Passion (1982) User Reviews (23)

"...there are no rules in film."

[shanejamesbordas · 7/10 · 26 May 2008]

Godard's 'Passion' will inevitably draw violent reactions from didactic viewers with a classical Hollywood outlook, even though it expressly addresses the contradictions and pains in discerning just what makes a film "a film". To condemn it as boring or shapeless is to blindly miss the point.

For those of us more inclined to tackle this fascinating question, there is much to luxuriate in here. From even a purely aesthetic viewpoint, the wonderfully incongruent images (like the ship in the forest) and the beautifully lit reconstructions of classical paintings (with their attendant outpourings of classical music) are enough to hold sway.

With these tools, Godard contrasts the passion and belief in labour; the practical against the artistic. Isabelle Huppert's stuttering, incoherent virgin loves her factory job and fights for her "right" to work, while the jaded director Jerzy, surrounded by a bevy of naked beauties during the making of his elusive film, sullenly stages his reconstructions. His work, however, contains no such solace and he becomes morose to the point of inertia by his task of creating a formally perfect but outwardly fragmented piece. Jerzy's constant frustration with having to explain to others what his film is "about" is a poignant running comedic highlight. But that is only part of the battle - practical concerns impinge also. This is painfully clear (and bitterly funny) when Jerzy's ever suffering assistant points out to the frustrated producer the individual cost of each item on the set in an attempt to explain where all the money is going.

The characters aggressive tussling, either through physical pulling and pushing or through their cars (reminiscent of Godard's masterpiece 'Week End'), also signify the difficulty and pain inherent in any kind of birth. The quiet moments call out to be examined and celebrated as much as the grand statement while others jostle for their money, their moment, or even a simple explanation as to what it all means.

Like most of Godard's late work, this mosaic approach will not appeal to all who cross its path (what film ever does?) but, even if it does ultimately fall short of answering any of the questions it asks, adherents will find much to ruminate on.

Passion of the Passion of the Passion

[aross-618-442420 · 7/10 · 25 December 2009]

In narrative painting, a story is told by the image, either through the composition or devices such as registers or continuous narrative. In a film, the story and image are separate and the image is usually a reenactment of the story.

Jean-Luc Godard would say (and has said, more or less) that all art forms have an interrelationship and interchangeability. With this philosophy in mind he used his work to try to break down film from its conceptual boundaries of the narrative. In a sense this is a beautiful gesture, and I'm not denying this, but this manifesto-based approach to art- making leads to a lot more of explaining yourself than creating original work. The Godard film I want to put in question is called Passion (1982). It scandalizes the film vernacular of that postmodern trope, the film within the film. It goes behind the scenes of film-making, but the mock-film, which is also titled Passion, has no plot. It simply recreates a few painting "masterpieces" on film with real characters, on a real scale. The seminal painting- reenactment is Eugene Delacroix's The Entry of the Crusaders into Constantinople.

Delacroix truly wanted to revolutionize narrative painting of the Romantic period in France. He was fed up with the conservatism introduced by painters like David. So rather than painting simple, yet psychological moments in a narrative like The Death of Marat, he tried to expand the modes of depicting narrative. The result of this effort is evident in The Entry of the Crusaders into Constantinople, completed in 1838, at the height of his career. His mode for this painting is somewhere between narrative registers and a theatrical moment (such as the moment Géricault chose for Raft of the Medusa). Elements of story are scattered around the chaos of the historical event: a woman kneels over her fallen friend, an old man tries to protect a young woman from the crusaders on horseback, another man fights a soldier on the steps of a temple, etc. At face value, it looks a bit like an epic painting, but it isn't. Epic paintings always have a shining moment; in Delacroix's, every moment shines in its own way. So while Delacroix's practice wasn't necessarily interdisciplinary, it most certainly zigzagged across painting genres. This aspect of the work is probably one of the Godard's interests in Delacroix, being that Godard was a seminal figure in the development of the shiftiest art movement to date, postmodernism.

The understanding that there are separate shining moments in both Godard's Passion and Delacroix's The Entry of the Crusaders into Constantinople is very important to the interpretation of these works. As Jerzy, the director of Godard's film within the film said, "An image is not beautiful because it is brutal and eerie it is because the solidarity between ideas is distant and just." This line is incredibly profound, because it lays out the truth of art and life in general before the work; that truth is that all ideas are conceived disparate from one another because ideas come out of experience, which coincidentally is a paraphrasing of another one of Jerzy's lines. This idea becomes more important as the movie progresses. The other painting-reenactments, which appear closer to the beginning of the movie, are simply still images transferred to three dimensions and then recorded on film; but when he gets to the Delacroix scene (which was the most modern of the paintings and also stretched the concept of narrative the most), he is true to his philosophy. The characters begin the scene by reenacting the sacking of Constantinople, so as to have the experience, each one on an individual level, to be able to depict it. The action, which was being filmed, didn't even seem important to the filmmakers, in fact some of the production assistants were yelling at the actors (especially the women who were pretending rather convincingly to be raped and harassed) to get back into their places, as if they were supposed to be standing still. The action became a way for the still image to fall into place on a more real level than could be composed (a testament to Godard's philosophies).

