The Fifth Desk · Evaluation
Act I · The Map
Jean-Luc Godard · a film in French · 1965 · about 110 minutes · loosely from Lionel White’s novel Obsession
Mode
Outlaw-couple picture as collage: gangster film, musical, travelogue, comic strip and essay in one feature
Mythos
The lovers on the run; paradise sought on a shore and lost; Robinson Crusoe enacted; the commedia Pierrot, the moon-struck fool betrayed by his Columbine, a name refused and fulfilled
Phase
From a party in Paris and a night flight from a flat with a dead man in it, down the roads of the south to an idyll on the Mediterranean coast, back into the gangsters’ business, and out to an island and the sea
Presentation
Feature film, about 110 minutes, Eastmancolor and Techniscope; intertitles, a voice-over split between two narrators, direct address to the camera, two songs, comic strips, paintings and books on screen
Register
Lyric and ironic in turns; slapstick, musical number, torture and suicide at one pitch of play, primaries of red, white and blue
Scale
Two people, a coast, a library of quotations
Governing Proposition
A man who has left his wife, his job and a party in Paris runs south with a woman he once loved, through stolen cars, a shore, a betrayal and two killings, and blows himself up on an island. The wager of the film is that a feature can be built out of quotation, genre fragments and colour used as a sign and still hold a love story to a real end: a man who can only live through what he reads cannot live with a woman who lives in the present, and the flight from the world of signs carries that world with it to the sea.
Act II · The Essay
Movement I
The film begins with a man in a bath, reading aloud. Ferdinand Griffon, played by Jean-Paul Belmondo, reads Élie Faure on Velázquez to his daughter. He has just lost a job in television, and his wife, played by Graziella Galvani, belongs to the life he is about to leave. The film shows from its first minutes what kind of hero it has: a man who lives in books, for whom the world arrives already written.
Then a party, lit in filters of red, green and yellow, where the guests speak in advertising copy, as though the commercials had moved into their mouths. Samuel Fuller, the American director, stands among them as himself and gives a definition of cinema. The consumer world the film will try to flee is set down here as a room where language has been bought.
Jean-Luc Godard wrote and directed the film, loosely from Lionel White’s novel Obsession of 1962, and Georges de Beauregard produced it. Raoul Coutard photographed it in Eastmancolor and Techniscope, 2.35 to 1; Françoise Collin edited it; Antoine Duhamel wrote the music. It was shown at Venice at the end of August 1965 and opened in Paris that November. One version circulates, the French film of about 110 minutes, and it is the film; later restorations are repair. Anna Karina plays Marianne Renoir, with Dirk Sanders as Fred and Raymond Devos as the man on the jetty.
Movement II
Ferdinand leaves with Marianne Renoir. In her flat a man lies dead, and the gangsters’ business, arms and money, has begun around them without ever being made clear. They flee by night. A night drive in Paris is lit by coloured lights that sweep across the windscreen in the dark, and the film lifts with them.
Marianne calls him Pierrot, the moon-struck clown of the commedia who loves his Columbine and is betrayed by her. He answers: “Je m’appelle Ferdinand”
“My name is Ferdinand”. The refusal is load-bearing. The name is a part handed to him by the woman, and the film will make him play it to the end: he becomes the fool he denies being.
The drive south is a run of stolen cars, each spent and left. One is set on fire on the road. Another is driven straight into the sea. The film destroys its own vehicles one after another, as it uses up its genres, and the lovers-on-the-run picture, the oldest road of the American crime film, is travelled by two people who quote it as they go.
Movement III
On the Mediterranean coast they live like castaways. There is a parrot and a fox, there are books, and Ferdinand keeps a journal. It is the Robinson Crusoe life, a paradise found on a shore, and Coutard’s colour gives it its light: long tracking shots along the water, the sea and the sun.
Karina sings among the trees by the shore, two songs to words by Serge Rezvani, and the film turns musical without warning. Marianne walks the beach with her refrain: “J’sais pas quoi faire”
“Don’t know what to do”. Against it Ferdinand writes in his journal. Here the disclosure is made in image and sound: a man who lives in words and a woman who lives in sensation cannot share a life, however much they love.
The two voices have shared the telling from the start, alternating on the soundtrack, and here the split becomes the subject. They tell the same story and cannot agree on it. The idyll runs out because what holds him does not hold her, and the paradise is lost before the plot returns to take it.
