N16 Film Title, Director, Actor
Film Socialism
The thorniest of entries (other than what might be in as-yet-unannounced “Views From the Avant-Garde” aside), Jean-Luc Godard’s enigmatic film essay is the NYFF’s prime head-scratcher as well as its No. 1 must-show (and -see, for some). The first half is shockingly beautiful—a dense, highly fragmented analysis of recent European history as allegorized by a Mediterranean cruise ship. The second is a bit rocky. The footage (which may or may not have been shot by the 79-year-old Godard) integrates all manner of video, digital, and online material; the dialogue mixes French with Russian, Arabic, and German. Interpolated titles are a form of concrete poetry offering little clarity to non-Francophones.[J Hoberman, Village Voice]
Likening the movie screen to the Kaaba, Godard suggests that the secular Jews of Hollywood were also founders of a faith, of a devotion to the guided gaze, sacralized by the prophetic power of the image itself. Yet calling the discovery the “black box” suggests that Godard considers the definitive record of Hollywood’s influence also to be a disaster and its prophetic influence to be fraudulent. It also suggests the loss of faith that accounts for the absence of references to the classic cinema and, in particular, to the Hollywood movies that were the core of the tradition he inherited and perpetuated.[Paris Review]