So there you have it, another piece of writing about ambitious men who wanted to make their mark on civilization (and if you pay attention to the gender relations in this movie, this is appropriate to mention). There's a lot of pressure out their for the ambitious man, and he is extremely sensitive. It's a tiring job for people who are more interested in theory than something more tangible (medium over message). And so they deal in epics and ambiguity. Godard, intent on advancing the medium of film is torn between writing stories and making abstractions that somehow incorporate characters. His answer, make a film about a filmmaker, making a film with master paintings in it. In the end, he creates a crypt filled so much with briefly explored theories (which may be too much to really comprehend) that it essentially becomes meaningless. Let's face it, Godard's Passion is a puzzle, and Delacroix's The Entry of the Crusaders into Constantinople is a puzzle with historical information behind it. I'd have to say that watching Godard's Passion was like being spoon-fed personal beliefs; not a work, but his philosophy. But, I liked it. As an artist, it is liberating to think of what Godard proposed with his reenactment of the invasion of Constantinople. Maybe if I get into the right groove, my work will somehow form out of a rehashing of my experiences, and I can make my experiences as exciting as a reenactment of The Entry of the Crusaders into Constantinople.

PASSION (Jean-Luc Godard, 1982) **1/2

[Bunuel1976 · 6/10 · 28 September 2011]

After 13 years spent in the wilderness of Marxist cine-verite' political commentary, the infant terrible of the French New Wave movement Jean-Luc Godard made a much-touted return to mainstream film-making with SAUVE QUI PEUT (LA VIE) aka EVERY MAN FOR HIMSELF (in the U.S.) and SLOW MOTION (in the U.K.) and, for this occasion, the director chose to collaborate with eminent screenwriter Jean-Claude Carriere. The result is one of Godard's better latter-day works but, having now caught up with his successive work (apparently also featuring the uncredited hand of Carriere) PASSION, I find myself once again bewildered; while his next few films – FIRST NAME: CARMEN (1983), DETECTIVE (1985) and HAIL, MARY (1986) – once again show a marginal improvement, by all accounts he would again alienate much of his audiences with the remainder of his filmography, of which I am only familiar with the equally frustrating NOUVELLE VAGUE (1990).

Apart from the aforementioned Carriere, PASSION also reunited Godard with Raoul Coutard (although Vittorio Storaro had actually been his first choice) – director and cinematographer had not worked together since their 1960s heyday (more precisely on Godard's surreal road movie masterpiece WEEK-END {1967}) – as well as actors Isabelle Huppert (from SLOW MOTION, where she had played a prostitute) and Michel Piccoli (from CONTEMPT, where he had been a cuckolded screenwriter). The latter film would make a telling comparison with PASSION since they both deal with the world of international movie-making but, while the earlier example did not sacrifice entertainment value when expressing its intellectual integrity, the same cannot be said of the film under review! In fact, the film-within-a-film being shot here seeks, for no particular reason, to recreate some famous tableaux on celluloid underscored by an operatic soundtrack...but, never having been too much of a fan of paintings or opera, regarding them as highbrow artistic mediums, PASSION becomes a pretentious ride to nowhere (Poland notwithstanding)! Indeed, exiled Polish film-maker Jerzy Radziwilowicz decides to head back home at the very end and both Hanna Schygulla and Isabelle Huppert decide to join him on a whim.

The film's Polish director seems more interested in (and distracted by) the two stars (Schygulla plays a hotel owner who is factory owner Piccoli's mistress and Huppert a rebellious factory worker) than in getting anything shot; in a way, I can relate to his inertia since these past two weeks I have not gotten much 'work' done because of a trio of female friends I have been in contact with! Besides, Jerzy is forever complaining of the inadequacy of "Mr. Coutard"'s lighting; amusingly, everybody appearing in the film plays a character with a similar first name as the actor playing him! Ultimately, however, for all the film's intermittent (and frankly slight) amusements (Piccoli has an annoyingly consistent cough, a penchant for roses, and is made to dodge one persistent creditor throughout the film), the sheer fact that female 'actresses' on the set do nothing but pose and shed their clothing for gratuitous full-frontal nudity at times makes the film seem uncomfortably like a highbrow Tinto Brass effort or a lowbrow Peter Greenaway one!

