TWO OR THREE THINGS I KNOW ABOUT HER (Jean-Luc Godard, 1966)
January 23, 2008Why shouldn’t Juliette Janson augment the family income as a prostitute to help pay the rent? Commercialized modern society makes a prostitute out of everyone, and in any case it is her husband who suggests that she pursue this course temporarily. After all, it is as a prostitute that she first met the man to whom she is now married.
2 ou 3 choses que je sais d’elle, whose title refers to “the Paris region,” is partly structured as a series of conversations between women, including Juliette, and different men; another woman spectacularly defies what the gentleman tells her to do. But Juliette is also influenced by what the director, Jean-Luc Godard, wants her to do. Whom are we watching? Juliette or Marina Vlady, the actress playing her? Godard’s offscreen voice introduces us to Russian-born Marina before he introduces Russian-born Juliette, who has the same color hair (which in either case Godard has difficulty determining) and wears the same dress. Rather than manipulating us to “buy into” the film’s reality, Godard distances us, complicating our relationship to the “text” of his film.
The din of traffic and construction accompanies many shots. In most films, sound is suited to image. Here, though, Godard periodically erases sound, sometimes to make way for his whispered voiceovers, but also to create a series of alternations between noise and silence. This also distances us, making us aware of the process by which we imaginatively supply the sounds that have been suppressed. Godard poses this question: What most determines what we “see”? The reality of what we’re looking at or our imagination? Godard implies that America’s refusal to tackle such issues pressed Lyndon Johnson into his murderous rampage in Southeast Asia.
Makes sense to me.
