For the French channels to pay you a nice tribute, it is better to be called Jean-Paul (Belmondo) than Jean-Luc (Godard). Admittedly, we did not expect TF1 to replace the series good doctor by take care of your right (1987), but not either for the public service to simply rebroadcast Breathless (1960) on France 5, Friday September 16. Livelier, the Arte channel will devote an entire evening to the author of All the boys are called Patrick (1959) from Wednesday, September 14. But it is on the platforms, streaming, and especially video on demand (VOD), that we will find most of Godard’s work. This is conspicuous by its absence on Netflix and Amazon Prime Video. Apple TV+ offers a good sample, while MyCanal, Orange and LaCinetek (the latter taking the trouble to accompany its selection with numerous bonuses) carve out the lion’s share. In all, we can see around forty feature films and series by the filmmaker (including History(ies) of cinema (1988-1998), on LaCinetek). Here is an arbitrary selection.
- “Breathless” (1960)
A hard and compact film, at the limit of nihilism, which nevertheless unfolds to infinity, premonition and criticism of the cinema to come. Although Godard did not hold chronology in great esteem, it is not necessarily silly to start with this beginning, from which sprang Godard’s work and the cinema of the decade that was beginning.
France 5, September 16, at 9 p.m.; Apple TV+, MyCanal, LaCinetek, Orange.
- “The Contempt” (1963)
The almost unbearable beauty of the film and its main interpreter, Brigitte Bardot, would almost eclipse its intellectual acuity. But beneath the neoclassical sighs of Georges Delerue’s score, we hear the rattling of the economic machine that produces cinema (see the character of the producer embodied by Jack Palance), which Godard sometimes approaches very closely (this is the case for Contempt) to better scrap it in the next movie.
Arte, September 14, at 8:55 p.m.; Apple TV+, MyCanal, La Cinetek, Orange.
- “Crazy Pierrot” (1965)
Fed with paint (one of the filmmaker’s favorite foods), Pierrot le fou appeared during its presentation at the Venice Film Festival as the expression of “feelings of a romantic man” (Yvonne Baby, The world August 31, 1965). A romanticism that collides with world politics (Vietnam), the invasion of goods, and boredom, chanted by Anna Karina. His sentence “What can I do? I don’t know what to do…” is placed in the Godardian anthology just behind “What is it, filthy? ».
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