Everything Is Cinema: The Working Life of Jean-Luc Godard [Hardcover]

Richard Brody (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 13, 2008

A landmark biography explores the crucial resonances among the life, work, and times of one of the most influential filmmakers of our age

When Jean-Luc Godard wed the ideals of filmmaking to the realities of autobiography and current events, he changed the nature of cinema. Unlike any earlier films, Godard's work shifts fluidly from fiction to documentary, from criticism to art. The man himself also projects shifting images--cultural hero, fierce loner, shrewd businessman. Hailed by filmmakers as a--if not the--key influence on cinema, Godard has entered the modern canon, a figure as mysterious as he is indispensable.

In Everything Is Cinema, critic Richard Brody has amassed hundreds of interviews to demystify the elusive director and his work. Paying as much attention to Godard's technical inventions as to the political forces of the postwar world, Brody traces an arc from the director's early critical writing, through his popular success with Breathless, to the grand vision of his later years. He vividly depicts Godard's wealthy conservative family, his fluid politics, and his tumultuous dealings with women and fellow New Wave filmmakers.

Everything Is Cinema confirms Godard's greatness and shows decisively that his films have left their mark on screens everywhere.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Comprehensive and fascinating, this critical biography of one of the leading filmmakers of the French New Wave, Jean-Luc Godard, by New Yorker editor and film critic Brody offers the significant events and achievements of the cinematic innovator who combined an eye-opening concoction of art, politics, music, personal values and social mores. The author reveals an isolated yet driven creative genius who rises from writing articles for the pioneering Cahiers du Cinéma magazine with Truffaut, Rivette and Rohmer to soaring early successes with his films Breathless, Contempt, Masculine Feminine, A Married Woman to the later controversial gems, First Name: Carmen, Hail Mary and Detective. Godard, according to Brody, compares in critical importance to Picasso in his artistry, as the director's puzzling complexity is revealed through scores of interviews with family, colleagues and crew. Throughout the book, the key personal elements of Godard's chaotic love life provide added spark. This is a completely enjoyable and revealing account of an enigmatic director whose singular creativity will not allow him to make commercial compromises. (May)
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Review

"Richard Brody's biography of Godard—arguably the most important, enigmatic, and exciting filmmaker of the second half of the 20th century—effortlessly weaves intellectual history, a personal saga, and an authoritative reading of the films themselves into a seamless web. It virtually crackles with intelligence, and is a must read for anyone interested in cinema."—Peter Biskind, author of Gods and Monsters: Thirty Years of Writing on Film and Culture

"Full of lucid analysis and human context, Richard Brody's book performs a heroic act in rescuing Godard and his growing shelf of works from the prison of myth and theory, from the cult of youth and the cult of the '60s, restoring him to his place as an engaged, hard-working artist."—Jonathan Lethem, author of The Fortress of Solitude

"Godard changed the movies as much as the American masters he grew up on: Welles, Hawks, Hitchcock, and the rest. He is as original as Picasso—but unlike Picasso, he has been denied the biography he has always deserved. This is it. Just at the moment when the New Wave turns fifty, Richard Brody has given us Everything is Cinema, a remarkable book which describes with sharp intelligence a great and elusive artist's times, intellect, passions, and work."—Wes Anderson, writer and director of Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, and The Life Aquatic

"Everything Is Cinema is better than a biography, it is a novel. And a great novel, in which one discovers the story of a man who almost picked the wrong art form, a struggling writer who became an immense filmmaker."—Bernard-Henri Lévy, author of American Vertigo

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 720 pages
• Publisher: Metropolitan Books; 1St Edition edition (May 13, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805068864
• ISBN-13: 978-0805068863
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.1 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #904,995 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #96 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Arts & Literature > Movie Directors

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Yes, but..., September 21, 2008

By 

Richard Patterson (Los Angeles, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Everything Is Cinema: The Working Life of Jean-Luc Godard (Hardcover)

The thing that struck me as I read this was that Brody seems more enamored of the idea of what he thinks Godard was doing as an artist than he is with the actual films he made - at least with the films he made during the first decade or so. Colin MacCabe's Godard: A Portrait of the Artist at Seventy seems more readable and more able to see the films as something other than opaque autobiography. Needless to say either book will tell you more than you ever wanted to know about Godard's personal life, although MacCabe, unlike Brody, shows some reticence in exploring his love life.

