Synopses & Reviews
A landmark biography explores the crucial resonances among the life, work, and times of one of the most influential filmmakers of our age
When Jean-Luc Godard wed the ideals of filmmaking to the realities of autobiography and current events, he changed the nature of cinema. Unlike any earlier films, Godard's work shifts fluidly from fiction to documentary, from criticism to art. The man himself also projects shifting images--cultural hero, fierce loner, shrewd businessman. Hailed by filmmakers as a--if not the--key influence on cinema, Godard has entered the modern canon, a figure as mysterious as he is indispensable.
In Everything Is Cinema, critic Richard Brody has amassed hundreds of interviews to demystify the elusive director and his work. Paying as much attention to Godard's technical inventions as to the political forces of the postwar world, Brody traces an arc from the director's early critical writing, through his popular success with Breathless, to the grand vision of his later years. He vividly depicts Godard's wealthy conservative family, his fluid politics, and his tumultuous dealings with women and fellow New Wave filmmakers.
Everything Is Cinema confirms Godard's greatness and shows decisively that his films have left their mark on screens everywhere. Richard Brody, a film critic and editor at The New Yorker, is also an independent filmmaker who lives in New York City. Everything Is Cinema is his first book. When Jean-Luc Godard wed the ideals of filmmaking to the realities of autobiography and current events, he changed the nature of cinema. Unlike any earlier films, Godard's work shifts fluidly from fiction to documentary, from criticism to art. Godard himself also projects shifting images--cultural hero, fierce loner, shrewd businessman. Hailed by filmmakers as a--if not the--key influence on cinema, Godard has entered the modern canon, a figure as mysterious as he is indispensable.
In Everything Is Cinema, critic Richard Brody has amassed hundreds of interviews to demystify the elusive director and his work. Paying as much attention to Godard's technical inventions as to the political forces of the postwar world, Brody traces an arc from the director's early critical writing, through his popular success with Breathless, to the grander vision of his later years. Brody vividly depicts Godard's wealthy conservative family, his fluid politics, and his tumultuous experiences with women and fellow New Wave filmmakers.
Everything Is Cinema shows decisively the lasting mark that Godard has left on cinema. Richard Brody's biography of Godard--arguably the most important, enigmatic, and exciting filmmaker of the second half of the 20th century--effortlessly weaves intellectual history, a personal saga, and an authoritative reading of the films themselves into a seamless web. It virtually crackles with intelligence, and is a must read for anyone interested in cinema.--Peter Biskind, author of Gods and Monsters: Thirty Years of Writing on Film and Culture
The increasing availability of the works of Jean-Luc Godard on DVD makes this the perfect moment for Richard Brody's massive, ambitious new biography of the French Nouvelle Vague pioneer . . . Brody seamlessly integrates the oft-told story--the transformation of Godard and his fellow Cahiers du Cinema critics into auteurs of the most glorious national cinema of the postwar period--with reams of new material he has gathered over seven years of research. He seems to have missed no one, interviewing Godard himself, all three of his wives including his frequent star Anna Karina, his Maoist collaborator Jean-Pierre Gorin, and literally dozens of people who were in the room or on the set at important moments in Godard's life. He is attentive to the ideological hair-splitting and political extremism of the Gorin years--a mad, molten period largely lost to legend until now. To his credit, Brody doesn't glide over Godard's occasional anti-Semitic remarks or his problems with women (Karina maintains that being slapped in public by him simply constitute proof of his love), or the deterioration of his relationship with Francois Truffaut. However, geniuses all have their flaws, and Brody goes to great length to contextualize these without excusing them, the better to unmask and explain this famously inscrutable artist and his work. All in all, Brody has given us the most satisfying--and epic--movie biography of the year so far.--DGA Quarterly
Richard Brody's Everything Is Cinema: The Working Life of Jean-Luc Godard is a story of transformation, a painstaking account of a lifelong artistic journey . . . A] meticulously detailed book . . . Everything Is Cinema works its way methodically through Godard's career, beginning with his days as a young cinephile in the early 1950s, writing for Parisian film journals like La Gazette du Cinema and, later, the newly founded Cahiers du Cinema. Brody explains that Godard's entree into the French film industry, via writing criticism, was 'revolutionary and didactic': Godard and his contemporaries--among them future filmmakers of the nouvelle vague including Francois Truffaut, Jacques Rivette and Maurice Scherer (better known to filmgoers as Eric Rohmer)--educated themselves by making pilgrimages to screenings at the Cinematheque and the Cine-Club du Quartier Latin, where they might see three or four films a day.--Stephanie Zacharek, The New York Times
Perhaps the most impressive thing about Brody's Everything Is Cinema: The Working Life of Jean-Luc Godard is that it's 700 large-format pages long, yet winds up seeming too short--a tribute to both the author and his 77-year-old subject . . . Brody's main strength, apart from the fact that he's never boring, is his ease in clarifying the intricacies of French politics and philosophy as they interact with Godard's evolution. Sometimes these two specialties even come together, bristling with God
Review
"Richard Brody's biography of Godard—arguably the most important, enigmatic, and exciting filmmaker of the second half of the 20th century—effortlessly weaves intellectual history, a personal saga, and an authoritative reading of the films themselves into a seamless web. It virtually crackles with intelligence, and is a must read for anyone interested in cinema."—Peter Biskind, author of Gods and Monsters: Thirty Years of Writing on Film and Culture
