5:58pm-6:11pm
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VARDA and TRUFFAUT are standing by a tree. VARDA appears as an old woman, the grandmother of cinema. TRUFFAUT appears permanently middle-aged, a kindly, sad uncle. The two are waiting, as they have been for some time. TRUFFAUT speaks first.
TRUFFAUT: And when he arrives, we spit!
VARDA: Right into his sunglasses. That will be a folly of a welcome, no?
The pair look at us and we see that they are, in fact, looking at themselves in a mirror.
The scene changes… The interior of an office. A pair of sunglasses sits on a reel of film. The reel starts turning. It is on an editing carousel. The sunglasses turn as the images from classic cinema bounce in front of and behind the lenses. Grace Kelly. Lauren Bacall. Vittorio De Sica. Jean Virgo. The workers en masse.
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A VOICEOVER: Godard, Godot. Godard, Gorbachev. Godard, Garbo. Godard, gourmand.
A series of images present themselves…photographs of Godard in various stages of public and private as pictures of other individuals are superimposed as transparencies over Godard’s visage—Beckett, Mikhail, Greta, Orson.
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Quick images and the snap of a slide-show. A cat for Chris M. A dog for Anna. A seagull for initials B.B.
Then a shot of the newspaper detritus littering the studio. Even newspapers in languages he cannot read, sourced in search of photographs. Paperbacks pilled up and over each other, many of which are split open, saved on the page of some fleeting reference. On the left side of the screen, a woman pumps gas and reads from her little red book. On the right side of the screen, an actor’s footage (J-P Leaud) is removed from history to be put through the postmodern snout.
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Gertrude Stein would appreciate Film Socialisme and Farewell to Language. She has not seen the image book, but she will watch it right after Week-End, which she will view on a perverse Thursday, notebook in hand.
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“Godard was the film maker as junk shop, the free association of idea-as-narrative, the voice box of the ego/echo.”
A DARK FIGURE in sunglasses makes his way slowly in a puff of smoke towards VARDA/TRUFFAUT as they now sit in the tree.
VARDA and TRUFFAUT call out: Oh brother, Oh bother!
The iconic smash of Anna Karina opening and closing scissors across the frame. La Chinoise as future-history music video. Collage as document. And in the last year, the specificity of silence—now extended.
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The motif of up and down, circular action and circular reasoning. The school boy’s essay and body builder on video playback, returning always to the same point at rest. And always looking for Anna or Anne or Anne-Marie. As lost and found as a pack of Parisiennes.
1930-2022
The Library Never Closes 