Qu’est-ce que la mise en scène - Jean-Luc Godard

"We are in the process of doing exactly, in my opinion, what we should not do..." This interview made for the ORTF in 1969, never broadcasted and preserved in its state of rushes (claps, end of reels, disjunction of sound and image) is a doubly precious document. Precious because of what Godard says while denouncing everything (television, the interview as an agreed-upon exercise) - this is the Godard "that we must accept as a whole", as Chris Marker used to say, with his strokes of genius and his "nonsenses". Precious by its materiality : the tension that runs through these images, to the point of rupture (Godard shutting the lens with his hand, striving to "waste the film of the ORTF"), draws quite precisely the state of affairs after May 68 : the interviewer, an unconscious accomplice of these "powers that would prefer us without memory," asks questions that date back to the "politics of authorship," as if May 68 had never existed; Godard, in the midst of theoretical agitation, equally caricatured but in tune with the times, who constantly brings back the new state of things and images. "Yes, there is ONE great director! All the films we see, all the French films we see on the screens, they have a great director : De Gaulle. You have to choose sides, comrades!

Arnaud Lambert
Filmmaker