"Full of lucid analysis and human context, Richard Brody's book performs a heroic act in rescuing Godard and his growing shelf of works from the prison of myth and theory, from the cult of youth and the cult of the '60s, restoring him to his place as an engaged, hard-working artist."—Jonathan Lethem, author of The Fortress of Solitude
"Godard changed the movies as much as the American masters he grew up on: Welles, Hawks, Hitchcock, and the rest. He is as original as Picasso—but unlike Picasso, he has been denied the biography he has always deserved. This is it. Just at the moment when the New Wave turns fifty, Richard Brody has given us Everything is Cinema, a remarkable book which describes with sharp intelligence a great and elusive artist's times, intellect, passions, and work."—Wes Anderson, writer and director of Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, and The Life Aquatic
"Everything Is Cinema is better than a biography, it is a novel. And a great novel, in which one discovers the story of a man who almost picked the wrong art form, a struggling writer who became an immense filmmaker."—Bernard-Henri Lévy, author of American Vertigo
Synopsis
A monumental work of biographical excavation that examines the life, art, and political and intellectual engagement of one of the most influential forces in modern cinema. Jean-Luc Godard, exemplary filmmaker of the French New Wave movement, brought the ideals of filmmaking and the realities of autobiography into a new iteration of the most comprehensive art form: cinema. A filmmaker who straddles the line between fiction and documentary, criticism and art, his persona divided between the ideals of cultural hero and impassioned loner, Godard has entered the modern canon as an artistic force to be reckoned with. In Everything is Cinema, Richard Brody weaves together Godard's work, life, and the intellectual and political history that surrounds him, melding the three into a meticulous critical biography. Godard's films are supremely autobiographical, his work the product of a single obsessive quest to unify his life and work. Brody delves into the mind of the isolated Godard, supplementing interviews with the filmmaker with over a hundred others, while at the same time exploring both published and unpublished film from American and European archivists and filmmakers. A thoughtful study in artistic psychology, Everything is Cinema is a window into the work and mind of one of the most complex and intriguing artists of our time.
Synopsis
A landmark biography explores the crucial resonances among the life, the work, and the times of this most influential filmmakerWhen Jean-Luc Godard, exemplary director of the French New Wave, wed the ideals of filmmaking to the realities of autobiography and current events, he changed the nature of cinema. Among the greatest cinematic innovations, Godard’s films straddle the line between fiction and documentary, criticism and art. Similarly, his persona projects the shifting images of cultural hero, impassioned loner, and shrewd businessman. Indeed, Godard has entered the modern canon, a figure as mythologized as he is influential.
In Everything Is Cinema, critic Richard Brody draws on hundreds of interviews with Godard’s friends, family, and collaborators as well as on unseen footage to paint the fullest picture yet of the elusive director. Paying meticulous attention to intellectual and political currents, Brody traces an arc from Godard’s early critical writing, through his popular success with Breathless and Contempt, to the grand vision of his later years. Throughout this original interpretation, Brody argues that Godard’s work, life, and the zeitgeist are inseparable, and that the films are the product of a single obsessive quest to unify biography, creativity, and history.
Synopsis
A landmark biography explores the crucial resonances among the life, work, and times of one of the most influential filmmakers of our ageWhen Jean-Luc Godard wed the ideals of filmmaking to the realities of autobiography and current events, he changed the nature of cinema. Unlike any earlier films, Godard's work shifts fluidly from fiction to documentary, from criticism to art. The man himself also projects shifting images--cultural hero, fierce loner, shrewd businessman. Hailed by filmmakers as a--if not the--key influence on cinema, Godard has entered the modern canon, a figure as mysterious as he is indispensable.
In Everything Is Cinema, critic Richard Brody has amassed hundreds of interviews to demystify the elusive director and his work. Paying as much attention to Godard's technical inventions as to the political forces of the postwar world, Brody traces an arc from the director's early critical writing, through his popular success with Breathless, to the grand vision of his later years. He vividly depicts Godard's wealthy conservative family, his fluid politics, and his tumultuous dealings with women and fellow New Wave filmmakers.
Everything Is Cinema confirms Godard's greatness and shows decisively that his films have left their mark on screens everywhere.
Synopsis
A revealing look at the life and work of David Lynch, one of the most enigmatic and influential filmmakers of our time Every frame of David Lynchand#39;s work, from the and#39;70s midnight movie Eraserhead to the groundbreaking TV series Twin Peaks, to the digital-video DIY feat Inland Empire, bears his unmistakable imprint.and#160;But the paradox of the Lynchian is that itand#39;s easy to recognize and hard to define.and#160;Lynch is a master of the inscrutable gesture, the opaque symbol. His career evades the usual categories:and#160;pop culture icon and subject of academic study, cult figure and industry outsider.and#160;Heand#39;s a Renaissanceand#160;manandmdash;musician, painter, photographer, carpenter, entrepreneurandmdash;and a vocal proponent or transcendental meditation.
Dennis Lim, the newly minted director of Cinematheque programming at Lincoln Center, is a skilled cinephile wary of over-interpretation. David Lynch preserves the strangeness of the Lynchand#39;s universe and offers a personal meditation on the most distinctive filmmaker in modern American culture. It leaves what Lynch likes to call andquot;room to dream,andquot;and#160;honoring the allure of the unknown and the unknowable.
About the Author
DENNIS LIM is the director of programming at the Film Society of Lincoln Center. A former film editor and critic at Theandnbsp;Village Voice, he is the author of The Village Voice Film Guide:andnbsp;50 Years of Movies Classics toandnbsp;Cult Hits (2009).