The film was included in Lionsgate 3-Disc Set of Godard films along with FIRST NAME: CARMEN, DETECTIVE and OH, WOE IS ME (1993); like its predecessor, Godard shot a featurette on the making of his current film but, unfortunately, it has not been included in the enclosed supplements and this is one of the reasons why I opted to obtain the film from ulterior sources. Despite my reservations, PASSION was up for the Golden Palm at the Cannes Film Festival (where it competed against eventual co-winner Costa-Gavras' MISSING, Lindsay Anderson's BRITANNIA HOSPITAL, Werner Herzog's FITZCARRALDO, Wim Wenders' HAMMETT, Michelangelo Antonioni's IDENTIFICATION OF A WOMAN, Jerzy Skolimowski's MOONLIGHTING, The Taviani Brothers' THE NIGHT OF THE SHOOTING STARS {1981} and Ettore Scola's LA NUIT DE VARENNES and, ironically, won a prize for Coutard!) and nominated for a couple of Cesar awards (where it competed against the Carriere-scripted DANTON and THE RETURN OF MARTIN GUERRE!).

Godard's Influence

[stevemac · 5 December 2003]

If one were to hold up a camera to life and to film for ninety minutes, the result would be, more than likely, a boring snapshot of the banal and mundane. These snapshots of life would have no narrative, would be disjointed and chaotic, for such is life. Godard's Passion struck me as just that, a snapshot of the banality of life, the disconnected, seemingly meaningless misadventures of ordinary people, captured in one moment of time. But of course, these are not ordinary people in ordinary circumstances, these are the creations of Godard's imagination, yet the presentation of the content of the film is without structure, narrative or any of the Hollywood conventions of 'good filmmaking'. I found the film compelling and intriguing; I wanted to know more about the people and the universe that they populated. The lack of narrative structure was not a negative factor in my enjoyment of the film, for the anarchic content was, of itself, enough to keep my mind from wandering away from it. Godard's reflexive jibes at cinema convention were acerbic and witty, carrying with them a tremendous knowledge of the mechanics of filmmaking. The story of Passion, what story there is, is subservient to the process of filmmaking and Godard's desire to subvert it. For me, that is what makes this film so entertaining.

The influence of Godard's work on other filmmakers is probably most profound in European cinema where the role of the Auteur is, if not quite nurtured, respected. It was a delightful surprise for me when, having seen Passion, I began to draw connections between Godard's storytelling and popular TV comedy. The First Series of the BBC comedy 'The Office', by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, leapt to mind as I mulled over Passion. The non-structure of Passion is very much evident in The Office, where the stories unfold as snapshots and moments in time, captured, and heavily influenced by the presence of the cameras. The Office is probably the most original piece of TV comedy since Monty Python's Flying Circus, yet I can see the influence of filmmakers like Godard in its presentation. Although there exists an A plot, B plot and guest plots, typical TV structure, in The Office, it is the presentation that makes all the difference. If handled in a more traditional fashion, it is highly unlikely that The Office would ever have been made, never mind popular. Even the origins of The Office pay homage to the anti-structural approach of filmmakers like Godard. Conceived and performed as an adlib piece on a BBC director's course by Gervais and Merchant, it shined with originality and a deep knowledge of and healthy disrespect for, convention; much like Godard really.

The success of The Office owes much to its originality and wit but also to the possibility that the audience is searching for a new experience in terms of storytelling both on television and film. The irony is that this type of storytelling has been with us since Godard and long before Godard. Perhaps the audience has finally caught up with the filmmakers.

Art!

[gavin6942 · 7/10 · 11 January 2017]

On a movie set, in a factory, and at a hotel, Godard explores the nature of work, love and film making. While Solidarity takes on the Polish government, a Polish film director, Jerzy, is stuck in France making a film for TV. He's over budget and uninspired; the film, called "Passion," seems static and bloodless.

Godard met Hanna Schygulla in Hollywood when she was shooting "One from the Heart" with Francis Ford Coppola. Godard asked Schygulla at once if she wanted to participate in his new film but she first wanted to see a synopsis. Soon after Godard sent her a three-page summary in English. The film marks Godard's reunion with cinematographer Raoul Coutard; the last time they had worked together was on "Week-end" (1967), which is usually considered the end of the French New Wave.

