The “moment” approach when analyzing film is the idea that there is a moment in any film that stands out to the individual viewer or spectator. It is always subjective and often times, the viewer will have no idea what the moment means within the context of the film or why, at first, the moment has significance at all. Nonetheless, within the “moment” approach, the spectator will relate their moment’s significance to the rest of the film and then be able to use the film to explain or justify cinema as a form of art. I used this approach to analyze Jean-Luc Godard’s film “Masculin, Feminin.”
The “moment” hit me about 25 minutes into the film. There is a sequence of shots that I believe Godard manipulatively and masterfully set up in order to throw the viewer off track.
The first shot is of a train passing by an open window in an apartment. The shot that follows is of Paul cracking open the doors of a moving train and looking out and around. In the third shot we are back in the apartment where this time we see Madeleine walking up to the window to look at the passing train. And finally we see Paul closing the train’s doors and walking back toward the center of the train.
These first sets of shots are establishing for the scene that follows. In all, they comprise only 20 seconds of the film and yet this moment stood out to me.
When considering most of Hollywood’s productions of movies, the filmmaker-audience relationship is usually on a “what you see is what you get” basis. For the most part, camera angles and editing styles are clear and concise in a film out of Hollywood. So from the point of view of a moviegoer who is used to seeing Hollywood films, it would be safe to assume that Godard is using parallel editing to tell us that Paul is either just leaving from of just arriving to Madeleine’s home. But after watching the confusion of the first 25 minutes of this film, I questioned my initial assumption of parallel editing. Perhaps Paul is neither leaving nor going to Madeleine’s. Maybe Paul just happened to be looking out of the train doors and maybe Madeleine was watching a different train pass by her window. For all we know, these two events happened during different times that night or even different nights all together.
I believe this moment is significant to the rest of the film in that it reiterates the notion that Godard seems to be manipulating his audience. Throughout “Masculin, Feminin,” and many of his other films, the audience is thrown for a loop again and again. As soon as you think you have figured out Godard’s mind and method, he presents another obstacle.
On the whole, I think this film represents cinema as a form of art. Making and perceiving art is a subjective process. What one person may like another may hate and vice versa. However, whether or not you liked a piece of art is insignificant if the artist has effectively swayed your opinion. George Carlin famously said that when doing a comedy special, if the show was good, he was able to manipulate the audience into agreeing with whatever he said. So much so that when every single audience member was on his side, he would contradict himself and get them all to agree with his contradiction.
Your moment of choice is very interesting; I also notice the train shot but did not catch the part where they show Madeline looking out the window. But I beg to differ that Eisenstein is telling us to figure out the reason he did anything the way he went about doing it. In the film there is a part the main character Paul says to is friend: a customer walks in and ask the hostess where to find a place and walks out, Paul then proceeds to get up the camera follows him and ask the exact same question the random man just asked, he says thank you and sits back down at the table with his friend. His friend then ask why did he do that, he says “Putting myself in his shoes; put yourself in his shoes it’s pointless”. As humans we are always trying to connect to the characters or the Director.
ReplyDeleteYou say in your argument that “from the point of view of the audience the shot can be assume to be a parallel editing to tell us something”. Again all it shows is that we are trying to connect to the character or connect two characters with the word parallel. Maybe what Godard is trying to prove is that the way Hollywood produces film and sending messages in their films, so we feel for the character or try to put ourselves in their shoes, is ridiculous. I agree with that line that it is pointless to put yourself in someone else’s shoes, because you can never really feel the full emotion they have or the thoughts they have, so what is the point. I feel that Godard is so witty that he is saying look at everyone trying to once again relate to a film that does not even have a exposition, rising action, climax, falling action and denouement, because what we look for in film is closure. -Sherrinette Wong
Fantastic dialogue! Radha, I LOVE your connection to George Carlon's quote. And, I agree...much of filmmaking is about getting an argument out there and making sure the audience agrees with it. Eisenstein and Godard both work with the idea of getting spectators to react to images, hoping their films will have a cultural and political impact on viewers. Sherrinette is correct as well. Godard does seem to suggest that it is pointless to try to identify with the main character. So, I wonder, if we are not supposed to identify with the characters, does Godard want us to be critical of them? Are we supposed to "do as they say and not as they do"?
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