The film starts with Godard's off voice saying: "ne changer rien pour que tout soit different" (do not change anything so everything is different). History doesn't change, but you can establish a different approach on details. This means that even if we try to change the whole story, it will have the same meaning because we already have certain feelings and opinions about it. If we allow history to stay the same but we change our ways of thinking, it'll have a completely different meaning to us because it lets us analize it in a different way. Sometimes we pay attention to new particular details when we see the same film, and it depends a lot on our humor and what we're thinking on that moment, so it also helps us to give the same film a different meaning than the one we thought about the first time we saw it.
The very opening of Historie(s) du cinema embeds a literary citation, “Hoc opus, hic labor est,” the Sibyl’s warning to Aenea’s descent to and return from the underworld. This fits in the history of cinema because since early ages we’ve been challenging everybody to prove we’re superior; but as usual, there’s always a chance for failure so we need to try to be the best, taking into consideration the mistakes that have been made by others in the past so we can avoid them and have better results.
Godard responded to an exasperated critic’s bewilderment, that his films didn’t have a beginning, middle and an end, with, “they do, but not necessarily in that order”. It is hard for me to say which order does Toutes les histories follow, but it was obvious that it doesn’t follow a determined order because, in my opinion, the sequences don’t have a very strict and close correlation with the other one, so it can’t have a logical structure. What matters is that despite the order the film follows, the message you want to transmit must be understood anyways.
The very first shot of Historie(s) du Cinéma certainly begins in the middle of film history, with a shot of a man with a camera, not a movie camera, but still a camera, with a telephoto lens, held at a little distance from his eye. The shot is in slow motion so we can see his anxious eyeballs moving from side to side. It is a tight shot of Jimmy Stewart from Hitchcock’s Rear Window 1954, hooked on to a screen, so to speak; a surrogate for us, the spectators. This represents that everything in this world is changing in front of our eyes, and we start getting a little anxious to be conscious about everything that’s going on right now.
“May each eye negotiate for itself” means that everybody has a different perspective of a particular thing. While someone thinks something is beautiful, another person may think it’s ugly and disgusting.
By “Don’t show every side of things, allow yourself a margin for the indefinite”, Godard means that having those blank spaces on a story allows people to start thinking about what’s going to happen next. This helps people to be motivated and interested on something. Otherwise, if they knew everything, life would be very boring.
The word TOI (you) is very strong and powerful because it means that you are the only one who knows how you think, and that your perspective about something is unique, even though it has common aspects with someone else’s perspective.
The artist’s role in society and in cinema is depicted with references to Jean Renoir’s La Règle du jeu (1939) (The Rules of the Game) as if to an exemplary combination of formal innovation and political commitment. This means that despite everybody must follow some socially acceptable behaviors, an artist can do things different because there are no clear rules for art, so they just do what it feels right. Nicholas Ray is important for Godard because he was an influence for him. That’s why there’s a lot of references of Nicholas Ray in Godard’s works. “There was theater (Griffith), poetry (Murnau), painting (Rossellini), dance (Eisenstein), music (Renoir). Henceforth there is cinema. And the cinema is Nicholas Ray”.
“Le cinema substitute a notreregard un monde qui s’accorde a nos desires” means that movies are created in order to fulfill our interests and desires because movies are a way for us to express how we see things.
Cinema is the best way to discuss the history of cinema because it can show things in a way that other forms of art can’t.
Cinema replaces the way we see life, because we can change things that in real life would just be impossible. It is said on the movie that cinema replaces perfume.
Irving Thalberg is the last tycoon because he had an extraordinary ability to produce excellent films in every aspect, like the cast and the script.
The power of Hollywood lies anywhere a movie can be seen. It can be at a movie theater or simply at home.
“A film is a girl and a gun”. Godard says that this is all you need to make a good movie because it’s what people want to see. I agree with this because nowadays most of the movies contain this to particular things and give them a lot of importance.
Kino Pravda’s purpose is to show truth-film. In other words, it shows everyday experiences without changing anything. It relates with the idea of a “Dream factory” and the image of Lenin’s corpse, because when he was alive he had a very strict control over his country so people couldn’t express their ideas freely. When he died, his regime came down with him, allowing people to think and do what they want, and that’s how the dream factory was born.
By “Aquel que ha pasado por el cine y ha conservado la marca no puede entrar en otro lugar”, Godard means that Once you’ve been introduced to artistic means and defined the boundaries of what you consider your reality is, you can't go back to the way you were before or appreciate the things with the past simplicity. You get marked by culture, a more conscious way of thinking, because the perspective you have developed makes you see things in a more complex and intellectual way.
Howard Hughes was an American business tycoon, investor, aviator, aerospace engineer, inventor, filmmaker and philanthropist who gained prominence in Hollywood from the late 1920s, making big-budget and often controversial films like The Racket (1928), Hell's Angels (1930), Scarface (1932) and The Outlaw (1943). I’m not sure if Godard disliked him, but I think that if he did, it was because Hughes had a lot of money so he could do anything he wanted when he produced a movie, so maybe Godard was jealous of him.
There’s an allusion to witchcraft because they say that women used witchcraft to get whatever they want, like a man or material stuff.
Godard depicts Orson Welles because they both were very philosophical people who had very intelligent thoughts about films. They preferred good, meaningful movies instead of just entertaining films with no sense at all
“Humiliated and offended” refers to the movies that were never produced and stayed just in ideas, so they were lost. These films were despised and discarded so they never got the chance to cause an impact on the society because it couldn’t deliver the message they were intended to.
The point of using Hitler’s images is to show in a critic and sarcastic way how reality can be hidden sometimes to people because they show in movies (and even on the news) only what they want. We all know what Hitler did, but he refused to accept his acts and he wanted people to believe that he only wanted the best for the world.
Regarding to the German invasion of France, Godard was not happy with it, because he’s French after all.
Malraux said that “The masses love myth and cinema addresses the masses. But if myth begins with Fantomas it ends with Christ. What did the crowds hear when they listened to Saint Bernard preach? Something other than what he said? Perhaps, no doubt. But how can we ignore what we understand when that unknown plunges deep into our hearts?”. This means that masses can be difficult to convince about something, because they only hear what they want to hear, so you have to choose your words carefully so you can make them think about it and change their ways of thinking.
Godard had a very good opinion of the cinematographer’s vision because they had beautiful and unique ideas that could be turned into a very good film, and not everybody has that capability.
Godard says “isn’t life wonderful” in a way for us to think that life can be really good if we want it to be that way. We’re the ones who are constantly complaining about little details making us unhappy with life, so we must change our ways of thinking so we can live a better one.
“The final conclusion the viewer can reach is that cinema has impregnated every aspect of society”. This means that movies had changed our ways of seeing life because they capture aspects of it that mark us emotionally and intellectually speaking. We certainly are influenced by movies, and that’s why we’re used to watch them in a regular basis, because they have the power to make us feel identified with their characters, plot, etc. and we feel like our life is like a very interesting film.