A sort of peewee, home-movie CONTEMPT, GRANDEUR ET DECADENCE is Godard's look at what happens during the making of a cheapo TV movie--i.e., he took on an assignment to make a cheapo TV movie, and in typical fashion gave the process the skewer. The emphasis here is on the real faces and real voices of real people--actors seen in a poignant juxtaposition of their headshots and their real, peeved, fragile selves. One of the most energetic, funniest and oddly touching of recent Godards, this is extraordinarily hard to find, and worth the hunt.
Black Sequence (TV Series)
Grandeur et décadence d'un petit commerce de cinéma (1986)
User Reviews
Review this title2 Reviews
Not pure BS but still unbearable BS
Lebowski_smokes6 October 2017
Watched this at the opening of the UNDERDOX Film Festival 2017 in Munich, where it was the opening film.
It is a very experimental film, with a lot of dissolve transitions, rewinding, music loops - nice little playful ideas. It is about a production company and the production process and focuses on the people involved. This film is very abstract, there is not straightforward storytelling. Even though I like experimental, abstract films - as long as they are good - I found this film highly exhausting, in a bad way. It is boring, it exhausts itself in its meta levels, the intended (funny) overacting of the actors becomes too repetitive - it is a nuance. This should only be watched by people who will blindly believe that everything Godard made is brilliant and who take pride from having watched this hard to find, formerly lost and rediscovered, supposed gem.
In a nutshell: this film is not pure BS, because there certainly remains some quality in it, and the rough idea and intend have the odeur of a somewhat worthy abstraction, but it is overall still unbearable BS.
It is a very experimental film, with a lot of dissolve transitions, rewinding, music loops - nice little playful ideas. It is about a production company and the production process and focuses on the people involved. This film is very abstract, there is not straightforward storytelling. Even though I like experimental, abstract films - as long as they are good - I found this film highly exhausting, in a bad way. It is boring, it exhausts itself in its meta levels, the intended (funny) overacting of the actors becomes too repetitive - it is a nuance. This should only be watched by people who will blindly believe that everything Godard made is brilliant and who take pride from having watched this hard to find, formerly lost and rediscovered, supposed gem.
In a nutshell: this film is not pure BS, because there certainly remains some quality in it, and the rough idea and intend have the odeur of a somewhat worthy abstraction, but it is overall still unbearable BS.
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