Frau im Mond

[Alvaro A.A. Fernandes]

>>>>> "Ebiri1" == Ebiri1  <Ebiri1 at aol.com> writes:
    Ebiri1>  << On Fritz Lang, though not, I think, on TRP: we in
    Ebiri1> London are at this very moment able to wax epic with a
    Ebiri1> spanking new print of Godard's Le Mepris, courtesy of the
    Ebiri1> National Film Theatre. >>
    Ebiri1> 
    Ebiri1> 
    Ebiri1> Oh, you lucky bastards.  I have a question for you: What IS
    Ebiri1> the correct aspect ratio of that film?  It's one of my
    Ebiri1> favorites, seen it a million times, but have never seen it
    Ebiri1> in a proper version (i.e. on a screen).  Gag...

Don't know the aspect figures, but it's in Pariscope and it's
breathtakingly wide. Godard makes the most of the screen and sometimes
the audience's heads' movement resembles that of the crowd in a tennis
match.

One legendary piece of cinematic flair, from which my subconscious just
drew the above simile, is, of course, the scene in which the camera
pans, without cuts for what feels like forever, from Bardot to Piccoli
and back as they sit across opposite sides of a table having a
Jean-Paul S. v. Simone de B.-kind of domestic quarrel.

So much is going into it: you get the technical mastery in the use of
the screen, you get dialogue with history in the cheekiness towards
Eisenstein, you get appropriateness in the wife-husband crunch of The
Odyssey.

Godard also used the neat device of saying, rather than printing, the
credits. Pasolini, 3 years later, in Uccelacci e Uccellini went a step
further and had them in recitativo. Orson Welles's The Trial is also
from '63 and has (I think, to my shame I haven't yet seen it) the
credits said at the end by Welles himself.

For the record, Raoul Coutard's cinematography and Georges de la Rue's
score are almost as important to the film's impact as Godard's
authority.

Je vous salue, Jean-Luc.

Alvaro
-- 
Dept of Math & Comp Sciences     URL  http://www.gold.ac.uk/~mas01aaf
Goldsmiths College              email          a.fernandes at gold.ac.uk
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