Sauve qui peut (la vie)

13 October, 2018 - 21:00
Cinematek, Brussels

An initiative of CINEMATEK and Courtisane, in collaboration with Le Service de Culture cinématographique (SCC).

On the occasion of this program, Courtisane, Sabzian and Cinematek have collected a series of writings and interviews in a small-edition publication (French/English).

Sauve qui peut (la vie)

Jean-Luc Godard
,
CH, DE, FR
,
1979
,
35mm
,
colour
,
88'

A composition in four tempos that Godard regarded as his second “first film”.

“It wasn’t a question of one single departure and one single arrival, but of the creation of three different rhythms. There is the great speed of the intellectual character played by Nathalie Baye, who carries the remains of leftism in her. There is a second woman, at an average tempo: for her you must eat to live or live to eat; you must buy or sell. The most obvious character inside this logic is that of what people call a whore or a prostitute, because the example would be in close-up, exaggerated even, but the exaggeration is – if the character sketch is refined – not exaggerated, so to speak. And then there is the character of the man who’s a bit like me, but ultimately isn’t really... It’s someone who doesn’t move. It’s a film in which all of the interesting characters are actually women, as forces that are more defined and extremely varied…” (JLG)

Screenplay by Jean-Luc Godard, Jean-Claude Carrière & Anne-Marie Miéville.

 

French spoken, Dutch subtitles