In May 2019, professor Fernão Pessoa Ramos, from Unicamp's Institute of Arts (IA), wrote an article about the film “Imagem e Palavra” and thought about calling it “The Last Godard” – a reference to the kind of code used by cinephiles in the 60s and 70s who, when they met other aficionados, asked if the others had seen Godard's latest film, the one that had just arrived in cinemas or that was circulating in film clubs. The professor, who feared being misinterpreted, ended up deciding that the article – published in Jornal da Unicamp – should be called “The new Godard”. Ironically, however, the essay dealt with what will become known as Godard's last feature film.
The brilliant French-Swiss director died on September 13th, at the age of 91, after an assisted suicide, in the small Swiss town of Rolle. The expression “the last Godard” refers to a very specific period in the history of the world and cinema, says the professor at the Department of Multimedia and Communication at IA. “In the 60s, cinema had a catalytic dimension for an entire generation – in which the arts all led to cinema. Everyone wanted to see cinema, they wanted to be a filmmaker”, says Ramos. “For this reason, there was a great expectation about the new films, especially those by Godard”, he adds.
“Godard is a bit like the Leonardo da Vinci of the 20th century”, comments the professor. “He brings together a set of arts and trends and has been through everything: from the Rolling Stones to Mao Tse Tung. From the Bosnian war to the Bible. He took everything.”
“He was one of the main figures of a central avant-garde of 20th century cinema, which is the New wave, and was later recognized by Hollywood and almost every festival in the world. He even won an Oscar for his lifetime of work, which he never received. He had an intense link with Italian neorealism and avant-garde documentaryism, or essayism, through the Dziga Vertov group (Soviet director from the 1920s/1930s that Godard paid homage to). He also had a very strong fiction side (although not through films with a linear plot) in which he was able to deal with the difficulties of his time”, says Ramos.
“Godard is unique. He lived through a historic moment in cinema, the 50s, 60s, 70s, a period in which film, overlapping with cinema, had its peak,” he added. Founding president of the Brazilian Society of Cinema and Media Studies, Ramos does not treat death with fatalism. "Things change. I, who in my youth waited for the last Godard, now have gray hair”, he argues.
“It's been many years, and we can't possibly want everything to stay the same. Is the cinema over? No. People continue to go to the cinema, and there is still a strong presence of films through streaming and other media. On digital platforms, in addition to films, there are also series, which come from film-cinema, are serial and extensive audiovisual narratives”.
The important thing, he says, was the story that Godard built. According to the professor, the influence of Nouvelle Vague – and especially Godard – was immense, worldwide. “Nouvelle Vague was the first of the 'New Cinemas'. You have the new Brazilian cinema, the new Czech cinema, the new English cinema, the Polish, the North American; all in the 1960s. And they all have a very strong Nouvelle Vague influence,” he explains.
For Ramos, Godard is a central figure in the Nouvelle Vague. “The Misunderstood, by François Truffaut, from 1958, is the inaugural film of the New Wave, but Breathless (Acossado) – which means breathless, in the sense that there is no more air to breathe –, which is somewhat the rhythm of the film made in 1960, is what really triggers the movement in its most innovative side, which will achieve dealing with post-1968”.
The Nouvelle Vague, says Ramos, comes from two aspects. One of them is the relationship with realism, especially Italian neorealism, which was a new way of making cinema on the street, with a low budget, without a script, poor photography, camera in hand. “All of this produces a stylistics that we could call realistic, in the sense that it is closer to life, everyday life, improvisations, the indeterminacies that surround people's daily lives”, explains the professor.
The other aspect refers to a very strong intertextual density. “Nouvelle Vague embodies the history of cinema. Therefore, I assert that harassed it is a pioneering film in terms of inaugurating modern cinema, because it dialogues with the history of cinema, in particular with (film) noir, with the musical, with the detective, with the classic narrative, with Hollywood cinema; in short, cinematic modernity par excellence, unlike the modernities of the beginning of the century – Russian cinema or German expressionism, which have a stronger dialogue with other artistic fields”, he says.
For the teacher, the central characteristic of harassed This is a more realistic proposal, in dialogue with the new technologies that appear, for example, in mobile cameras, in the greater photographic sensitivity of film and in dialogue with the history of cinema. Since its emergence, Nouvelle Vague has had a very strong influence on the world and continues to resonate, according to professor Fernão Ramos.