Of Godard's later (Second Wave) films, this may be the most artistic. He not only references works of art in the film several times over, but even makes film an art within an art. The casting of little people for the film-within-a-film is interesting, and adds that surreal quality to the movies that people of unusual size tend to do. This is definitely worth a repeat viewing.

A movie should not necessarily be entertaining.

[bzad56 · 6/10 · 14 July 2002]

Cinema, just like other forms of art is an expression of feelings. That's what Art is all about! If I make a movie, first of all I am making it for myself. That's how I have felt. I wont force anyone to like my job. Some viewers establish communication, some dont. No Rebuke!

very artistic movie of Godard

[osmangokturk · 7/10 · 27 July 2017]

Another film of Godard about film making, specifically should a film has a story or not. Godard uses a lot of elements from the class conflicts jargon. This is referred in the movie as well by the dialogue " any film has been cast in a factory?"

Running a factory has difficulties and problems as making a film in set. However all of these lives are intrigued. The main actress the lower of the factory owner, is waiting material gains but is being deceived like every worker in the factory.

The factory owner is always coughing, which shows the general ill manner of the business environment.

Movie director decides to forget his ex-wife, and she eventually understand the lies of the owner.

Movie director refuses to sell his movie to the Americans, the capitalists, the rebellious girl in the factory do not subdue to be fired.

the playing girl, the lamb in the movie set, the child are all the elements that indicate the innocence

Turgid Unattractive Slice Of Life

[Slime-3 · 4/10 · 12 November 2012]

Very little in this film can honestly be said to grab the attention for long, unless perhaps, you are a Godard completest. An art historian might appreciate the messages hidden within the old master painting being turned into a movie by the director at the centre of the piece. For the rest of us it's hard to follow threads of the various partially connected stories in which largely unappealing characters bicker, berate and bed one another. Jerzy a Polish movie director, has literally 'lost the light' in his big budget production. His efforts are hamstrung by news of Solidarity's emergent uprising in his native land, the financial demands of his producers and his involvement with two women : the owner of the hotel in which most of his film company lodge, and a dowdy sacked worker at her husbands factory. That's pretty well it. There's not much more. The images of the old masters Jerzy is attempting to turn into a film, although he seems to have little concept of exactly how, are nicely lit but the films exteriors around the promising location of Lake Geneva are drab, the interiors even worse and despite some big names among the cast there is little charisma in evidence. I've watched it twice and sadly 'Passion', an oddly inappropriate title in itself, made no more impression on the second viewing. The Godard of 'Pierrot Le Fou' (a film I loved) seems a long way from the Godard of 'Passion'. Other reviewers have clearly found a meaning and beauty that I have missed. But hey! If it floats your boat then thats good.

from what I remember, this has its very good moments, and its dull forgettable ones

[Quinoa1984 · 8/10 · 19 May 2007]

Passion was the kind of Jean-Luc Godard picture I would watch rather late at night, ironically enough, thinking of it and other works of his like digging into a good book as something fulfilling before conking out. There are things that make this effort quite reccomendable, albeit I'm not sure how I would react to it overall if seen again in the context of a sunny day and some more concentration going on. What remains striking, even when Godard was at his most slumming-it points in the 80s (and he had quite a few) are the images as done by a master of the camera. The opening shot is one of these, with the airplane far off in the sky letting out its white line of smoke, photographed to a classical composition playing in the background. It has a feel of the documentary, but the push of something more operatic in the meaning behind the image. This could go for what is most significant about the rest of the film, where- per usual as one of Godard's most love-hate subjects- cinema itself is dissected though what could be more like abstract documentary figures as characters.

The one asset to a film like Passion, at least in comparison to other works at this period for the filmmaker, is that there is at least something of a story going on, something that doesn't shut out a viewer entirely by the banality of overused semantics and images that end up evoking a disinterest in the distance of subject to viewer. There's even a couple of conversations one sees from time to time with the characters that go towards at least coherent and at best with a good edge at the struggles of film-making and the hassles of love, or half-hearted lust. The only problem then comes with some of this just being so experimental that it ends up closing off some viewers. I remember one segment that had the inklings of being a compelling scene, where Godard shows the filming within the filming (if it is that, maybe it isn't) of a period piece being filmed. There's many faces and narration going over each face and image, but one's attention (at least mine anyway) waxed and waned. This may or may not be Godard's fault; in fact, one of the points that Godard has in his main filmmaker character having to make a film on TV is how mixed forms of media can be sort of antithetical. But to say that there are more than a couple of scenes and moments that foreshadow Godard's decent into pure (un-captivating) self-indulgence in his later years is present, even amid the nudity and classical music.

