Because I think you guys are swell.
Ice cream you scream.
What’s great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too.
A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good.
Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it.
(The Philosophy of Andy Warhol, 1975.)
So my daughter is completely obsessed by Amanda Seyfriend due to her being in Mean Girls and Mamma Mia!, and she made me buy her this month’s issue of In Style magazine because Amanda Seyfried is on the cover. She is six and has never read a ladies’ make-up and hairstyle magazine, and, as she is the girliest-girl on the planet (I assume that’s some sort of rebellion against me), it has blown her little mind.
During Mass as we took our seats after the gospel in preparation for the homily, kidlet leaned over and said, “I think Father Khoi is a heart-shape like me.” I whispered, “What?” And she said, “His face. Like me. Heart-shapes. We are not supposed to have bangs on our foreheads because it will make our chins look sharp.” I shushed her and assured her that I doubted Father Khoi is considering cutting bangs, but if I heard of it, I’d let him know.
Continuing on the topic of bangs, she told me very seriously later that day, as we sat by the pool in the evening, that I needed to cut bangs again. She looked at me critically and said, “You are an oval but your face is too long. It will look smaller with bangs.” Thanks for the tip.
Quotes from Godard illustrated by his wife and early muse, my own style inspiration and personal patron saint, the lovely and talented* Anna Karina.
*Not sure if you’d noticed, but I only bill as “lovely and talented” those who take it off. Write that down.
All you need to make a movie is a girl and a gun. (Journal entry, 5/16/91)
“Light me up!” Still of Anna Karina as Natacha van Braun from Alphaville, une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution / Alphaville (1965)
I don’t think you should feel about a movie. You should feel about a woman. You can’t kiss a movie.
Still with Jean-Paul Belmondo from Une femme est une femme / A Woman is a Woman (1961), previously highlighted with “Look, Ma, no gag reflex!” still here back in September.
“In films, we are trained by the American way of moviemaking to think we must understand and ‘get’ everything right away. But this is not possible. When you eat a potato, you don’t understand each atom of the potato!” (Interview with David Sherritt, The Christian Science Monitor, 8/3/94)
Une femme est une femme / A Woman is a Woman (1961)
Art attracts us only by what it reveals of our most secret self. (Critique called “What Is Cinema?” for Les Amis du Cinéma , 10/1/52, a work which advanced the auteur theory but also kind of ripped off Bazin, which is weird cause Bazin would’ve read it and was a big influence on Godard but this was done contemporaneously of Bazin himself working on something titled this, about this, so maybe the quote is misattributed? … or maybe there is more to it than I know with my tiny ken of French movie guys, maybe it was a done thing to borrow titles from one another, or perhaps it was a continuation of a dialogue they were already having both in person and via publications, or, finally, it could even have been an “understood” question which anyone might use as the title of a book or article … I am probably over-reading it.)
Hands down my favorite picture of Anna Karina
Beauty is composed of an eternal, invariable element whose quantity is extremely difficult to determine, and a relative element which might be, either by turns or all at once, period, fashion, moral, passion. (“Defense and Illustration of Classical Construction,” Cahiers du Cinéma, 9/15/52)
Cover or liner art for her album, a collaboration with the dread Serge G
The truth is that there is no terror untempered by some great moral idea. (“Strangers on a Train,” Cahiers du Cinéma 3/10/52 — Godard wrote extensively and insightfully in his early career about the movies of Hitchcock, one of my favorite and I think misunderstood directors; I’ll try to share some good nuggets from time to time)
Anna cahorts about topless as Anne in 1968’s The Magus, also starring Anthony Quinn (Zorba the Greek), Michael Caine, and Candace Bergen (Murphy Brown) — no one seems to like this movie but me. That’s okay, because I like it a lot.
Photography is truth. The cinema is truth twenty-four times per second. (Le petit soldad / The Little Soldier, 1963.)
With Jean-Paul Belmondo again, this time as Ferdinand and Marianne in the sort of romantic-tragi-comedy-crime-caper Pierrot le fou / Crazy Pete / Pierre Goes Wild (1965).
To be or not to be? That’s not really a question. (unsourced)
Screencap with subtitles from Une femme est une femme / A Woman is a Woman (1961).
The only thing more attractive to a man than demonstrating for him your lax gag reflex is doing so with a negative pregnancy test. Winner, winner, chicken dinner! Love it.
Anna Karina as Angéla with Jean-Claude Brialy as Émile in Une femme est une femme, 1961, directed by Jean-Luc Godard.
A naughty cabaret dancer/singer—one of these days I will track down a scene on youtube and put it up here, she does this one in a sailor outfit that is hilarious—wants a baby (cause you know us women), but her boyfriend is not going for it, so she decides to hook it up with his friend Alfred (Jean-Paul Belmondo), who is always claiming to be in love with her, and sort-of hijinks ensue. It’s actually very witty and offbeat, and it has some fun music in it, too.
Alfred: Answer yes, and I owe you 100₣. Answer no, and you owe me 100₣, okay?
Bar Owner: Okay.
Alfred: Okay. Here’s the question: Can you loan me 100₣?