“More contemporarily, we have Quentin Tarantino (American director, who created the film production company “Band Apart”, a play on the name of Godard’s classic film, Bande à Part, 1964). And which axis does Tarantino take? Godard's intertextuality. O harassed It's pure Tarantino. It's that thing outside of gravity; bang-bang, this play with narrative that Godard always liked to do. But, we must remember, this cut does not exhaust Godard’s stylistics”, he warns.
The professor says that, in the Brazilian case, Godard's influence was even greater. Cinema Novo emerged in Brazil early. While the new cinemas are later – more towards the end of the 1960s or beginning of the 70s –, Cinema Novo do Brasil dates back to the beginning of the 60s. Glauber Rocha had already been awarded at Cannes in 1964 and recognized internationally, he recalls. he.
For Ramos, despite occurring almost simultaneously, the influence of Nouvelle Vague can be felt in new Brazilian cinema in a very direct way. “You take God and the Devil in the Land of the Sun (by Glauber Rocha, 1964) and sees that fragmentation, the overlapping of voices, narrative forms, have everything to do with Godard's proposals. Not to mention Glauber's participation in the film The East Wind (made in 1970 by the Dziga Vertov Group)”, recalls the professor.
“Glauber speaks for third world cinema. Look. It's not even from Latin America. Who is the spokesperson for 3rd world cinema at the time? Glauber and his entire generation. Furthermore, it still has the Cinema Marginal. Hence, the influence is even greater,” he says. "The relationship between pierrot le fou (which in Brazil won the title The Eleven O'Clock Demon) and the Red Light Bandit It's immense. The similarities are evident. Godard’s influence”, he guarantees.
The professor, in fact, plays with the translation of the film's title. “I still wonder today what went through the translator's head when he called pierrot le fou de Demon of the Eleven O'Clock. Why 11 o'clock? Why the hell?” he asks, laughing.
Beyond the New Wave
Fernão Pessoa Ramos also assesses that the filmmaker's career went beyond the Nouvelle Vague. “Godard comes from the Nouvelle Vague, but it, like every cinematographic movement, is restricted in time. The same happens with Cinema Novo. You may ask: Was Glauber bigger than Cinema Novo? These movements do not have a date of birth, like human beings, who count their age from the moment they leave their mother's body. They also do not have characteristics that are found in books, such as those that separate mammals from reptiles, for example. You can't say Nouvelle Vaugue is this, this, this.... Or say it's not that, it's not that... Like romanticism, baroque. There are fluid characteristics that define Nouvelle Vague. Some very strong characteristics clearly define the movement, but it is not a mathematical definition”, he argues.
“There is a part of Godard's career that develops at the core of Nouvelle Vague, influenced by Nouvelle Vague and making Nouvelle Vague, but he goes much further. Then, he creates a group that wants to be Maoist, a Maoism of filmmaking, and Truffaut, for example, is making classic films. Rohmer (Éric Rohmer – another member of Nouvelle Vague) is going to make another type of film, even with a bias towards religious, Christian dilemmas. And Godard follows his career, and in this sense, he goes well beyond the nucleus that made up the young Godard at his core”, says the professor.
The radicality of life
Fernão Pessoa Ramos says he was disturbed by Godard's death, but believes that the circumstances (assisted suicide) were consistent with the radical nature of his life. “I was a little shocked by his death. It's as if part of our generation has left. But this story doesn’t end,” he says.
“I was struck by the way he died. It didn't fit out of his life. It was consistent with his career, in the sense that, in a certain way, he wanted to have control over when he would switch off. As the greatest 'metteur en scène' of his generation, I have the impression that he created a mise-en-scène, a mise-em-scène, also for his death. At a time when he felt, deep down in his soul, deeply exhausted and fragile. I think there came a time when he said: enough. And he left as he came in, acting out the farce of life”, said the professor.
“It was a closure. I'm not going to say it was a golden closure, because that's not the case, there's no such thing. But it was a closure in tune with the artistic sensitivity and aesthetics that he preached throughout his life. Godard always had this radical side. That's where the harmony in death lies: this radicality. There was no violence, just the radicality of the scene”, concluded the professor.
