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Cambridge Film Classics
The Films of Jean-Luc Godard: Seeing the Invisible
In this study, David Sterritt offers an introductory overview of Godard's work as a filmmaker, critic, and video artist. In subsequent chapters, he traces Godard's visionary ideas through six of his key films, including Breathless, My Life to Live, Weekend, Numéro deux, Hail Mary, and Nouvelle vague. Also included is a concise analysis of Godard's work in video, television, and mixed-media formats. Linking Godard's works to key social and cultural developments, The Films of Jean-Luc Godard explains their importance in modernist and postmodernist art of the past half century.
- GenresFilm
316 pages, Paperback
First published August 13, 1999
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About the author
David Sterritt
18 books10 followersDavid Sterritt is a film critic, author and scholar. He is most notable for his work on Alfred Hitchcock and Jean-Luc Godard, and his many years as the Film Critic for The Christian Science Monitor, where, from 1968 until his retirement in 2005, he championed avant garde cinema, theater and music. He has a PhD in Cinema Studies from New York University and is the Chairman of the National Society of Film Critics. Sterritt is known for his intelligent discussions of controversial films and his lively, accessible style. He is particularly well known for his careful considerations of films with a spiritual connection, such as Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), and Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ (2004).
His writings on film and film culture appear regularly in various publications, including The New York Times, MovieMaker Magazine, The Huffington Post, Senses of Cinema, Cineaste, Film Comment, Film Quarterly, Beliefnet, CounterPunch, and elsewhere. Sterritt has appeared as a guest on CBS Morning News, Nightline, Charlie Rose, Geraldo at Large, Catherine Crier Live, CNN Live Today, Countdown with Keith Olbermann and The O'Reilly Factor, among many other television and radio shows.
Sterritt has written influentially on the film and culture of the 1950s, the Beat Generation, French New Wave cinema, the films of Alfred Hitchcock, Robert Altman, Spike Lee and Terry Gilliam, and the TV series, The Honeymooners.
Sterritt began his career at Boston After Dark (now the Boston Phoenix), where he was Chief Editor. He then moved to The Christian Science Monitor, where he worked as the newspaper's Film Critic and Special Correspondent. During his tenure at the Monitor, Sterritt held a number of additional appointments. From 1978-1980 he was the Film Critic for All Things Considered, on National Public Radio. From 1969 to 1973, he was the Boston Theater Critic for Variety, and he sat on the selection committee for the New York Film Festival from 1988 to 1992. Between 1994 and 2002 he was Senior Critic at the National Critics Institute of the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center, and he served as the video critic for Islands magazine from 2000-2003. From 2005-2007 he was Programming Associate at the Makor/Steinhardt Center of the 92nd Street Y. He is a member of the National Editorial Advisory Group of Tikkun, sits on the Editorial Board of Quarterly Review of Film and Video, is a Contributing Writer to MovieMaker magazine, and the Chief Book Critic for Film Quarterly. Sterritt has also held a number of significant academic appointments. From 1999-2005 he was the Co-Chair, with William Luhr, of the Columbia University Seminar on Cinema and Interdisciplinary Interpretation. He is currently on the Film Studies Faculty at Columbia University's Graduate Film Division, and Adjunct Faculty at the Maryland Institute College of Art in the Department of Language, Literature and Culture and the Department of Art History. He is also Distinguished Visiting Faculty in the Goldring Arts Journalism Program at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University, and Professor Emeritus of Theater and Film at Long Island University, where he taught from 1993 to 2005, obtaining tenure in 1998.
Sterritt is the partner of psychoanalyst, author and cultural critic Mikita Brottman.
His writings on film and film culture appear regularly in various publications, including The New York Times, MovieMaker Magazine, The Huffington Post, Senses of Cinema, Cineaste, Film Comment, Film Quarterly, Beliefnet, CounterPunch, and elsewhere. Sterritt has appeared as a guest on CBS Morning News, Nightline, Charlie Rose, Geraldo at Large, Catherine Crier Live, CNN Live Today, Countdown with Keith Olbermann and The O'Reilly Factor, among many other television and radio shows.
Sterritt has written influentially on the film and culture of the 1950s, the Beat Generation, French New Wave cinema, the films of Alfred Hitchcock, Robert Altman, Spike Lee and Terry Gilliam, and the TV series, The Honeymooners.
