#482: GODARD, Jean-Luc: 2 Or 3 Things I Know About Her (1967)

GODARD, Jean-Luc (France)

2 Or 3 Things I Know About Her [1967]

Spine #482
DVD

In 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her, Jean-Luc Godard beckons us ever closer, whispering in our ears as narrator. About what? Money, sex, fashion, the city, love, language, war: in a word, everything. Among the legendary French filmmaker's finest achievements, the film takes as its ostensible subject the daily life of Juliette Janson (Marina Vlady), a housewife from the Paris suburbs who prostitutes herself for extra money. Yet this is only a template for Godard to spin off into provocative philosophical tangents and gorgeous images. 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her is perhaps Godard's most revelatory look at consumer culture, shot in ravishing widescreen color by Raoul Coutard.

87 minutes
Color

Monaural

in French

2:35:1 aspect ratio

Criterion Release 2009

Director/Writers

Based on an article by Catherine Vimenet.

Jean-Luc Godard was 37 when he wrote and directed 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her.

Other Godard films in the Collection:

#408: Breathless (1960)
#238: A Woman Is A Woman (1961)
#512: Vivre Sa Vie (1962)
#171: Contempt (1963)
#1010: Le Petit Soldat (1963)
#174: Band Of Outsiders (1964)
#25: Alphaville (1965)
#421: Pierrot Le Fou (1965)
#308: Masculin Féminin (1966)

#481: Made In U.S.A. (1966)
#635: Weekend (1967)
#744: Every Man For Himself (1980)

The Film

The color is spectacular. Red, White and Blue (and some Yellow); occasionally put in the correct (French) order: Blue, White and Red! It’s all a feast for the eyeballs.

Godard is the whispering narrator, with two or three things on his mind: first and foremost, American imperialism — specifically the Vietnam War, and the underlying pertinent counterpoint, mass consumerism.

Bursts of short fragments from Beethoven’s late string quartet in F Major, Op. 135, occasionally punctuate the image.

The “anonymous” letter from “Stella” (reprinted in its entirety in the booklet) is perhaps just as powerful as the film itself. In this society of the mid-‘60s, a middle-aged French woman is reduced to prostitution in the banlieues, presumably because she has burst her budget with too much consumerist stuff! — today, these ugly high-rises are overflowing with poverty-stricken immigrants, who are much worse off than Juliette (Marina Vlady). [see, for example, La Haine (1995)]

It is a shame that, by this time, Godard’s had stopped working with his ex-wife — Anna Karina. Vlady is purposely less animated Karina, but I think AK would have given a much more interesting performance.

Some highlights:

• She drops her kids off at a day-care center which doubles as a brothel.
• An American war correspondent, John Bogus (Raoul Lévy) [read about Lévy’s sad demise], hires both Juliette and Marianne (Anny Duperey). He makes them put his TWA and Pan Am travel bags over their heads (both then mammoth American corporations which no longer exist today!)
• Juliette’s husband, Robert (Roger Montsoret) sits in a café, presumably waiting for Juliette. A pretty girl sits next to him (Juliet Berto). What starts as an innocent conversation — albeit inappropriate even then — would today be considered sexual harassment.
• A beautiful scene where we get a full 20 seconds or so of the Beethoven, has Juliette repeating the motion of walking through a group of trees towards the café.
• One of the most exciting images in the film: Godard whispers over an ECU of a bubbling, swirling cup of coffee.
• The final shot:

Film Rating (0-60):

52

The Extras

The Booklet

Twenty-two page booklet featuring an essay by film critic Amy Taubin and the letter that sparked the idea for the film.

“‘I wanted to include everything: sports, politics, even groceries. Everything should be put in a film,’ wrote Godard about 2 or 3 Things. It could have been Andy Warhol speaking. And given that Godard and Warhol had the same genius for purloining the words and images of others to create visions of the world like no others, I hesitate to venture which of them was first to express the desire to encompass ‘everything’ in a movie. It was Warhol, however, who in 1962 brought ‘groceries,’ or more specifically brand-name grocery packaging, into the institutions of high art, creating a media sensation. So one can safely say that Warhol was very much on Godard’s mind when, in 1966, he plucked from the magazine Le Nouvel observateur a letter in response to an article enticingly titled ‘The Shooting Stars,’ about women living in the newly built housing developments on the edge of Paris, who worked as part-time prostitutes in order to pay for the basics of a middle-class life (what Godard ironically dubs ‘a normal life’), not the least of which was their groceries.”

Commentary

Featuring film scholar Adrian Martin.

Yes, scholarly, perhaps even a bit overly didactic. This film may mark the beginning of Godard’s period of serious political commentary, but one still gets the feeling that he’s putting us on …

Archival television interviews

The first featuring actress Vlady on the set of the film, the second with Godard debating the subject of prostitution.

Vlady makes an astute observation towards the end of her interview. Godard was unique in her experience with directors, in that she wasn’t expected to be an icon of beauty and seductiveness, but rather was encouraged to drop all such masked pretenses.

In this, Godard was surely ahead of his time.

**

In the rather too-obviously set-up tête-a-tête between Godard and Jean St. Geours, a political futurist, it is merely quaint to hear Godard express astonishment that the governing political party is using advertising specialists in their upcoming campaign. Ooh-la-la … or pffouffff …

Video interview

With theater director Antoine Bourseiller, a friend of Godard’s in the sixties.

The very sad story of a good friendship lost to absurdist politics.

Video essay

Cataloging the multiple references in the film.

For example:

• The two men sitting in the café behind many stacks of books … one of them, Bouvard (Claude Miller) is picking up books and randomly reading a short passage, while Pécuchet (Jean-Patrick Lebel) writes it down. So the joke is Bouvard and Pécuchet (1881) is an unfinished novel by Gustave Flaubert about two “copy-clerks.” Ha-ha …

Godard would have us research every tiny clue buried amongst the detritus of this political diatribe. I’d rather just enjoy the bright colors.

Theatrical trailer

Extras Rating (0-40):

34

52 + 34 =

86

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