Sunday 24 october 2021, Can Dialectics Break Bricks Cinema: Tout va bien (Everything’s All Right), directed by Jean-Luc Godard, 1972, 96 minutes. In French with English subtitles. Doors open at 20:00, Film starts at 20:30.
Directly after the ground-breaking historical events that occurred in May ’68 in France, director Jean-Luc Godard went into a crisis. He was famous internationally, but the revolution shook him so deeply that he realized that such fame was a fraud and actually undemocratic! So Godard went into collective filmmaking, and this film was the major result of this period. These collaborations are known as the Dziga-Vertov films.
Because he had two major stars signed for the project – Jane Fonda and Yves Montand – he was able to make a big-budget experimental film that follows the journey of a filmmaker and a reporter caught up in a worker’s take-over of a sausage factory. So there is an intimate love story, but this film also steps back and looks at the bigger picture. By approaching the situation in this way, Godard, together with Jean-Pierre Gorin, are able to analyze the movie industry, society in general, how news is reported by the mass media, along with structurally undemocratic hierarchies inherent in factories and most places of work.
Certainly a bewildering movie, there is nothing else quite like it. Mid-way through the film you see the look on actor Yves Montand’s face, something like “What the fuck is going on? How did I get mixed up in this!” It is a crazy film, with a lot of humor, but also despair. There is a thoughtful and melancholy mood that hangs over this innovative flick, as Godard stubbornly continues the battle when most others have already given up, ditched the ship, and gone for the cash in post-May ’68 France. This is the kind of film you need to watch if you want to explore, understand the world around you… and also to grasp the untapped possibilities of cinema.
Film night at Joe’s Garage, cozy cinema! Free entrance. You want to screen a movie, let us know: joe [at] lists [dot] squat [dot] net
