{"id":15625,"date":"2010-08-11T16:04:32","date_gmt":"2010-08-11T15:04:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.influx.co.uk\/wordpress\/?p=15625"},"modified":"2024-11-14T14:52:18","modified_gmt":"2024-11-14T14:52:18","slug":"jean-luc-godard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.adrianflux.co.uk\/influx\/features\/jean-luc-godard\/","title":{"rendered":"Jean Luc Godard and the Auto-Dystopia"},"content":{"rendered":"

Quintessential French filmmaker? Perhaps. Unbearably pretentious? Depends. Petrolhead? At times.The controversial French director Jean Luc Godard\u2019s work is shot through with ambiguities. One of the most visible is the precarious relationship that exists in his films with cars and with women. They represent desire and danger as readily as liberation and entrapment \u2013 in Godard\u2019s films these things collide in the form of the subtly feminine curves of the corrozzeria<\/em>.<\/p>\n

In 1960\u2019s New Wave opus Breathless<\/em>, the director\u2019s faith in automobiles is almost intact. The whole movie is steeped selfconsciously in the essence of Hollywood, from the sleek cars to the cool gangsterism of the central character, which is played by an impossibly hip Jean Paul Belmondo.\u00a0 Jean Seberg, meanwhile, plays Belmondo\u2019s American lover. Gangster and girl cruise around Paris in various stolen motors, including a beautiful \u201956 Thunderbird coupe, committing crimes and indulging in an elliptical sort of trans-Atlantic holiday romance.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n

But Belmondo\u2019s true partner-in-crime is not the girl.\u00a0 It\u2019s the car. The cipher of freedom wrought in steel is always waiting around that Parisian street corner to help him escape. In the closing scene Belmondo is caught out. Having been betrayed by his girl, the getaway car is nowhere to be seen. Breathless, with the police in pursuit, the young man\u2019s luck runs out and he takes a bullet in his back. The moral of the story? Women can\u2019t be trusted, and the American dream will fail you.<\/p>\n

From thereon in, Godard\u2019s work the relationship between man and machine becomes steadily more and more sour. Cars continually fail their owners. Swanky film producers and their lovers are abruptly crushed in their shiny Alfas.\u00a0 With the arrival of Weekend<\/em>, Godard\u2019s 1967 dystopian vision of the future, the decree absolute between the director and the automobile is finally exchanged.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n

The film features what was the longest one-take tracking sequence in film history –\u00a0 the camera panning across a hilariously strange, seemingly endless traffic jam. Fights break out in the background. Families picnic in their cars. Death is discovered in tableau at the roadside.\u00a0 The car is no longer a handy escape mechanism from the strictures of mainstream society, but instead becomes the driving force of a bourgeois decadence that spawns only death and decay.<\/p>\n

Jean Luc Godard evoked the contemporary dilemma of car culture very early. We can\u2019t make a break from our planet-gobbling obsession with cars. They may fail us every now and then \u2014 but being totemic of freedom, escape and sexuality \u2014 they remain essentially seductive.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cars, Girls and Decadence…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1779,1781,6,1780],"tags":[115,212,2530,141],"class_list":["post-15625","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cars","category-culture","category-features","category-people","tag-film","tag-french","tag-french-car","tag-movies"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nJean Luc Godard and the Auto-Dystopia - Influx<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Cars, Girls and Decadence...\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.adrianflux.co.uk\/influx\/features\/jean-luc-godard\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Jean Luc Godard and the Auto-Dystopia - 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