Movement IV
The couple take to the road again, and the film fills the road with episodes. One is a playlet about Vietnam that they put on for American tourists; the war also comes in by a report on the car radio. It is named, not disclosed, and the film keeps it at that distance.
On a jetty a man played by Raymond Devos tells Ferdinand about a tune that will not leave his head. The episode is delightful and stands alone: nothing in the film needs it, and the film has room for it because it has room for anything. That is its freedom, and its cost on the test of what is required.
The gangsters close in. Ferdinand is tortured with water. Marianne goes over to Fred, played by Dirk Sanders; whether she is a betrayer or the figure Ferdinand’s fantasy makes of one, the film leaves open. The staging is flat here, and the plot obeys no law of its own; but it delivers the man to the end the ending needs.
Movement V
On the island Ferdinand shoots Marianne and Fred. Marianne dies. Then he paints his face blue, winds sticks of red and yellow dynamite round his head and lights the fuse. He seems to think better of it, and fails. The explosion is dreadful and comic at once, and the film keeps both.
The camera turns from the explosion to the sea. Over the water and the sun, lines of Rimbaud are whispered: “L’éternité”
“Eternity”. The flight has run out of road at the shore, and the film ends where the image dissolves into the horizon. The man who lived through what he read dies to a quotation, and the last quotation is the sea.
The film is the summa of Godard’s first period, and with it the collage that Breathless had begun as a break became a whole film. Its blue face, its striped dress and its dynamite have outlived it as images, and the outlaw couples of the cinema that followed carry its mark. Its advertising talk and its playlet are of 1965 exactly; the sea at the end is not.
Act III · The Twelve
Run the subtractive test and the film yields a good deal. Its method is accretion: Faure, Céline, Rimbaud, Lorca and Les Pieds Nickelés; a party that speaks in advertising copy; Samuel Fuller defining cinema; a playlet about Vietnam for American tourists; Raymond Devos on a jetty with a tune that will not leave his head; gangster talk of arms and money that the plot never needs to make clear. The playlet and the jetty are the purest cases, delightful and detachable. Against that the spine is required: the flight, the idyll, the betrayal and the death, each paid by the ending. The profusion has a reason, since Ferdinand lives through what he reads; the reason defends the method, not every instance of it, and that holds the axis just below the line of 7.5.
Score: 7.4 / 10
What the film brings into the open can be stated. A romantic flight from the consumer world carries that world with it; a man who lives in words and a woman who lives in sensation cannot share a life, however much they love; and the outlaw romance, played out, ends in murder and self-destruction, not in freedom. The disclosure is made in image and sound on the beach, where Marianne’s refrain is set against Ferdinand writing in his journal, and it is credited in full. Beneath it lies a wider finding, a life lived among signs. What holds the axis below the gate: much of the disclosure is mood, the melancholy of an impossible couple, and the social diagnosis is stated by collage more than shown to hold. Vietnam is named, not disclosed.
Score: 8.2 / 10
The film rises often, and frequency counts. The night drive in Paris with coloured lights sweeping across the windscreen; a car burning on the road; a car driven into the sea; Anna Karina singing among the trees by the shore; Raoul Coutard’s light on the Mediterranean, and the long tracking shots along the water. The ending is a true summit, dreadful and comic at once: the painted face, the dynamite wound round the head and lit, the second thought that comes too late, the explosion, and the turn to the sea with Rimbaud whispered over it. Held short of the top because the elevation goes lyric and ironic in turns, and the irony cuts the height down before it can build, as the film intends.
Score: 8.5 / 10
The myths are many, and some are built. The outlaw couple of You Only Live Once, They Live by Night and Gun Crazy is the structure; the flight to the shore is a paradise sought and lost; the Robinson Crusoe life is enacted with its parrot and its books. The commedia Pierrot, the moon-struck clown betrayed by his Columbine, is the name Marianne gives Ferdinand against his will, and his refusal is load-bearing: he becomes the fool he denies being. Rimbaud’s eternity of sea and sun closes it. The charge holds the axis below the gate: much of the archetypal matter is evoked by citation, on book covers, in quotations and painted reproductions, rather than built into the action. The film collects myths as it collects paintings.
