The death of mainstream cinema was continually called for in the development of contemporary avant-garde film. At a time when traditional narrative forms were being attacked and new approaches developed, two figures emerged from the vanguard. Jean-Luc Godard had earlier predicated the death of cinema, a decline that Laura Mulvey later celebrated. Mulvey added to this a now famous demand — for the destruction of cinema’s pleasures by radical filmmakers.1 As the time beyond which both Godard and Mulvey’s predictions and demands has now passed and cinema is not dead, a different time has been arrived at. This is a time and a place, which Raymond Bellour has more recently described as ‘pure’ cinema — that is, the place of artists film. 2
Why think of these moments now? We go around, we revisit, we recall and we come back to the same place — only now it is a different place.
As Brigitte Bardot (Camille) walks on the roof of Casa Malaparte in Jean-Luc Godard’s Le Mepris the blue sea of the Gulf of Salerno and a cloudless blue sky form an infinite horizon.3 The camera follows Bardot as she steps lightly across the roof. You can sense the heat of the sun on the surface of the roof as you watch Bardot’s dance-like steps and notice that she seems unable either to stand still or to put her feet firmly down. Bardot dominates Le Mepris. In the first scenes her naked body is surveyed, through a red lens filter which graduates to a blue lens filter, and again in the closing scenes, where the camera tracks toward and ends in a close-up of her dead body in the crashed red car. Whilst Bardot is the object of the film its subject is film itself, film producers and film production. Godard had announced this early on in Le Mepris, as the camera pans 45-degrees around and is pointed towards the audience, its lens filling the screen. Godard goes on to leave no room for doubt about his views, as shortly afterwards the character Prokosch, the film producer played by Jack Palance, proclaims — ‘this is the end of film’.
Why think of these moments now? We go around, we revisit, we recall and we come back to the same place — only now it is a different place.
Some time after writing ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ Laura Mulvey wrote an essay with Colin McCabe about Godard where they attempt to unravel some of the complexities of Godard’s representation of women in his films.4 Godard was, at the time, representative of a political European avant-garde that had developed a distinct counter-cinema. Peter Wollen had said as much when he wrote about the distinguishing characteristics of these avant-garde groups. Some of these concerns and influences came together in Riddles of the Sphinx where Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen, as filmmakers, enlarge on ideas in film that they had speculated about in written texts.5 In its highly formal structure Riddles of the Sphinx has a central section — around which the film revolves — which is the story of a young mother and child. Each section of ‘Louise’s story told in thirteen shots’ is a 360-degree pan of the camera. It is a literal telling of her story divided into thirteen episodes — as Louise moves from dependence on her husband to supporting herself and caring for her child — each of these episodes lasting the length of a complete camera pan. This use of the camera technology, even now, has a startling effect. Critics, at the time, commentated on the film’s lyrical qualities.6 In one of the episodes during this section the camera is circling a scene played out in a mirrored interior. When the circling camera is reflected in a mirror and includes the cinematographer, Diane Tammes, in the shot, it becomes for one commentator a ‘stunning moment’.7 The use of the circling camera has, in one fell swoop, dispensed with conventional narrative and revealed its own technology — and in this case the gender of the operator.
Why think of these moments now? We go around, we revisit, we recall and we come back to the same place — only now it is a different place.
When Peter Wollen described the use of the geared head of the camera tripod in Riddles of the Sphinx as ‘hyperbole’ he was describing not only its use but also its mis-use.8 The persistent circling of the 360-degree pans can induce in the viewer a trance-like effect but the return of the camera to its ending/beginning always insists upon an acknowledgement of the presence of the camera itself. Here, the camera no longer conforms to the 180-degree rule where its forward advance through a scene — or a shot/reverse shot — follows the characters or actions in a scene. Instead, the camera moves past the actors in the scene or the actors walk past the camera. The action in the film is no longer presented centrally to the viewer but is dispersed to the margins while the camera pans its circular route. The viewer is reminded here, not once but thirteen times, that this film is a reflection on cinematic experience. With the use of this, now notorious, device — amongst the other cinematic strategies it utilised — Riddles of the Sphinx mounted an attack on conventional cinematic narrative.
We go around, we revisit, we recall and we come back to the same place — only now it is a different place.
As Godard’s camera tracks around the semi-circular wall on the flat roof of Casa Malaparte it follows the character Paul (Michel Piccoli), the film’s screenwriter — where he finds his wife, Camille (Bardot), on the other side of the wall sunbathing naked on a yellow towel.9 A book, Homer’s Odyssey — around which the film that is within the film is constructed — is propped on Brigitte Bardot’s right buttock. An argument ensues about Paul continuing to succumb to the crass requests of the film’s producer, Prokosch, for money and whether their marriage can be saved. The argument continues as Camille dons a yellow bathrobe and they descend the flight of steps that form the lower roof (in the shape of an inverted pyramid) of Casa Malaparte. Finally, the scene ends as Paul decides to break his contract with the producer while Camille, exclaiming exasperation and declaring independence from her husband, disappears from the view of the camera. Camille — Bardot — reappears, having dived into the sea and swims naked, like a mermaid. It seems that Camille has performed this for the delight of the film — within the film — producer, Prokosch. With this, Godard cuts through the dual narratives in Le Mepris to reflect on his own experience of making the film. As the story goes, one of the producers of Le Mepris had demanded that Godard insert more nudity in the film, and as the opening scenes of Bardot show, it was a request he had ‘literally’ complied with. It is in the final scenes of the film with the death of Prokosch, alongside Camille, in his crashed red car that Godard’s wishes were perhaps fulfilled — with the death of the film producer and with him, the death of the studio system he represented.
We go around, we revisit, we recall and we come back to the same place — only now it is a different place.
1 Mulvey, Laura. ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’, Screen, Vol.16, No.3, 1975, p.6-18.
2 Bellour, Raymond. ‘The Moving Image – A Battle of Ways and Means’. Modern Painters, Vol.14, No.1, 2002, p.66-69.
3 Le Mepris, Dir. Jean-Luc Godard, 1963.
4 Mulvey, Laura and MacCabe, Colin. ‘Images of Woman, Images of Sexuality’, in MacCabe, Colin. Godard: Images, Sounds, Politics, London, MacMillan, 1980, p.78-104.
5 Riddles of the Sphinx, Dir. Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen, 1977 (held at the British Film Institute Archive).
6 Forbes, Jill. ‘Riddles of the Sphinx’, Monthly Film Bulletin, June 1977, p.128.
7 MacDonald, Scott. Avant-Garde Film: Motion Studies, New York, Cambridge University Press, 1993, p.89
8 Wollen, Peter. ‘Cinema and Technology: a Historical Overview’, in Wollen, Peter. Readings and Writings: Semiotic Counter-Strategies, London, Verso, 1982, p.176. Although both Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen direct the film, Mulvey has recently attributed the idea of using 360-degree pans to Peter Wollen, in Balaram, Rakhee. ‘Questioning feminist nostalgia: An interview with Laura Mulvey’, n.paradoxa, Vol.19, 2007, p.62-67.
9 To be precise, the cinematographer in Godard’s Le Mepris was Raoul Coutard. 10 Dixon, Wheeler Winston. The Films of Jean-Luc Godard, New York, State University of New York Press, 1997.
Commissioned for Relay
Mo White is an artist, curator and writer based in Birmingham. She has exhibited widely, including exhibitions in New York, Stockholm, Berlin, Dublin, Belfast and London.
She was awarded a PhD in 2007 for research examining the work of Laura Mulvey and artists using the moving image in the UK since the 1970s and lectures in Fine Art at Loughborough University