Another Dull and Boring Film without Story by Jean-Luc Godard

[claudio_carvalho · 1/10 · 15 July 2012]

Sometimes I question myself why I insist on watching films made by Jean-Luc Godard, the most overrated and pretentious director of the cinema history.

"Passion" has not been released on VHS or DVD in Brazil, but I have unfortunately bought an imported VHS and today I have decided to watch it. What a waste of time! There is neither storyline nor screenplay; the characters have the first name of each actor or actress; there is no edition and the viewer sees disjointed scenes on the screen.

This dreadful mess is about a Polish director, who is the alter-ego of Godard, that is filming a movie without story or money and has simultaneous affair with the owner of a hotel and a worker of a factory. My vote is one (awful).

Title (Brazil): Not Available.

Jean-Luc Godard est Jean-Luc Godard

[Daniel Karlsson · 10/10 · 25 April 2002]

Jean-Luc Godard makes me think clearer. After having read the other comments accusing "Passion" of being boring and pretentious crap, I can only say that I strongly disagree. Comments like those just make me angry. JLG's films are definitely not boring; unless you are completely unintellectual and don't have a clue of what is going on. "Passion" and JLG's other films are fresh and intellectual and philosophic. Godard is unique. It is as simple as that. Newcomers might look after some kind of plot, and find themselves confused. I don't know why they do, because a film does not have to have a fixed plot, a story or something like that, but in a way, it gets one by itself. Godard clearly points out in the film that "in cinema there are no rules".

Maybe you could say "Passion" is about art. And Poland (Godard never hesitate of adding political aspects in his later films). A lot of classical music is played during the scenes, and Godard keeps turning the music on and off like he uses to. At one occasion he is playing Mozart's Requiem, then he turns it off in the middle of the piece. Then he turns it on again from the beginning, turns it off, and starts over. My intuition told me that the music would continue once the same track had been played three times. And so it did. You can trust Godard. The visualizations of classical paintings by Delacroix, Rubens and Rembrandt are spectacular. Overall it is a beautiful film, with cinematography by the legendary New Wave cinematographer Raoul Coutard. The first half contains some scenes were the photo and the voices are not synchronized, giving a messy impression (which doesn't have to be negative). This impression is increased by the several childish quarrels among the characters.

9/10

Zero Stars For Dull

[osloj · 1/10 · 27 April 2007]

Do not listen to the film buffs who call this "art" and a series of vignettes that defy any meaning, it's worthless and boring.

The whole film has no interest to offer, what it tends to portray is stuffy French poseurs who smoke and talk about nothing in particular; that isn't very entertaining.

I was dragged to the ending finally and was exhausted by the absolute uselessness of this picture, and of Godard himself, who isn't a very capable film director.

What irks me is that such a banal director can be heaped upon with praises for such a tedious work.

Most of the shots are badly lit and with no sense of remedial drama at all; it reminds one of Von Trier's overrated work as well.

Makes good torture for prisoners with TV sets.

Another reason why French films are considered unequivocally dull.

One of Godard's finer masterpieces

[Chris_Docker · 10/10 · 10 April 2012]

Have you ever watched a movie and been aware of how much your emotions are being manipulated? Your buttons being pushed?

Just before I watched this film, I'd seen neuroscientist Susan Greenfield say how modern media encourages a sequence she calls arousal-addiction-reward. And stimulating that mental pathway releases dopamine, which inhibits the part of the brain associated evaluating social behaviour, planning complex cognitive behaviour, personality expression, and decision making. Most films are designed to produce emotional response. We are aroused (for instance) by the plight of the leading lady, addicted to the drama long enough to see what happens, and then suitably rewarded when she marries and lives happily ever after. Not only have we been told what to feel, but our critical thinking is subjugated into passive viewing. Unbiased appraisal of hypothetical outcomes is largely overridden by dominant subtexts. Critical thinking off: mainstream message on.

Godard claims he makes films to invite audiences to think, not to feel. The complex concept and metaphor (rather than adrenalin-filled) stories, can at first seem boring. Lacking in formal narrative, they flop at the box office, yet go on to critical acclaim and canonical status. Passion examines this discrepancy between a film as a piece of art versus the demands of commercial cinema.

Passion is a film within a film. Jerzy, a Polish filmmaker in western Europe, is re-creating tableaux vivants - masterpieces by Goya, Rembrandt, El Greco, Ingres and Delacroix. Tableaux vivants were a popular 19th century pre-cinema entertainment (described, for instance, in Sontag's novel, The Volcano Lover). Actors don't speak or move, and Jerzy is obsessing over light and shade while making up scenarios on the fly. His aesthetically ambitious film is two billion francs over budget. Money is needed. Meanwhile backers harangue Jerzy over his lack of storyline.