Score: 8.2 / 10
The inheritance is the American crime film and the lovers-on-the-run picture, the pulp of White’s novel, and Godard’s own work to date. The departure is large. A star picture with the two leading names of the new French cinema is made as a collage of genres; colour is used as a primary sign, in the red, white and blue of the flag and the filtered light of the party; the lead talks to the camera; two narrators share the voice-over and correct each other; intertitles cut the film, and quotation becomes narrative matter. The stake was real: a costly production in colour and widescreen, with a commercial cast, in a form that refused the plot it borrowed. Held below the top because much of the vocabulary was Godard’s already, as in Breathless (9.3), and the turn from his own practice is one of degree.
Score: 8.6 / 10
Change the form and the film loses what it knows. Told continuously, in the classical manner, White’s novel would be a crime picture about a man ruined by a woman. Broken, it becomes a film about a man who can live only in fragments of what he has read, and a woman who lives in a present tense he cannot enter. The split voice-over is the instrument: the two narrators share the telling and cannot agree on it. The chapter breaks, the comic-strip inserts and the codes of colour are the hero’s consciousness made into cinema. The form also knows its end: the flight runs out of road at the sea, and the image dissolves into the horizon. Held below the top because some devices are applied rather than required, and part of the collage would serve any Godard film of those years.
Score: 8.4 / 10
Sixty years of return are the evidence. The film has been read as the summa of Godard’s first period, as a film about colour, as an essay on language and image, as a document of Godard and Karina’s separation, and as a political film before the politics, with Vietnam and the consumer world at its margins. It yields formally on return: the sea, the red and the blue, the books, the cars destroyed one after another, the two voices. Questions stay open: whether Marianne is a betrayer or a figure the man’s fantasy makes into one; whether the end is tragedy, farce or both; how far the politics are meant. Held at the figure because part of the yield is the pleasure of naming quotations, which closes once they are named, and much of the writing returns to a few readings.
Score: 8.4 / 10
The field is the cinema of the 1960s, a crowded one. The intrinsic force is strong: the film is the fullest statement of collage cinema in its decade, showing that a feature could be built from quotation, fragments of genre and colour as sign while keeping a love story and an ending of real force. It is a summa more than a first: Breathless (9.3) and Vivre sa vie had opened the way. Achieved reach is scored with intrinsic force: it stands behind the American outlaw-couple films that followed, Bonnie and Clyde in 1967 among them; behind Leos Carax’s Mauvais Sang and Les Amants du Pont-Neuf; behind Wong Kar-wai’s colour and voice-over and Quentin Tarantino’s collage of genres, lines commonly drawn and sound. The reach is wide within art cinema and the cinephile tradition, narrower beyond it, and the figure stands below the gate for that.
Score: 8.4 / 10
Weighed on form, then presence, then surface. The form survives whole: one version, nothing lost, the restorations repair only. Presence has been continuous for sixty-one years, in repertory, festival retrospectives, television and home video and the teaching of film, and the film’s images have outlived it as currency: the blue face, Karina’s striped dress, the dynamite. That presence is wide within cinema and limited beyond it. The Techniscope colour, restored, holds. The surface is the charge: the advertising talk, the pop and comic-strip register, the Vietnam playlet and the political allusions are fixed to 1965 and read as period. The charge falls on surface only, and the figure stands a step below what that span of survival usually earns, and above the figure it earns where presence is charged too.
Score: 8.6 / 10
Command of the medium; invention is credited under The Swerve and Pressure on Tradition. The command is real and bears weight in the principal parts: Coutard’s colour, the primaries in the décor and the costumes, the long lateral tracks by the sea, the night lights on the windscreen; Antoine Duhamel’s score, romantic and broken off mid-phrase as the cutting demands; Jean-Paul Belmondo and Karina, who hold the screen through every change of register, and Karina’s songs. Sound is cut as boldly as image. The costs: the roughness is partly method and partly haste; the gangster scenes are flatly staged; some inserts and tableaux, the playlet above all, are thin as making; continuity of action is waived beyond what the form needs. A master in command of his means, with uneven finish, not the even and total command the top of the axis requires.
