i can very simply sum up how i feel about this title: one cannot possibly go wrong with the words straight from jean-luc "cinema" godard's mouth. made up of interviews with godard over the decades of his career, this book illuminates godard's various phases and his astounding ideas on cinema and art and life in general. the man is an amazing artist, and if you are at all familiar with his films, you owe it to yourself to read some of what he has to say. his insight into filmmaking and his personal output greatly increases any understanding of his cinematic works. i recommend this book to any student of cinema, academic or just curious, or to anyone who has ever watched a godard film and still had many questions after the screen turned dark. and of course, if you're a godard nut like myself, you should buy this right now and thank me later; this is required reading for godard devotees.

Along with GODARD ON GODARD, this book is a must-have for any serious cinema affecionado. The interviews with Jean-Luc Godard are relevatory and thought provoking, and are essential to read alongside viewing his films. It covers his work from his (more popular) early/mid-sixties films through his video work in the eighties and back to his films of the nineties. Highest recommendation.

This collection of Truffaut's letters is an extraordinary portrait of a man of enormous charm, passion, integrity and (sometimes brutal) honesty. The immediacy of his writing makes his voice emanate from these pages. What an enormous privilege it must have been to count oneself among his friends. And what a daunting foe he must have been as well.

An inspiring, invigorating book.

Thank God for university presses that publish books about little known or even unavailable films. Godard's Pierrot le fou (France, 1965) was recently released on DVD, and if any film ever needed footnotes, this is it. Now one can read Cambridge Film Handbooks's Jean-Luc Godard's Pierrot Le Fou, edited by David Wills, and enjoy the book as a supplement to an almost-forgotten masterpiece. Pierrot le fou is a cinematic work that nails the '60s in 110 minutes. The plot is quite simple: A bored man portrayed by ultracool Jean-Paul Belmondo goes to a party with his wife, at which everyone converses in advertising slogans. He leaves and runs off with his baby-sitter, played by the beautiful Anna Karina, and they go on a crime spree. Ridiculous? Well, this is a Godard film. The baby-sitter is named Marianne, and she symbolizes the French republic, as she is consistently clothed in the colors of France. Marianne thinks she is in a movie (which she is) and wants emotion and movement. The Belmondo character, Pierrot, wants to leave civilization, live on an island, and read books -- a character with whom I fully sympathize. He wants to live in words and thoughts, and she wants emotion and action. The film is about role-playing, the nature of cinema and its audience, Vietnam (where the French had difficulties before the Americans did), and the dynamics between reading and action.

The book contains five essays, each focusing on specific aspects of the film. The writings form a critical study, rather than just including gossip about the film shoot and about its participants. The most interesting essay is the last one, "Pierrot le fou and Post New Wave Cinema," by Jill Forbes. The essay focuses on the complexity of Pierrot le fou: Since the characters know they are acting out their dramas in a film, Forbes discusses how this relates to their world in terms of audience. Forbes also writes about Godard's use of the poetry of Arthur Rimbaud, who invented a poetic language "that will be used by all the senses." Godard plays with film genres, such as the musical, and incorporates literature into his cinema as well. Not only are there literary chapters named after Rimbaud's poetry in the film, but his use of color and quotations gives the work layers of meaning. One could argue that his films are really open-ended essays on the nature of language, images, and life. I recommend this book, only as a supplement to this fantastic film, which is a sort of book in its own right.

"Weekend (best pre-packaged volition)." -Premature Positivity

I've just read the book and though it dragged at some points because I wasn't familiar with a couple of the films he was talking about it, the overall experience was uplifting. If you have the slightest interest in Godard and the New Wave read the book and get inside a New Wave director's head and see how he looks at films. The book contains a number of his Cahiers du Cinema reviews and articles, and some interviews he gave later in life. By the end of the book you finally begin to understand a little of how this genius thinks.

Even for those unfamiliar with all of Godard's films, these conversations are interesting. Although the book sometimes reads like a postmodern primer with footnote references and keyterms to all the 'right' writers of the sixties and seventies, the analysis is generally more complex and undogmatic. The scene by scene structure of each dialog also guarantees a trueness to the original "text" of the film, that is not always found in critical writing on film.

