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Authors: Julian Barnes
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every shot of X—in Week-End it was as though you were tipping a wink at your pals: this whore wants to make a film with me, take a good look at how I treat her: there are whores and there are poetic young women.
Funding difficulties?
I need have no worries on your account, in Paris there are still enough wealthy young men, with a chip on their shoulder because they had their first car at 18, who will be delighted to pay their dues by announcing: “I'm the producer of Godard's next film.”
Bad faith?
I've felt nothing but contempt for you [since 1968]—as when I saw the scene in Vent d'est showing how to make a Molotov cocktail and, a year later, you got cold feet the first time you were asked to distribute La Cause du peuple [Sartre's newspaper] in the street. The notion that all men are equal is theoretical with you, it isn't deeply felt, which is why you have never succeeded in loving anyone or helping anyone, other than by shoving a few banknotes at them.
Godard is not just a liar, but a phony, a poseur, an élitist, a narcissist, “a piece of shit on a pedestal,” an assiduous cultivator of his own subversive image. He treats individuals disdainfully while fawning before an abstract concept of “the masses.” Even his militancy is false:
You need to play a role and the role needs to be a prestigious one; I've always had the impression that real militants are like cleaning women, doing a thankless, daily but necessary job. But you, you're the Ursula Andress of militancy, you make a brief appearance, just enough time for the cameras to flash, you make two or three duly startling remarks and then you disappear again, trailing clouds of self-serving mystery.
This thorough trashing of Godard's character and by extension his work (“Films resemble the people who make them”) ends with a well-aimed quote from Bernanos: “If I had, like you, failed to keep the promises of my ordination, I would prefer it to have been for a woman's love rather than for what you call your intellectual development.”
The spectacle is exciting, the more so if we declare our man the winner; but finally depressing. Co-ordinees and collaborators in their youth, Truffaut and Godard have now diverged totally. Their quarrel is also part of the old one between head and heart, the aes thetic and the moral, theory and individualism; the strategy of offence versus the strategy of charm. Whereas Truffaut was good at customer relations, being civil and helpful to those genuinely interested in his work, Godard was famously cavalier and confrontational, offering contempt as proof of integrity. Invited to London some years ago to lecture at the National Film Theatre, he accepted, then changed his mind at the last minute and sent a jaunty telegram:
IF I AM NOT THERE TAKE ANYONE IN THE STREET THE POOREST IF POSSIBLE GIVE HIM THE HUNDRED POUNDS AND TALK WITH HIM OF IMAGES AND SOUNDS AND YOU WILL LEARN FROM HIM MUCH MORE THAN FROM ME BECAUSE IT IS THE POOR PEOPLE WHO ARE REALLY INVENTING THE LANGUAGE STOP YOUR ANONYMOUS GODARD.
When this message was read out to the expectant crowd, many applauded, either from sycophancy or aesthetic agreement. One dissident stood up and shouted, understandably if perhaps too all-encompassingly, “Sod the Frogs!”
On 21 October 1984, Truffaut died from a brain tumour. His last published letter (of January 1984) was characteristic:
On 12 September last, I was operated on for an aneurism of the brain, but film criticism was 20years ahead of conventional medicine, since, when my 2nd film, Tirez sur le pianiste, came out, it declared that such a film could only have been made by someone whose brain wasn't functioning normally!
Godard's introduction to these letters ends with a posturing flourish that would not have surprised Truffaut: “François is perhaps dead. I am perhaps alive. But then, is there a difference?” Another error of category from Jean-Luc. There is a difference, sad and enormous, not least for those
Funding difficulties?
I need have no worries on your account, in Paris there are still enough wealthy young men, with a chip on their shoulder because they had their first car at 18, who will be delighted to pay their dues by announcing: “I'm the producer of Godard's next film.”
Bad faith?
I've felt nothing but contempt for you [since 1968]—as when I saw the scene in Vent d'est showing how to make a Molotov cocktail and, a year later, you got cold feet the first time you were asked to distribute La Cause du peuple [Sartre's newspaper] in the street. The notion that all men are equal is theoretical with you, it isn't deeply felt, which is why you have never succeeded in loving anyone or helping anyone, other than by shoving a few banknotes at them.
Godard is not just a liar, but a phony, a poseur, an élitist, a narcissist, “a piece of shit on a pedestal,” an assiduous cultivator of his own subversive image. He treats individuals disdainfully while fawning before an abstract concept of “the masses.” Even his militancy is false:
You need to play a role and the role needs to be a prestigious one; I've always had the impression that real militants are like cleaning women, doing a thankless, daily but necessary job. But you, you're the Ursula Andress of militancy, you make a brief appearance, just enough time for the cameras to flash, you make two or three duly startling remarks and then you disappear again, trailing clouds of self-serving mystery.
This thorough trashing of Godard's character and by extension his work (“Films resemble the people who make them”) ends with a well-aimed quote from Bernanos: “If I had, like you, failed to keep the promises of my ordination, I would prefer it to have been for a woman's love rather than for what you call your intellectual development.”
The spectacle is exciting, the more so if we declare our man the winner; but finally depressing. Co-ordinees and collaborators in their youth, Truffaut and Godard have now diverged totally. Their quarrel is also part of the old one between head and heart, the aes thetic and the moral, theory and individualism; the strategy of offence versus the strategy of charm. Whereas Truffaut was good at customer relations, being civil and helpful to those genuinely interested in his work, Godard was famously cavalier and confrontational, offering contempt as proof of integrity. Invited to London some years ago to lecture at the National Film Theatre, he accepted, then changed his mind at the last minute and sent a jaunty telegram:
IF I AM NOT THERE TAKE ANYONE IN THE STREET THE POOREST IF POSSIBLE GIVE HIM THE HUNDRED POUNDS AND TALK WITH HIM OF IMAGES AND SOUNDS AND YOU WILL LEARN FROM HIM MUCH MORE THAN FROM ME BECAUSE IT IS THE POOR PEOPLE WHO ARE REALLY INVENTING THE LANGUAGE STOP YOUR ANONYMOUS GODARD.
When this message was read out to the expectant crowd, many applauded, either from sycophancy or aesthetic agreement. One dissident stood up and shouted, understandably if perhaps too all-encompassingly, “Sod the Frogs!”
On 21 October 1984, Truffaut died from a brain tumour. His last published letter (of January 1984) was characteristic:
On 12 September last, I was operated on for an aneurism of the brain, but film criticism was 20years ahead of conventional medicine, since, when my 2nd film, Tirez sur le pianiste, came out, it declared that such a film could only have been made by someone whose brain wasn't functioning normally!
Godard's introduction to these letters ends with a posturing flourish that would not have surprised Truffaut: “François is perhaps dead. I am perhaps alive. But then, is there a difference?” Another error of category from Jean-Luc. There is a difference, sad and enormous, not least for those
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