Score: 8.5 / 10
Take the two most distant elements: the party in advertising talk, flat and comic, and the explosion on the island with Rimbaud over the sea. One law governs both: every experience comes through a sign, a quotation, a picture, a genre, and the man who cannot get free of them blows himself up trying. The law holds across a very wide range, from slapstick and musical to murder and suicide, and the range is the achievement. The strain holds the figure down. The gangster plot obeys no law of its own: its business of arms and money is neither credited nor parodied consistently. Some shifts of tone are arbitrary rather than lawful, as in Devos on the jetty, which answers to no rule but the film’s freedom. That freedom is a law of a kind, but a loose one, and narrowness is not coherence any more than looseness is.
Score: 8.1 / 10
The orders are present: the couple, and the marriage left behind; consumer society and advertising; war, in Vietnam; art and literature as a second world; the natural order in the sea, the sun and the animals of the coast; consciousness, in Ferdinand’s journal and the two voices. They are partly integrated through Ferdinand, who holds the art, the language and the love in one disposition. What holds the axis low is that the social and political orders are listed by collage more than held. Vietnam is a playlet and a report on the car radio; labour is absent once Ferdinand has lost his job in television; the state appears only as police by the road; the sacred is Rimbaud’s eternity and nothing more. It is a film of one man’s disposition, widened by quotation rather than by structure.
Score: 7.5 / 10
Act IV · The Reckoning
8.2 / 10 · Final Average
Placement: Tier IV · Canonical
Strongest Dimensions
The Swerve and The Imperishable at 8.6, then The Sublime and The Made at 8.5. A star picture made as a collage of genres with colour as a sign, on a real stake; a film that survives whole in its one version, its images in circulation sixty years on; summits that rise often, from the night drive to the explosion and the sea; and a command of colour, camera, music and playing that bears weight through every change of register.
Limiting Dimension
The Inevitable at 7.4: the spine of flight, idyll, betrayal and death is required, but the method is accretion, and the playlet, the jetty and the gangsters’ business can go without loss. Beside it, The Encompassed at 7.5, the social and political orders listed by collage rather than held, and The Inner Law at 8.1, a law of mediation that holds across a wide range but loosens in the gangster plot and the free interludes.
The Necessity Cap is unmet: The Inevitable at 7.4 falls a tenth short of the threshold of 7.5. The Coherence Floor clears: The Made at 8.5, The Living Form at 8.4, The Inner Law at 8.1, each against 7.0. The Epochal Gate is unmet on three axes: The Swerve at 8.6 and The Imperishable at 8.6 clear the bar of 8.5, but Pressure on Tradition at 8.4, The Unconcealment at 8.2 and The Archetypal Deep at 8.2 fall short of it. The Universal Minimum is unmet at The Inevitable, 7.4, a tenth below 7.5, with The Inner Law at 8.1 the next lowest; The Encompassed, which it exempts, clears its own floor of 6.0 at 7.5. Two of the five summit conditions are met, the Coherence Floor and the Megethos Floor. The work stands where its aggregate places it: 8.2, from a sum of 98.8, in the band of Tier IV, below the 9.0 that the summit requires, and the Necessity Cap would close the summit to it at any aggregate.
Basis · a reading from knowledge of Pierrot le Fou as released in 1965, the French film of about 110 minutes in its one circulating version, in Eastmancolor and Techniscope, from the bath and the party to the sea: written and directed by Jean-Luc Godard, loosely from Lionel White’s novel Obsession, produced by Georges de Beauregard, photographed by Raoul Coutard, edited by Françoise Collin, with music by Antoine Duhamel; with Jean-Paul Belmondo, Anna Karina, Dirk Sanders, Graziella Galvani, Raymond Devos and Samuel Fuller. Later restorations repair the same film and bear on The Imperishable only. No print, script or subtitle file was consulted. Every axis is judged on the French film; English renderings are given beneath the French for sense, are a reader’s aid rather than the object, and nothing here is charged to them. Dialogue is quoted only where its words are certain; Fuller’s definition of cinema and the lines of Rimbaud are described rather than quoted beyond one word. The film is known here in its large structure and its sequences, not shot by shot. Details that could not be verified, among them the co-production credits, the exact date of the Paris opening, the year of the restoration, the titles of the songs, the number of intertitles, the exact order of the episodes on the road, the full content of the gangsters’ business, the place of Algeria in it, the scene and shot counts and most dialogue to the word, are not given, and the account of the middle of the film follows its episodes without fixing their order.