The filmmakers occasionally go to a nearby hotel and factory to find extras. Jerzy seduces both the factory owner's wife and a worker, Isabelle (Isabelle Huppert), who has been laid off and wants her money. They are attracted to the artistic environment, finding an aesthetisized mirror of their daily life. Squabbles off-set seem to be echoed in set pieces (for instance, where a Crusader carries off a half-clad maiden). The idea is voiced that work and love share the same movements, underlined with typical Godardian 'food for thought' such as, "One has to work on loving or love working."

With painting, image takes precedence over movement. The viewer supplies movement, or 'narrative,' by imagining a backstory or the painting's creation. With film, movement takes precedence over image. Brechtian techniques can be used to jolt audiences into awareness of stillness, or a concept contained in the film, allowing us to approach it from different angles much as we would a sculpture. Some techniques here used by Godard include extended L-cuts: we hear one woman talking but the camera is on another woman who is talking at the same speed, her voice muted (symbolically unheard). We watch an actress as she watches herself: on a video monitor, where she is struggling to lip-synch an operatic aria. That the film mirrors the film within the film, and also its own making, focuses our attention on the idea of what we are watching rather than the visual spectacle itself. Godard breaks down the barrier between documentary and fiction: "It's not a lie but, rather something imagined, not the exact truth, nor the opposite of truth. It's set apart from the real as it appears by the thoroughly calculated approximations of verisimilitude."

In making his Passion (the word can be taken in all three senses), Godard, like Jerzy, experienced resistance from actors because action is organised around images rather than a script. He created scenarios on a day-to-day basis as the film was being shot. For non-Godard fans, Passion is less hard work than his most abstruse work, but still takes effort to figure out what is happening rather than dismiss it as meaningless self-indulgence (which on casual viewing would be very easy to do). Once that investment has been made, it contains not only considerable satire, but enough material to engender repeat viewing. Although there are some political overtones, they are more in the background than with his earlier work. The film can also be admired for sheer exquisiteness, attention to detail, and perfect lighting in its re-creation of famous paintings. Amidst the mayhem of the studio and the baring of the director's soul, the young woman dancing clumsily around with a robe falling off, the young girl told to lie naked in the pool as a star-shape, or the cherub with a pointing finger – all are transformed into images of utter beauty. Godard's rendering of Rembrandt's Nightwatch is uncanny to anyone familiar with the painting. Goya's Nude Maja closely resembles Godard's live copy. The characters in Godard's version of Ingres' Small Bather might be inexact, but a comparison draws attention to the perfectly reproduced luminescence of the woman's skin – an effect achieved by perfect lighting – lighting that makes the human image semi-divine. "An image is not powerful because it's brutal or eerie," muses Jerzy, "but because the solidarity between ideas is distant and just."

Passion is an outpouring of the creative process, inspired, according to Godard, by Titan's Bacchus and Ariadne. Together with First Name Carmen and Slow Motion, it is is one of three films by Godard showing directors struggling with 'impossible' projects. I sometimes find Godard almost spoils me for conventional cinema. Like one of his characters, I find myself muttering, "Don't push my buttons! OK?"

Haste war du cinema

[nunculus · 30 August 1999]

Godard scholarship, lined along the axes of variants of French post-structuralism, would appear to have gotten it all wrong: a Godard movie can't be assimilated into a coherent and non-self-contradictory statement about work, gender, representation, or whatever academically approved topic you might name; it can't even be assimilated into a coherent process. What has to be confronted is that the work is essentially diaristic and subjective; these films are the more or less uncensored insides of Godard's head, not a white paper on a topic (no matter how "challenging" or "frustrating to expectations").

It also must be acknowledged that for Godard, even ideation is essentially sensuous, aestheticisable; ideas, like a piece of irruptive slapstick staging, a stale aphorism, a blast of the Mozart Requiem, are objects of delectation and desire, and finally repositories of aesthetic emotion--handwrapped presents. To say that the ideology of Godard's Maoist period was finally another aesthetic object for him is not to condescend to him as a radical-chicster. Very simply, Godard is an artist for whom the gland that produces aesthetic feeling works ten times more overtime than anyone else.

This produces the jarring and sometimes tonic feeling that we are overhearing the disordered and associative thoughts of God as He falls asleep. In a late, lyric work like HELAS POUR MOI, this quality becomes transcendent: the film is like a communication from a higher alien intelligence. In PASSION, that desire to aestheticize everything in sight, to wave a wand marked "excruciating beauty," in essence to make like a cinematic Goldfinger, is tripped up by the story Godard was required to tell in order to receive funding.

