Nineteen years after Contempt, Godard retraces many of the same steps here with Passion. This is largely about the making of a film (like all of Godard it is never that simple of course). Godard shoots the camera shooting another movie (instead of The Odyssey like in Contempt, the movie within the movie here is “Passion”). Godard even brings back Michel Piccoli who starred in the 1963 masterpiece.
Reflexive and post-modern, in many ways all of Godard’s films are about the making of film—but this, like Contempt again, quite literally is. Here the actors use their own name which is strange including the short-haired (her own little Seberg-like pixie cut) young Isabelle Huppert.
Godard’s own appetites for art (the Rembrandt recreation is just one of many) and classical music are a major part of the collage here.
In many scenes the audio and visual are not synched- characters’ lips are moving with no sound. This is Godard winking at the audience, intentionally flummoxing them and exposing the lie of the medium.
There’s no real narrative, it is a labyrinth of a mixture. There’s a polish director with a producer who says “I need a story”- haha. In comparison with Contempt this is twice as opaque with 10% of the beauty.
At the 41-47 minute mark the longest take is Godard’s camera floating around the Passion set.
At the 51-54 minute mark, men in full costume and on horseback are parading around crude movie miniatures in a studio. This is just one of the many shots that last 2-3 full minutes.
[…] Passion – Godard […]