedan that pulls up with the license plate "SHAPE 9435". When I saw that in college, I was sure that name and those numbers would hold great meaning. Perhaps they do because I remember them all these years later but don't know their meaning. I think the most important word in that film's title is précis, best understood if in stark Helvetica.

Contempt!

Now that Bryce Digdug is back from the Big Easy, we had a chance to compare notes on the Minnie Riperton shows at Jazzfest and Thursday night's performance at the Fox. There was a near riot in the rush ticket line that snaked along Market Street all the way down to Franklin.

Our banter got pretty heated as we shared our opinions about the two concerts but could not come to a consensus on which was the better (apparently Minnie didn't include her San Francisco curtain call, a rousing rendition of "Feelings", in New Orleans) as we sat in our seats last night at the Castro Theater. Our little tiff was soon blown away by gentle Mediterranean breezes as we enjoyed Godard's Le Mépris (Contempt). What a wonderfully wacky cast -- Brigitte Bardot, Jack Palance and Fritz Lang. Lang (who played himself a la Cecile B. Demille in Sunset Boulevard), perpetuated the myth that he fled Germany the night he was offered the role of the Third Reich's official filmographer by Goebbels. It was a bit more complex than that. However, it was fun to see him refer to Brecht as "BB".

The other BB -- la Bardot -- had plenty of bare bottomed scenes, hilariously covering it with a book while sunbathing in one scene. Perhaps more erotic were the architecture and scenery -- a shabby chic Italian country villa, a shabby deco cinema and a modern villa built on a seaside cliff in Capri with better-than-sex views.

Bardot was actually a very good actress in the film. There was certainly plenty of focus on her physical attributes ("You like zee thigh?" "Oui!" "You like zee breast?" "Oui!"), but she purposely tried to tone it down, putting on a dark wig and chatting with her mom on the phone.
Though unable to come to agreement on Minnie Riperton, Bryce and I agreed that Bardot's costar Michel Piccoli was very hot in that sexy Eurochic/trash '60s sort of way. Unlike today's male Hollywood overly buff/waxed mannequin stars, he was lean and furry in a great sort of way, having a wonderful scene wearing just his cigar and a fedora in a tub as la Bardot ranted at him. Okay, he did need just a little trimming around the edges, but he was particularly fetching on the roof of that Capri villa in a cream colored linen suit and his same fedora.
Debriefing over dinner at Le Mediterranean (detect a theme here), I nearly spat out my Merlot and had to mask my horror when Bryce said he'd never heard any of Bardot's great pop singles from the late '60s or her frequent partner in crime, Serge Gainsbourg. Contempt, indeed!

Just in case there are any other readers who are equally unacquainted, I suggest they check out the great Bardot/Gainsbourg collaboration on "Bonnie and Clyde", and Bardot's definitive "Harley Davidson" (below) where she makes Nancy Sinatra look like FLDS sister-wife #18.