"Speaking About Godard" by Kaja Silverman and Harun Farocki will stimulate Godard afficionados into conversations about Godard's work as the authors have themselves in this book. The authors devote chapters to selected works from the French auteur's oevre analyzing and debating specific aspects of the films. They attempt to find the meaning of specific scenes in the following Godard films: "Vivre sa vie", "Le mepris"("Contempt"), "Alphaville", "Weekend", "Le gai savoir", "Numero deux", "Passion", and "Nouvelle Vague". Some film stills accompany the authors examples from the respective films. You may not always agree with their analysis, but they don't always agree with each other. Of course, Godard's films are so rich with meaning, they are open to debate. The conversational style of the book makes it a great read for those stimulated by the great filmmaker's work.

The layout of this book is interesting and accessible. It is basically an extended conversation between two fans of Godard, who just happen to be very learned in film studies/theory as well. The chapter on "Weekend" is particularly good. If you are finding yourself drawn to Godard, but do not know where to start, try this book.

My exposure to Godard films were through VHS tapes. I was too young to watch his 60's films in their original formats. The transfer is not too great but good enough. The colors are right, it is thankfully letterboxed, etc. even if there are a few image distortions, artifacts and the sharpness and overall quality leaves a lot of room for improvement. There is something very wrong, however, with the sound especially towards the fifth chapter (that's the 5th access in the chapter search of which there are only 6 - thanks to Fox/Lorber!) Thankfully, this is a subtitled film (can't be switched off/on, they're pasted on the screen) otherwise, even the French won't understand the French dialogue. The noise distortion is terrible, but could it be Godard's deliberate way to convey sound since it is the part in which the CB radios or walkie-talkies were being used in the scene? My impression is that the technician in charge was probably asleep or didn't care when this noise distortion was taking place and the DVD didn't go through quality control which could have fixed it. I haven't seen the original so I don't know but since this is a Godard film, anything goes. But then the distortion continued even after that scene so any reasoning to defend Fox's negligience on this matter proved futile. I found it terribly distracting and I thought it pulled down the quality all the more of this already mediocre DVD transfer. Is this the best version yet? How does the VHS version rate? Fox/Lorber is hit and miss with DVDs. They did good with Seven Beauties, Last Year at Marienbad, and the already LD Criterion-restored Umbrellas of Cherbourg and 400 Blows but did very poorly with A Woman is a Woman, several Truffaut films and even the relatively recent Padre Padrone. What a shame that a company like Fox/Lorber gets the rights to release these great Foreign films but doesn't have the interest to come up with quality transfers. I think this is a waste of our hard-earned money to buy the DVDs that they produce. Next time you buy from Fox/Lorber, read the reviews... otherwise just rent or wait for a better re-release in the future.

Godard's "Pierrot le Fou" (1965) is in my opinion his greatest film and possibly the greatest movie of the 1960s. In it Godard attempts to do EVERYTHING- capture both life and art in a movie. I don't think there's been a movie like it before or since. Seeing it is an experience like no other - it truly involves the viewer's mind and senses in a breathtakingly imaginative, creative,new way. "Pierrot le Fou" stars Godard's (then)muse and wife Anna Karina and Jean-Paul Belmondo, the star of his first, breakthrough film "Breathless"."Pierrot le Fou" begins with a deft satire of the incredible power of corporate culture and advertising to shrink people's interior life and identity/personality, and then follows a couple's run on the lam (a la Bonnie and Clyde) from a crazy series of crimes and rejection of social conventions. It is filled with images, comments and action referring to politics(the Vietnam War, Algeria, Arabs and Israel, terrorism) art (Renoir, Velasquez, Celine,Rimbaud,comic books and 'pulp' genres, Samuel Fuller and on and on), the war between the sexes, the impossibility of really knowing and understanding another person,and other things. It also has some very enjoyable comic and musical vignettes. It's a lot for a movie to take on, but in spite of all this, the experience of "Pierrot le Fou" feels like both a pleasurably cerebral and sensual new way of viewing (and making) a movie. I don't know where Godard could have gone after "Pierrot le Fou" - it's too bad he wasn't able to continue in this exciting new vein. His films after this became more explicitly leftist/Marxist/Maoist political and in the case of "Weekend", completely bleak as well. And after "Weekend"(1968) Godard gave up on feature filmmaking for over ten years. All I know is that it's great "Pierrot Le Fou" is here as an example of how thrilling the process of life and the movies' transformation/representation/reflection of it can be.