15 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Two or Three Things About This Book (Made in USA), July 11, 2008

By 

t.g. randini (Highlands, VA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Everything Is Cinema: The Working Life of Jean-Luc Godard (Hardcover)

This book is a must-have for any fan or person interested in the work of Jean-Luc Godard. It is a comprehensive critical biography detailing the working methods and conditions surrounding each film in Mr. Godard's ouvre. It is a massive and lengthy tome filled with erudition.

I break my rating down as follows:

Skipping the childhood and parental history: 5 Stars (because his childhood and parental history does not interest me... and was already covered in MacCabe's book.)

Late 40's/Early 50's background on French critical theory: 5 Stars (for the Astruc/Bazinian/etc. cinema theory... mixed with Satrean/etc. existentialism... along with a dash of vermouth named Brecht)

The financing/producing of the films and a history of various working methods: 5 Stars (great for any cinephile)

The Karina/Godard relationship: 5 Stars (not enough can ever be said about one of the true goddesses of cinema!)

May 1968: 5 Stars (some exciting stuff that I lived through at the time)

Comprehensively talking about every short, middle and feature-length film or video that has even been publicly seen in a movie theater, on television, or at various screenings: 5 Stars (`nuff said...)

Critical Taste in the analysis of films: 2 Stars

I find this to be Mr. Brody's only failing but his taste is somewhat different than mine in the appreciation of the relative merits of Mr. Godard's individual films. To wit:

Brody speaks much more highly of King Lear than Band of Outsiders. He rates Prenom: Carmen much more highly than the film that immediately preceded it (Passion). He is not much of a fan of Two or Three Things yet raves about A Married Woman. He doesn't have much use for Les Carabiniers. Or British Sounds.

(Huh?)

King Lear over Band of Outsiders? Band of Outsiders was poetic AND fun at the same time. Looks easy but hardly anyone can do it.

Les Carabiniers is a dadaist masterpiece and includes one of the high points of cinema... (and I paraphrase the dialogue...) ... "You mean we get to steal, rape and kill and get away with it?" "Yes." "SIGN US UP!"

(Isn't this as good, if not better, than Bergman's God-is-a-spider-crawling-on-the-wall??) (!!)

I liked Prenom: Carmen very, very much. But I liked Passion very, very, very, very, very, very, very much. I guess I preferred the ecstatic/epiphanal shots of art tableux in Passion to the repeated shots (in Carmen) of Ms. Detmers' pubis.

Mr. Brody can't see the forest for the trees on this one! As Chuck Heston once said when confronted with wooly beasts, "Get away from me you d--n dirty ape!"

(Apologies to Ms. Detmers who more than proved her acting chops/oral skills in Marco Bellocchio's DEVIL IN THE FLESH. A fine lass, she...!) (And I did very much enjoy Carmen as well as her performance... but Passion is a superior work of art.)

The best cup of coffee in the history of the world was Godard's Two or Three Things... and even Hamlet never faced the poetic quandary Godard did when he wondered "Should I speak of Juliette... or the trees?" as an Edenic shot of creation is framed within the 1.66:1 ratio. Or was it 2.35?

And if you've ever worked on a factory line... you'll admire the perfectly chosen perfection of the ear-drone-hammer-industrial-noise soundtrack in British Sounds.

Perhaps Mr. Brody never was an industrial wage-slave or he would have more admiration for the truth in much of what Godard/Gorin expressed in their Vertov films. Sometimes the truth ain't pretty. And sometimes the truth may hurt your ears.

IN SUMMARY, though you may disagree with Mr. Brody on his critical analysis of individual films... (taste in their relative merits may simply be akin to taste in ties)... the reading of his critical biography was sometimes fascinating, and almost always interesting. Well worth each capitalist penny spent!

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Comprehensive review of Godard's work, July 21, 2009

By 

Stacey Mardock (Texas) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Everything Is Cinema: The Working Life of Jean-Luc Godard (Paperback)

This book is extensive and really focuses on Godard's intellectual process, how he has viewed film as art, and how he differed from the other French New Wave auteurs. The author also examines how Godard's personal life, especially with Anna Karina, intertwined with his work. The chapters are chronologically divided by film, which made it easy to watch each corresponding movie as I read the chapters. Not many comprehensive, well-researched books on the French New Wave era of film making exist, so this one is really welcome. Highly recommended biography.