The necessity of telling a story is one of the (many) subjects that flit by in this production, which followed Godard's minorly popular comeback, EVERY MAN FOR HIMSELF. And the story Godard tells is so halfheartedly offered it disrupts the all-pervasive atmosphere of heightened lyricism he generates elsewhere. In essence, it's the same old movie about the making of a movie: the director (Jerzy Radzilowicz) is an idiot caught between a virginal proletarian (Isabelle Huppert!) and a slatternly hanger-on (Hanna Schygulla). The director pontificates, the producer (Michel Piccoli) avoids paying checks, and the inevitable phone calls for completion funds are delivered in dirty rooms.

If this reminds you of everything from BEWARE OF A HOLY WHORE to LIVING IN OBLIVION you're right; but nothing in those movies compared to Godard's strategy of contempt-uously making his stars Huppert and Piccoli stutter and cough, respectively. Or to the moment when a grip tells a child extra out of nowhere, "O those who will come after us--do not harden your hearts against us."

PASSION reminded me of John Simon's review of LE GAI SAVOIR, which began in the manner of, "I have seen no movie more illucid, arbitrary, and, yes, insane as..." PASSION genuinely is insane--it raises every line, every gesture, every landscape to a plane of unbearable intensity, and refuses to draw any lines between them. The cumulative effect suggests the personality of a slightly depressed but highly stimulated schizophrenic. Godard's late work is so beyond the prison of our narrative and identificational expectations that we may have to wait several lifetimes for its voice to be genuinely, not just indulgingly, heard.

My favourite film

[pizdamaterina · 10/10 · 14 July 2003]

This beautiful film takes me into my childhood fantasy world. The colours are beautiful, the dynamics is nocturnal, the people dance a ballet all the time, the sound has a life of its own... It's not just a motion picture, it's a motion painting. What a shame it hasn't been issued on DVD yet.

If you can't beat them, join them

[taylor9885 · 17 December 2002]

This is a good introduction to late-period Godard: all (ideological) passion spent, Oncle Jean is just going to show us a good time. Pretty girls lolling around the pool naked, glamourous stars like Hanna Schygulla with little to do, Isabelle Huppert when she could still play dewy-eyed ingenues, a ridiculous peplum being filmed by greedy, unscrupulous types (the director should have been played by Jacques Dutronc instead of that dour Polish actor).

It's 1982,these are the Thatcher-Reagan years, nobody thinks about Vietnam or the Palestinians or civil wars in Africa--people only want to make money. Godard gives us hip product-placement, Rembrandt, Caravaggio, Mozart instead of Coke or Pepsi.

"We live in bloodless times"

[bob998 · 8/10 · 20 April 2014]

My theory is this: you have to watch this film after midnight, after all the cares of the day are forgotten (the phone call you forgot to make, the stuff you didn't pick up at the store) and you can relax completely. Just let the scenes unspool before you, the beautiful images wash over you. Godard has made a kind of masterpiece, under trying circumstances--he wanted Vittorio Storaro as DP, and had to call in Coutard, with whom he was no longer friendly--and his efforts were not crowned with commercial success; the picture was a flop.

Jerzy's character is fascinating; he seems to take inertia to new heights. Imagine refusing to shoot because the lighting is wrong. Fritz Lang (and Godard himself, of course) would never have used that silly excuse: they would have worked around any problems on the set. Miss Lucachevski, the tall and very elegant script-girl, says that she is tired of working on a production that produces nothing and we can feel her frustration. Jerzy asks her to read a passage from Les Miserables about Enjolras's passion, then he makes the bloodless remark about bloodless times I've used in the summary. Radziwilowicz is a pudding-faced actor who shows us little of what he's feeling. Hanna Schygulla on the other hand is extraordinarily animated and focused as the uneasy female angle of the triangle with Michel and Jerzy. She is photographed better here than Fassbinder managed to shoot her in his films. MacCabe's book on Godard tells how she came to work one day after a night of excess and Godard insisted on shooting her with every wrinkle lovingly recorded. Whatever, she is gorgeous, every bit as striking as Anna Karina, or even Jane Fonda, to name two of Godard's leading ladies.

The enactments of the paintings are ravishing, worth the price of the video in themselves. Myriem Roussel posing on the pool deck for the Ingres Bather is stunning, the entry of the crusaders into Jerusalem will delight you. A knockout.

