Cinema: The Archaeology of Film and the Memory of a Century

The most prolific and relentlessly experimental of the French New Wave directors, Godard (b. 1930) broke decidedly with the Hollywood narrative tradition (while simultaneously absorbing its entire history), seeking out a ""thinking"" form that would speak to and cultivate a critical audience able to join in exposing life's socially and ideologically constructed conventions, including those in the cinema form itself. This quest achieved a sublime end in Godard's Histoire(s) du cinema, a provocative four-part made-for-television collage of overlaid and treated images, film clips, texts and sound that excavates both the history of cinema and the role of cinema as an inextricable part of modern history. Ironically, the film, said by some to be his masterpiece, is difficult to come by. But even without seeing it, a reader appreciates how its layered, self-referential character makes an ideal basis for the wide-ranging discussion between Godard and French art scholar Ishaghpour that is collected in this volume. Of all the interviews with Godard out there, this is one of the few that reads like an intellectual coffee klatch. Sharp and suggestive points come amid Ishaghpour's ponderous historical-philosophical formulations, as do teasingly half-formed ideas or insights. Cineastes happy in this rarefied discourse, however, may be frustrated by how little text is actually devoted to Godard's words. Much of the book's material, including its chapter headings, derives from ideas introduced by Ishaghpour, whose accompanying essay expands on what he's brought out in the ""interview.""