This blog contains weekly journal entries for glover's film history class at Champlain College in Burlington VT.
The plain template is in effect because it does not crop the youtube imbeds.
Students are expected to post a minimum of 1 response a week, plus 1 comment on a peer post.
Feel free to add relevant imbeds or links, or to use the blog for related off-topic threads, or to post your presentations for use in class, or viewing after.
When I first started watching Godard's "Week End", I thought it was the worst movie I had ever seen. I did see his masterpiece, "Breathless", before seeing "Week End" so I expected great things. Once I realized that the movie was systematically breaking every rule of popular film, I started to understand Godard's specific intentions.
I believe he was so fed up with the standards of most Hollywood movies, that he had to make a satirical movie about what he felt the film industry was coming to. The general public expected certain things from every film that they saw and it was ruining the art of film. I'd have to see it again, but I don't think the plot really had any purpose and it was simply a movie about the downfall of movies.
Some examples from the film were the ridiculous inter titles that appeared out of nowhere and broke up the flow of the film. Right in the beginning, there very long take following the main character's car through a traffic jam, with annoying car beeping sounds that I thought would never end. He probably was suggesting that the film industry was stagnant and hitting a traffic jam of its own.
There is one tediously long scene of minorities talking, but it shows the person that isn't talking during the others monologue. I think he did this to go against the grain and show something that could have never been expected by the viewer. He makes a good point in the piano scene with the pianist talking about how Mozart is the best because he played classically formatted music for royalty. However, I think Godard would appreciate Beethoven a lot more because he went against the grain in music when no one else did, just like Godard did with "Week End".
Once I understood this fed-up directors motives, I thought the movie was hilarious, in a black comedy sort of way. Also, I think its funny that it is called "Week End" and not "Weekend" because it sounds like it is poking fun of its "weak ending". It may be no pun intended though. This is an example of a movie that I really respect, but wouldn't have a great time watching over and over.
I must say Nick picked up on some very good things. Goddard was pushing the envelope of what could be depicted in a film for sure. I thought it was worked in a way. The scene with the poets is one that stood out for me. For some reason I felt it was tied to a thought that protaganists usually get their way in movies and in this one they didn't. I never really looked into the title of the film, but Nick brought up a really good point about the title. I feel like that is blatent now that I think about it. The way the main characters are very self absorbed could be a hack at culture, but they were also ultra-violent. I don't know if this was to show that being self absorbed makes you passivly ultra-violent. A lot of this movie didn't really click, but the images he used were very compelling. I just second Nick's points about the traffic jam and the reason for the name of the film.
Weekend. That film in itself, is a sentence, hell, it's a series of novels released over a period of years which was actually only the course of two hours. What Jean-Luc Godard did in this movie, I can't even begin to describe. I personally am a huge fan of weird, especially in the movies. I love the surrealists, the classics, I love it all, but the weird, the stuff that has never been done before, always fascinates me. Godard's film, needless to say, more than applies to that category. In a film where a 15 minute tracking sequence of traffic, accidents, yelling, and horns honking, doesn't even begin to describe. But sequences just like that are really what makes this film so different and for whatever reason, enjoyable. France was in an odd position due to the chaos and craziness caused by the 1960's, so what else could they do? All the same, I thoroughly enjoyed this movie, every aspect of it, especially due to the fact that it is completely outside the bounds of the stereotypical film.
Godard's Week End was too much for my poor little brain to handle.
It was apparently incoherent gibberish, I failed to see the reason behind the close to ten minute long traffic scene and it irritated me to hear honking horns for that long.
I'm sure there is some masterful hidden meaning behind everything in this movie, and I respect Godard for that I am just not deep enough to figure it out.
4 comments:
When I first started watching Godard's "Week End", I thought it was the worst movie I had ever seen. I did see his masterpiece, "Breathless", before seeing "Week End" so I expected great things. Once I realized that the movie was systematically breaking every rule of popular film, I started to understand Godard's specific intentions.
I believe he was so fed up with the standards of most Hollywood movies, that he had to make a satirical movie about what he felt the film industry was coming to. The general public expected certain things from every film that they saw and it was ruining the art of film. I'd have to see it again, but I don't think the plot really had any purpose and it was simply a movie about the downfall of movies.
Some examples from the film were the ridiculous inter titles that appeared out of nowhere and broke up the flow of the film. Right in the beginning, there very long take following the main character's car through a traffic jam, with annoying car beeping sounds that I thought would never end. He probably was suggesting that the film industry was stagnant and hitting a traffic jam of its own.
There is one tediously long scene of minorities talking, but it shows the person that isn't talking during the others monologue. I think he did this to go against the grain and show something that could have never been expected by the viewer. He makes a good point in the piano scene with the pianist talking about how Mozart is the best because he played classically formatted music for royalty. However, I think Godard would appreciate Beethoven a lot more because he went against the grain in music when no one else did, just like Godard did with "Week End".
Once I understood this fed-up directors motives, I thought the movie was hilarious, in a black comedy sort of way. Also, I think its funny that it is called "Week End" and not "Weekend" because it sounds like it is poking fun of its "weak ending". It may be no pun intended though. This is an example of a movie that I really respect, but wouldn't have a great time watching over and over.
I must say Nick picked up on some very good things. Goddard was pushing the envelope of what could be depicted in a film for sure. I thought it was worked in a way. The scene with the poets is one that stood out for me. For some reason I felt it was tied to a thought that protaganists usually get their way in movies and in this one they didn't. I never really looked into the title of the film, but Nick brought up a really good point about the title. I feel like that is blatent now that I think about it. The way the main characters are very self absorbed could be a hack at culture, but they were also ultra-violent. I don't know if this was to show that being self absorbed makes you passivly ultra-violent. A lot of this movie didn't really click, but the images he used were very compelling. I just second Nick's points about the traffic jam and the reason for the name of the film.
Weekend. That film in itself, is a sentence, hell, it's a series of novels released over a period of years which was actually only the course of two hours. What Jean-Luc Godard did in this movie, I can't even begin to describe. I personally am a huge fan of weird, especially in the movies. I love the surrealists, the classics, I love it all, but the weird, the stuff that has never been done before, always fascinates me. Godard's film, needless to say, more than applies to that category. In a film where a 15 minute tracking sequence of traffic, accidents, yelling, and horns honking, doesn't even begin to describe. But sequences just like that are really what makes this film so different and for whatever reason, enjoyable. France was in an odd position due to the chaos and craziness caused by the 1960's, so what else could they do? All the same, I thoroughly enjoyed this movie, every aspect of it, especially due to the fact that it is completely outside the bounds of the stereotypical film.
Godard's Week End was too much for my poor little brain to handle.
It was apparently incoherent gibberish, I failed to see the reason behind the close to ten minute long traffic scene and it irritated me to hear honking horns for that long.
I'm sure there is some masterful hidden meaning behind everything in this movie, and I respect Godard for that I am just not deep enough to figure it out.
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