11.23.2023

[EasonVonn · 10/10 · 22 November 2023]

Godard after three rebirths

Once Godard connected with Anne-Marie Melville, his films shone: it's no coincidence that Anne-Marie Melville enabled him to integrate his early romantic and Marxist political ideas, since she made him first consider the concept of women and their place in society in the 1980s. .

As before, Godard continues to deconstruct his own relationship between sound and image, and to make it even more pronounced. As well as narrating without any desire for narrative structure, Godard is still deconstructing the relationship between sound and image and making it even more pronounced. What is different is that Godard seems to have drawn closer to the audience once again since his third rebirth.

There also seems to be a point where Godard wants to explore Bazan's reference in What is Cinema to the image in order to restore traditional art such as oil paintings corresponding to Rembrandt's Nightwatch in the film. This is perhaps Godard's greatest attempt at the art of cinema.

A beautiful film and a wonderous mood

[sbahlin · 9 October 1999]

Despite the idiocy of the last comment there is an awful lot to be loved about Passion. The almost overstyled interiors of the studio set, complete with Painting Concrete (if you will) while the director and producer wander about discussing exactly how much per day it costs. Love it!

The narrative (yes it is there, just let your mind wander) is simple and familiar, the in jokes are hilarious, and the atmosphere, especially at the end scene with the ship in the forest is, at times, breath taking.

Yes it is dis-continuous, it is a film by JEAN-LUC GODARD! What do you expect. If you hate him, you'll hate this, if you love him, then this is destined to be one of your favourite JLG films (if you like his "mature" style that is).

One of the most boring films I have ever seen!

[adrianaruk · 17 November 2004]

Jean-Luc Godard's "Passion" can only be described as an absolute bore. The director presents his audience with a film that hardly has a storyline; there is no intrigue and no entertainment. Lets say that his pursuit for originality is the reason why it's all so strange and dull. The disjointed scenes means that the viewer quickly looses interest- this lack of continuity persists throughout the entire film. The classical music in the background sounds like a technical fault, as it inhibits the clarity of the dialogue- all I could hear was mumbled monotone voices. There is much confusion and it takes a lot of effort to identify characters and establish relationships between them.Being a film student myself, as much as I would like say that Godard moves away from typical Hollywood cinema and presents us with an artistic piece, the film is an absolute flop. The story does not develop, the nudity scenes are pointless, and the characters are uninteresting. When the film finally ended , I came out feeling unfulfilled.

The most boring film I've sat through in the last ten years

[keenanchris · 9 May 2000]

It's not that I don't like arty films, I just found this so dreary. i can see why it may be of interest to a film-student, but to sit through it for entertainment purposes is certainly not recommendable! If you suffer from lack of sleep, check this out and it'll have you snoozing within no time at all. A christmas present for a friend you want to get rid of. In other words - pretentious crap.

Turned off VCR mid-way. No continuity. No interest.

[egor · 2 January 1999]

Difficult to give fair appraisal of film since I lost interest 15 minutes in. Surprising that a film of 1982 should have a screen play which lacks so much in terms of continuity and French is one language with which I am familiar.

One of Godard's most gorgeously twisted art objects

[philosopherjack · 10 June 2022]

Jean-Luc Godard's Passion is one of his most gorgeously twisted art objects, a work of stunning craft and visual sumptuousness which, even as it ravishes us, persistently prompts us to find such beauty lacking, both on its own terms and as an expression of the hermetic industrial and financial infrastructure which allows its creation. While it's seldom been worthwhile to try summarizing a Godardian narrative, Passion revolves around a stalled film project taking place in proximity to a factory riddled with industrial unrest and to a nearby motel, the proprietors and workers of which interact in various ways; the director is from Poland, at that moment in time a focus of political engagement, the very evocation of which tends to condemn the decadent irrelevance of the film within the film and all that it drives. The project appears to consist primarily of (again, gorgeous) recreations of iconic paintings and historical snapshots, with no apparent protagonists; the director spends much time worrying about the quality of the lighting, while his producer continually hustles for money; as such it's in an intriguing dynamic with Godard's own film, which has an emblematically art-house cast (Isabelle Huppert, Hanna Schygulla, Michel Piccoli), all of course subservient to the governing scheme (Huppert's character stutters: Piccoli's perpetually coughs; Godard seems most interested in Schygulla for her face, including one wondrous searching close-up that recalls Falconetti in The Passion of Joan of Arc). In the end, the director sets off for his home country with some of the film's women tagging along; to one who balks at getting in because she doesn't like cars, he explains that it's not a car but a magic carpet - a silly line, but one which works on her, and which perhaps points to the possibility of escaping a cinematic dead end, for a creative renewal more rooted in the real world.