Capital Celluloid 2016 - Day 42: Thu Feb 11

Slow Motion (Godard, 1979): BFI Southbank, NFT, 8.50pm


This film (screened on 35mm) is part of the Jean-Luc Godard season at BFI and is also being shown on February 12th. You can find the full details here.

Chicago Reader review:
Jean-Luc Godard calls this 1979 production, 
Sauve Qui Peut (La Vie), his “second first film”—which means both a return to narrative after his brilliant documentary-theoretical work in the 70s and a complete clearing of the decks. You feel him questioning his entire life here, his most basic impulses and ideals, and his honesty is devastating; he emerges as a hollow man, trapped between the limitations of his politics and his sexuality, with barely enough ego left to imagine his own death. Of course, the film's substantial artistry belies Godard's self-negation: with his formal, four-part ordering of the narration, the tension he establishes and exploits between sound track and image, and his use of slow motion to analyze and abstract the action, Godard pulls an aesthetic victory from the jaws of utter nihilism. With Isabelle Huppert, Jacques Dutronc, Nathalie Baye, and Marguerite Duras (on the sound track only).
Dave Kehr

Here (and above) is an extract.

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