Godard and women: two or three things I know about them

In good old days, Godard Sólonecesitaba a pistol and a woman to make a film and gun may be spared. Bad temper, film that addresses Erotómana obsession of Swiss, is not at height of its legend, but re is where to read.

Godard and AnJean-Luc na Karina, on her wedding day, in Switzerland. JEAN-CLAUDE SAUER

"It is a universally accepted truth that history of cinema is a conspiracy of timid, unattractive men and sexual obsessed to surround mselves with ravishing women," writes Colin MacCabe in Godard: Portrait of an artist at 70 (Seix barral). From run we could talk about Woody Allen, Roman Polanski, Roger Vadim, François Truffaut and, of course, Jean-Luc Godard himself. But none of m had such long-lasting and prolific creative alliances with ir lovers as filmmaker who began his career six decades ago and today is still active, held in his house on shores of Lake Geneva alongside woman of his life , Anne-Marie Miéville.

In its beginnings, all that Godard needed to make a film was a woman and a pistol. Sometimes he could even spare gun. When she first saw Anna Karina in a soap commercial, she had no doubt: cinema had been created to capture her face, her back, her voice, her tears, her dances. She rejected first offering of that strange type of dark glasses 10 years older than her, who wanted her to appear naked at end of getaway. The second try said yes.

After modest approach and timid harassment of Godard's camera to face and body of actress in soldier, his first film toger (although it was released three years later), a woman is a woman was an absolute declaration of love in which cinema and life , accomplices of same cause, joined toger to enrich one anor. A Godard quotation is always a good handhold to be seized: «Cinema is not an art that film life, cinema is between art and life».

The seven films y made toger were, in words of Raoul Coutard, faithful director of photography of Swiss filmmaker, " most expensive postcard a man has ever sent to his wife." His breakups and reconciliations, suicide attempts and love letters, discussions fed images and sounds of living his life, Banda Aparta, Lemmy against Alphaville, Pierrot El Loco and Made in USA. Even when unhinged instability of ir relationship made it impossible, as in contempt, Godard used Brigitte Bardot to emulate Karina and actor Michel Piccoli as ir own sosias.

During summer of 1966, Godard was rolling in morning Made in USA and in afternoon two or three things I know about her. If first was Karina's definitive farewell, second was meeting with Marina Vlady, with whom he lived a romance destined to fail. He wanted Vlady, an already consecrated interpreter, to forget everything he knew and to show himself to camera vulnerable, natural, without masks. That didn't work. When Godard asked him to marry and was rejected, Depecho led him to look at an 18-year-old girl he had discovered through a photo. The snapshot, taken during filming of Random, Baltasar, of Robert Bresson, was that of a redheaded girl of Transparent look and parted lips: Anne Wiazemsky, who would be his second wife and muse of its political stage.

At that time, one year before May 68, Godard was closest thing to a rock star. The future belonged to him. Toger with his fellow generation, he had reinvented cinema several times but still had his inner revolution pending. Maoist, for more signs. She, a granddaughter of François Mauriac, a Nobel laureate in literature who was very supportive of pages of Le Figaro to conservative presidency of de Gaulle, lived it all with intensity and ingenuity of youth. Among student Algaras, evening with intellectuals, evenings in cinema and sleepless nights, toger y rolled chinoise. And nothing's ever been same again.

Bad temper, film of Michel Hazanavicius that premieres on Thursday 12 and that has coincided with death of Wiazemsky victim of a cancer, it is a very free adaptation of a busy year (anagram) and an an an après (unpublished in our country), two autobiographical books Written by actress in which both live ir first meetings and disencounters. The film appropriates Godard's resources and quotations and portrays it in comedy code, when it does not parody, like a jealous, clumsy, neurotic, and leaden-speaking type. Despite Louis Garrel's commendable efforts to inhabit character, evil genius can only be understood as a joke, skirting bad taste, on macho vanity of a hopeless cretin.

After turbulent years of Dziga Vertov group, with Godard adrift in his ideological crusade, Anne-Marie Miéville would appear on horizon as only possible table of salvation. She was first her scriptwriter, n her editor and co-director, to end up building her own career as a brilliant filmmaker, a light bulb in front of Godard's elongated shadow. Sentimental and creative couple from 1973-except for some parenses like filming of I Salute You, Maria, in which filmmaker was dislived by actress Myriem Roussel-toger have shared most important of ir lives: an unconditional love for cinema. And what cinema has brought toger, let no man separate.