Godard's films from the 1980s, the focus of this installment in our ongoing retrospective, mark a (relative) return to narrative. Genres from slapstick to detective stories are mined, juxtaposition and fragmentation are enlisted, and sound and image angle for supremacy. Ultimately, though, Godard continues to interrogate what cinema means to him. "The(se) films . . . are arguably deeper, more technically accomplished, and more daring than the early ones" (Richard Brody, The New Yorker).
Read full descriptionJean-Luc Godard (Switzerland/France, 1990). A rich businesswoman accidentally injures, then takes home, a hitchhiker (Alain Delon) in Godard's meditation on beauty, silence, and the inadequacy of language. "Jean-Luc Godard on love as the antidote to the bankruptcy of modern materialism” (Variety). (90 mins)
Jean-Luc Godard (US/France, 1987). Introduced by Tom Luddy. “More Cocteau and Beckett than Shakespeare” (TIFF Cinematheque), Godard's take on King Lear features one of the most eclectic casts ever assembled: Woody Allen, Peter Sellars, Norman Mailer, Burgess Meredith, Molly Ringwald, and Godard himself. “A grand statement about the power of moviemaking ”(The New Yorker). (90 mins)
Jean-Luc Godard (France, 1994). The “first film of Godard's old age” finds the great artist turning the camera on himself. “An inebriating dialectical diary of words, sounds, images, and landscapes” (Variety). Preceded by Origins of the 21st Century (2000). (73 mins)
Jean-Luc Godard (France, 1985). (Je vous salue, Marie). New 35mm Print! The story of Mary Magdalene, as filtered through the sensibilities of Godard. “I wanted to make a sincere, reverent film about faith, even if it's not the film the Church would have wanted,” he wrote; critics raved, while the Pope condemned it as “blasphemous.” (103 mins)
Jean-Luc Godard (France, 1987). (Soigne ta droite). Godard's episodic comedy stars himself as an Idiot Prince, ordered to make a movie in one day. Godard at his most light-hearted and inquisitive, inspired by Buster Keaton, Jerry Lewis, Jaques Tati, and Dostoevsky. (82 mins)
Jean-Luc Godard (1985). Godard's send-up of and tribute to film noir follows a dozen or so characters as they wander about a Parisian hotel, looking for mysteries, love, and money. With Johnny Hallyday and Jean-Pierre Léaud. (95 mins)
Jean-Luc Godard (France, France/Switzerland, 1983). (Prénom Carmen). Anne-Marie Miéville and Godard's Bizet adaptation captures “the spirit of erotic feverishness . . . A violent lunge at the carnal mysteries” (David Denby). (85 mins)
Jean-Luc Godard (France/Switzerland, 1982). Isabelle Huppert and Hanna Schygulla in Godard's visceral, visually enthralling film about a film called Passion, based on tableaux vivants of famous paintings. (87 mins)