Cheap In Praise Of Love (DVD) (Bruno Putzulu, Cecile Camp) (Jean-Luc Godard) Price

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Customer Reviews of In Praise Of Love

Europe uber Alles
It is important that "In Praise of Love" is watched by many ordinary intellectuals in US, for it is a beautifully stated manifesto. "We are all tricksters" states Godard, and here he tricks the cinema lovers into the formalist heresy of acknowledging his "masterful" technique, his "outstanding" cinematography.
However, the supposedy profound content of this film is actually nothing other than a set of actions, thoughts, and presumptions usually found in a teenager who is well read, lives in Europe, and never lived in US: extensive citations from unpopular books by the great (French) philosophers, paranoidal hate of the Americans, and the constant mention of death...
Has the great European film director Jean-Luc Godard become wiser and better with age, or the most horrible is true? That he has finally shown us the true face of his and of European intellectualism in general: an adolescent burdened by his own thoughts of love and death.
Aside from it all, this film has moments for which the author could get punched in the face. There is a mention of the "fact" that most Albanian "refugees" were in their home at the time of the Serbian army attack. Mr. Godard ommits the fact that they were not refugees at that precise moment yet.
It is neccessary to see and look deep into what Godard is saying and what he is showing us. The great repository of culture (Europe = France) has History on its side, and that makes all of US population - an inferior breed of humans. It is all very "profound" indeed!!!

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A Poetic Essay
If you only know Godard from his 1960's films this late phase masterpiece will come as a surprise. In Praise of Love could just as well be titled In Praise of French Culture as this film is like a testament to all of the things Godard loves most about his countries cultural traditions. We know Godards taste in philosophy, music, literature, painting and most importantly film because his favorite sources decorate every frame of the film. References abound within the film to Robert Bresson -- who I think could well be called the patron saint of French Cinema. The New Wave film makers were always fond of Bresson but here Godard not only shows a young man standing in front of a movie poster for Pickpocket but he also quotes from Notes of a Cinematographer-- this book provides wonderful insights into Bressons mind set but also Godards who obviously reveres him . There is also a moving reference to Vigo's L'Atalante. The Godard of the 90's is a much matured artist less concerned with shaking things up than with learning how and teaching us how we must look backward and remember in order to move forward. The view of an aging artist yes but also the view of a mature artist.

The first half of In Praise of Love is shot in black and white and the most memorable shots are of Paris at night -- the cinematography is achingly romantic which is fitting for the first halfs main theme is the search for romantic love. It is misleading to say this is the only theme though as while that theme is explored Godard also speaks of the current state of France and through his actors offers his insights into the modern state of French public life and politics which obviously leave him cold -- ie the state has no love for its people, and, anyone who makes over 10,000 francs a month in France no longer has a political conscience. As he films his young actors you can tell Godard is reminiscing about his own youth and own first love Anna Karina. For Godard politics are never far from love -- the two seem to go hand in hand for him -- because the search for love is intimately connected with our search for an ideal. Love will always fail, Godard seems to say, because we can never achieve our ideal of it -- or, searching for the ideal we cease to see the object that we love. In support of this examination of the early stages of love by a young man he offers an older gentlemans memory of his first love and how the memory of it still stings him. The film has a decidedly documentary feeling and a decidedly somber tone which is reinforced by the elegiac piano music. Though the narrative is not strictly linear it is fairly easy to follow. In addition each time Godard quotes one of his cherished sources (Chateubriand, Balzaz, Bataille's Blue Noon) the book is usually in the frame. The Godardian methods will be familiar to someone who has only seen his sixties work but you will also notice that those methods have mellowed, deepened, and become more intimate, and furthermore the pace of his films has slowed considerably reflecting the directors age and this is actually a welcome nuance as it allows one to absorb the content of each sequence. I am tempted to say I prefer this late phase of Godards career to his early phase but of course one would not exist without the other.

In the second part the main theme shifts away from love, although that continues to be a minor theme, and towards history -- in truth the two themes are interrelated and comments made about one topic invariably have significance for the other. Memory becomes an obsesion for the aging artist and Henri Bergson is a major reference point in this section of the film. Godard argues that until nations are willing to confess their crimes and own up to them and allow for open discourse they will remain in a kind of infancy. National identity and growth is dependent on memory and thus America is ridiculed for failing to have any kind of memory. In fact in the funniest part of the film a representative for an American film company is in France trying to purchase the rights to a resistance fighters memoirs. Godard has a character comment that America has no memories of its own and thus must buy them from other countries. America is seen to be suffering from the worst case of arrested development but France is also seen to be guilty of it as well.

The film is a rich essay with many themes which complement each other in unusual ways. I found it moving and thoughtful and infinitely rich -- at any given moment you will find yourself contemplating a particularly evocative reference which connects the past to the present. This is the kind of film you like immediately and the kind of film that invites you back to it. There is much here and I've only hinted at some of the things I noticed on a single viewing but I plan on watching this many more times.

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Melancholy
An incredibly melancholy movie by Godard. Interesting experimental use of digital video too.