GOING TO THE MOVIES
291
a beginning, middle, and end in your films ." "Certainly," Godard
replied, "But not necessarily in that order."
Still, unsatisfactory as the plots of his films may be to many people,
it would hardly be correct to describe Godard's films as plotless -like,
say, Djiga Vertov's
The Man With the Camera,
the two ' silent films
of Bunuel
(L'Age d'Or, Un Chien Andalou )
or Kenneth Anger's
Scorpio Rising,
films in which a story-line has been completely discarded
as the narrative framework. As in many conventional feature films,
Godard proposes an interrelated group of fictional characters located in
a recognizable, contemporary, usually urban landscape (Paris), but the
sequence of events suggests a fully articulated story without adding up
to one. The audience is presented with a narrative line that is partly
erased or effaced (the structural equivalent of the jump-cut). Disregard–
ing the traditional novelist's rule of explaining things as fully as they
seem in need of explanation, Godard provides simplistic motives or
frequently leaves motives unexplained; actions are often opaque, and
fail to issue into consequences ; occasionally the dialogue itself is not
entirely audible. (Of course, there are other films, like Rossellini's
Journey to Italy
and Resnais'
Muriel,
employing a comparably "unreal–
istic" system of narration, in which the story is decomposed into disjunct
objectified elements; but Godard, the only director with a whole body
of work along these lines, has suggested more of the diverse routes for
"abstracting" from an ostensibly realistic narrative than any other direc–
tor. It is important, too, to distinguish various structures of abstracting
- as, for instance, between the systematically "indeterminate" plot of
Bergman's
Persona
and the "intermittent" plots of Godard's films.)
Thus, it is precisely the presence, not the absence, of story
in
Godard's films that gives rise to the standard criticism made of them.
Godard's modifying, rather than making a complete rupture with, the
conventions of prose fiction underlying the main tradition of cinema
seems to have made more difficulties for audiences than the forth–
right "poetic" or "abstract" narration practiced by the official cine–
matic avant-garde. Another difficulty is the sources from which
Godard draws some of the plots he will modify but not altogether ob–
literate. Like many directors, he prefers mediocre, even subliterary
material, finding it easier to dominate and transform by the
mise-en–
scene.
"I don't really like telling a story," Godard has written, some–
what simplifying the matter. "I prefer to use a kind of tapestry, a
background on which I can embroider my Own ideas. But I generally do
need a story. A conventional one serves as well, perhaps even best."
Thus, Godard has ruthlessly described the novel on which his brilliant
