Jane Fonda in Tout Va Bien (1972)

Jean-Pierre Gorin & Jean-Luc Godard at the September 1972 Anti-Venice Film Festival.

The festival, which was under the direction of Gian Luigi Rondi, was opposed by a leftwing festival across the lagoon in Venice. There, in two sidestreet movie houses, the protesting Italian filmmakers held showings and conferences, calling their counter‐festival “The Days of Italian Cinema.” Jean-Luc Godard withdrew his film “Tout Va Bien” from Venice 33 to place it instead with the opposition. It was rumored that a print had been smuggled across the border from France. This would have constituted violation of customs rules—a tax is imposed on all imported films. In any case, the Godard work was not shown in’ either festival.

Here and Elsewhere, Anne-Marie Miéville / Jean-Luc Godard / Jean-Pierre Gorin (1976)

Tout Va Bien (Jean-Luc Godard & Jean-Pierre Gorin, 1972)

"I'm not denying that our society has drawbacks. The hard work and aggressiveness that accompany the drive for efficiency risk dehumanizing everyone and destroying the weaker among us. The desire for possessions can lead to frustration, and too much pleasure can make you nauseous. You have to find a balance, and most people find it - or will find it. They have a natural tendency to find balance and adapt because of their need to streamline all aspects of their lives and surroundings."

Tout Va Bien, Jean-Luc Godard, Jean-Pierre Gorin

Happy 80th, Jean-Pierre Gorin.

professor jean-pierre gorin about san soleil by chris marker

EPISODE 007: Sundance '92 Selection Ranked

American documentary filmmaking emerged as earlier as film equipment became widely available and affordable. Many young filmmakers sought a collective resurgence in a new era of American cinema, now broadly accessible -- this time it helmed at the heart and gut of independent filmmaking. The quintessential roots of American independent cinema can be found in the films selected for the Sundance Film Festival of 1992, which is available on the Criterion Collection Channel. In this episode on LA CINEASTE, we will sort through and essentially rank the 25 captivating films in the 1992 Sundance Selection. Though many auteurs exceeded with accolades and impressed the new age, others found challenges along the way.

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Godard in America [Ralph Thanhauser, 1970]

Tout Va Bien (Jean-Luc Godard, Jean-Pierre Gorin, 1972)

Cast: Yves Montand, Jane Fonda, Vittorio Caprioli, Elizabeth Chauvin, Castel Casti, Éric Chartier, Louis Bugette, Yves Gabrielli, Pierre Oudrey. Screenplay: Jean-Luc Godard, Jean-Pierre Gorin. Cinematography: Armand Marco. Production design: Jacques Duguied. Film editing: Claudine Merlin, Kenout Peltier. Jean-Luc Godard and Jean-Pierre Gorin's sardonic look at what happened to the leftist intellectuals who were in the forefront of the May 1968 protests in France has two great cinematic showpieces. The first is the multi-chambered two-decker set on which we watch the employees of a sausage factory play out their messy, scattered, and mostly ineffectual efforts at a strike. Though the set is often described as an hommage to Jerry Lewis's similar set for The Ladies' Man (1961), the concept goes back to the era of silent comedy. The other remarkable sequence takes place in an enormous supermarket, in which the camera, placed behind the row of cashiers ringing up purchases, tracks back and forth as shoppers wheel up their goods, a communist hawks his book with a newly marked-down price, and a small revolution starts in which people are told that everything is free. It's a nightmare of consumer capitalism run amok. Godard and Gorin's satire is directed at the complacency into which everyone has sunk in the four years since May 1968, while attempting to demonstrate that the class struggle is still viable. It's conceived as a kind of film about a film, with off-camera voices discussing the need to cast stars -- i.e. Jane Fonda and Yves Montand -- to guarantee the money needed to make the movie. As a demonstration of Godardian film technique, it has moments of brilliance, but even though it scores some points, as political filmmaking it feels inert and now inescapably dated.

Tout Va Bien (1972)

I thought Anthony Bourdain Parts Unknown: Beirut is going to be better. It is fine and gives lots of information but it seems like the typical programmes about the Middle East: Always trying to show the contrasts. It is arguable if there is a better way to show the Middle East, but at least, it could be something slightly more unconventional that makes me enjoy it more. There are some pieces of media that achieve to do that for me: the French-language documentary directed by Jean-Luc Godard, Jean-Pierre Gorin, and Anne-Marie Miéville called “Ici et Ailleurs (Here and Elsewhere)”, the films of Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Abbas Kiarostami, and Mohsen Makhmalbaf, and photographs I reblog here.

Here and Elsewhere, Anne-Marie Miéville / Jean-Luc Godard / Jean-Pierre Gorin (1976)

”Tout va bien”  (1972) by Jean-Luc Godard & Jean-Pierre Gorin <Groupe Dziga Vertov>