At my local UC PIERROT is shown in the survey of film history class they offer. I was invited to sit in once. Normally the professor shows the film, then lectures. He screened PIERROT. When it was over, there was total silence. He started to lecture, but almost the entire lecture hall of students walked out. A good friend told me later that she had been profoundly moved, and she simply didn't want to understand why. She didn't feel it was respectful to what she had just seen. PIERROT is on of the few examples of true mystical cinema that we have. Yes, there are the references to Rimbaud, Hollywood musicals, gangster films.... The visual puns, the references to Godard and Karina's life at the time, the improvisations, the barbs about American commercialism, the Gish-rebeling-against-Grifith quality of Karina's amazing performance... But what do they matter?

Sunlight/love/color/the face/poetry/emotion/loss of love/slapstick/image/life: PIERROT LE FOU

Godard made this movie over 30 years ago and it remains fresh. It is timeless, the hallmark of a genuine classic. There are no fancy special effects. Godard used the Paris of the 60s to delineate Alphaville, a metropolis of mechanized people. He blends pulp fiction, film noir, sci-fi, comics, poetry and philosophy and the result is unusual and dazzling. Eddie Constantine is the perfect grizzled private eye and the sublime Anna Karina gives a poignant performance as Natasha Von Braun. Raoul Coutard's cinematography is a milestone in moviemaking.

Godard's best film, in my judgment. Certainly his most cerebral. Manages to be quite affecting and parodistic all at once--not an easy feat, even for a Frenchman. Naturally such a sensibility is alien to the American mindset. Most Americans would hate this. In fact, it may be fair to say that *Alphaville* is the litmus test for whether or not a person can handle French New Wave cinema: if you make it through this one, baby, hey, look up--it only gets easier. It's about a French Mike Hammer-type called Lemmy Caution (an amusing name for English speakers--another of Godard's calculated effects) who drives on up to Planet Alphaville by way of a Ford Galaxy. Suspend your belief, baby. This is sci-fi cinema by way of Elizabethan theatre. His secret mission: either assassinate or kidnap a mad technocrat named Vonbraun (get it?) who has created the evil Alpha 60 supercomputer. Along the way, he runs into "seductresses, third-class", Vonbraun's daughter (Anna Karina in the height of 60's fashion), an old friend and former fellow-agent (Akim Tamiroff, doing a hilarious impression of Orson Welles in *Mr. Arkadin*), various other assassins, bureaucrats, garage-park attendants, and even Alpha 60 itself. What does it all mean? I have a relatively good idea, but I don't kid myself for one second: Godard's having a bit of fun w / us, here. Too much analysis and you'll be climbing the walls, like certain characters late in the film. Just watch and enjoy . . . if you can. The photography by the master Raoul Coutard, incidentally, is even better than usual, and that's saying a lot.

Jean-Luc Godard, the most experimental and influential filmmaker from the French New Wave, made this film in 1965, about an out of control, totalitarian, scientific, logical society. Lemmy Caution, a spy from the outlands, comes to Alphaville, under the name Ivan Johnson to investigate. He discovers a society run by a supercomputer Alpha 65, and populated by brainwashed drones, where love, art, and emotions are against the law. Lemmy gets involved with Alphaville's top scientist's daughter. He helps her discover her true human nature, they fall in love, and together they fight the leaders of Alphaville, and Alpha 65 itself.

The film is fast paced, reminiscent of crime thrillers, and of sci-fi dystopians such as Blade Runner. The film examines human nature, and the redeeming value of love, and spirit, over mind, and material. The film is both very entertaining, and philosophical, that rewards multiple viewing, that offers new insights. I recommend this very much. 5 stars.

This book is a good guide to one of the most interesting movies of our time. This book not only gives the reader some background material about how it came to be, but it also has the script of the movie included for you to read. Even though there was no real script when the film was made, the editor of the book was able to break down the movie shot by shot and give the reader some sort of continuity script. The end of the book is filled with interviews and reviews of the film.

I think this book is a very good tool for those interested in the movie "Breathless" because it helps you understand not only the movie a little better, but the method behind Jean-Luc Goddard's madness. I would definitely recommend this book to those who want to learn more about this innovative and extremely interesting piece of film!

Guzzetti's study of the Godard film appeared before the advent of home video. Indeed, Two or Three Things I Know About Her was released for the first time on video by New Yorker Films in 1997. Guzzetti provides a text which is designed for the reader to begin an in depth study. The book's layout provides a frame by frame analysis. More than a film script, the book matches each line from the film, with its corresponding image (albeit in b&w) reproduced alongside in widescreen. How to read a film indeed!

I like Godard.