Sterritt began his career at Boston After Dark (now the Boston Phoenix), where he was Chief Editor. He then moved to The Christian Science Monitor, where he worked as the newspaper's Film Critic and Special Correspondent. During his tenure at the Monitor, Sterritt held a number of additional appointments. From 1978-1980 he was the Film Critic for All Things Considered, on National Public Radio. From 1969 to 1973, he was the Boston Theater Critic for Variety, and he sat on the selection committee for the New York Film Festival from 1988 to 1992. Between 1994 and 2002 he was Senior Critic at the National Critics Institute of the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center, and he served as the video critic for Islands magazine from 2000-2003. From 2005-2007 he was Programming Associate at the Makor/Steinhardt Center of the 92nd Street Y. He is a member of the National Editorial Advisory Group of Tikkun, sits on the Editorial Board of Quarterly Review of Film and Video, is a Contributing Writer to MovieMaker magazine, and the Chief Book Critic for Film Quarterly. Sterritt has also held a number of significant academic appointments. From 1999-2005 he was the Co-Chair, with William Luhr, of the Columbia University Seminar on Cinema and Interdisciplinary Interpretation. He is currently on the Film Studies Faculty at Columbia University's Graduate Film Division, and Adjunct Faculty at the Maryland Institute College of Art in the Department of Language, Literature and Culture and the Department of Art History. He is also Distinguished Visiting Faculty in the Goldring Arts Journalism Program at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University, and Professor Emeritus of Theater and Film at Long Island University, where he taught from 1993 to 2005, obtaining tenure in 1998.
Sterritt is the partner of psychoanalyst, author and cultural critic Mikita Brottman.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
January 23, 2016
In this entry in the Cambridge Film Classics series, David Sterritt attempts to survey the work of the French filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard up to the book’s publication in 1999 (Godard has produced a number of films in the years since). However, Godard's work was so prodigious that Sterrit decided to focus only on six films as representative of his whole career. These are À bout de souffle, Vivre sa vie, Weekend, Numéro deux, Hail Mary, and Nouvelle Vague. A final chapter is dedicated to Godard’s several works for television and video, which remain little-known.
This book left me with mixed feelings. As an attempt to cover Godard's entire career, this book is much less effective than the survey by Richard Brody that was published a decade later,Everything is Cinema, which actually does manage to cover all of Godard's films to date instead of trying to make a representative selection, and in such a clear and enjoyable style that the much greater length of Brody's book still goes by more quickly than Sterritt's 300-odd pages. With his page limitations, Sterritt just couldn't produce the same comprehensive introduction.
Also, Sterritt’s book all too often interrupts a clear description and convincing analysis of Godard’s work to reference postmodern writers for academic street cred. I don't feel that his citations of Kristeva and Lacan bring anything to Godard’s work. And finally, Godard’s films since the mid-1960s have contained an enormous amount of quotation, and Sterritt doesn't get it all. He is baffled by the drummer singing a paean to the "ancient ocean" in WEEKEND, unaware that it is drawn from the Comte de Lautréamont’s Les chants de maldoror. A knowledge of the French canon is essential towards getting the most out of Godard's work and relating it to a general audience, but Sterritt apparently lacks that grounding in French culture (most of his published work is on English and American films).
Still, there *may* be enough material here to make the book worthwhile for Godard fans who have already read Brody's book. I like how Sterritt chooses Numéro deux – still a shocking achievement today and woefully underappreciated – as an important cornerstone of Godard’s career. The chapter on the television and video efforts is also welcome, as while Godard's 1970s experiments are now easier to get ahold of thanks to the internet, those interested in Godard will appreciate a description of this body of work before dedicating themselves to, say, the 312 minutes of France/tour/détour/deux/enfants.
This book left me with mixed feelings. As an attempt to cover Godard's entire career, this book is much less effective than the survey by Richard Brody that was published a decade later,Everything is Cinema, which actually does manage to cover all of Godard's films to date instead of trying to make a representative selection, and in such a clear and enjoyable style that the much greater length of Brody's book still goes by more quickly than Sterritt's 300-odd pages. With his page limitations, Sterritt just couldn't produce the same comprehensive introduction.
Also, Sterritt’s book all too often interrupts a clear description and convincing analysis of Godard’s work to reference postmodern writers for academic street cred. I don't feel that his citations of Kristeva and Lacan bring anything to Godard’s work. And finally, Godard’s films since the mid-1960s have contained an enormous amount of quotation, and Sterritt doesn't get it all. He is baffled by the drummer singing a paean to the "ancient ocean" in WEEKEND, unaware that it is drawn from the Comte de Lautréamont’s Les chants de maldoror. A knowledge of the French canon is essential towards getting the most out of Godard's work and relating it to a general audience, but Sterritt apparently lacks that grounding in French culture (most of his published work is on English and American films).
Still, there *may* be enough material here to make the book worthwhile for Godard fans who have already read Brody's book. I like how Sterritt chooses Numéro deux – still a shocking achievement today and woefully underappreciated – as an important cornerstone of Godard’s career. The chapter on the television and video efforts is also welcome, as while Godard's 1970s experiments are now easier to get ahold of thanks to the internet, those interested in Godard will appreciate a description of this body of work before dedicating themselves to, say, the 312 minutes of France/tour/détour/deux/enfants.
June 27, 2008
PRAISE GOD(ard)!
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