In the mid-70s, Godard completed two series, France/Tour/Détour and Six fois Deux, for French television and confronted the viewing public with intriguing works that ransacked the dilemmas of imagemaking, manipulation and self-reflexivity. Godard's newest affront to television comes in the form of this 90-minute mystery. If made-for-TV is a denigrating term, implying the thorough acceptance of broadcast's effete conventions, then Godard's episode for "Série Noir" counters that notion with fertile invention. Godard's videotape revolves around the financial crisis of a small film production company and a hefty number of "borrowed" Marks misplaced by the company's producer (Jean-Pierre Mocky). Forget this thickening plot, the real mystery lies elsewhere. Enter Gaspard Bazin (Jean-Pierre Léaud), a once successful film director now banished to television. Burdened with a cheap mystery novel adaptation, he is unable to grasp the character of the coming film and spends days in endless casting sessions. Grandeur et Decadence, then, becomes a meditation on the seeming futility of contemporary cinema. One chapter, "The omnipotence of television," points out the source for Godard's frustration with cinema. Television-with its less than vital priorities-has eclipsed the grandeur of the filmic landscape. "Will we never cease to theorize on things, rather than see them as they are?" Bazin is asked. "I hope so!" he replies. Bazin's, and thus Godard's, cinema is one of elevated exploration through the mythopoeic image. Television reveals only as it reduces and demythologizes. -Steve Seid Videotape from an AFI Video Festival Reprise.