Take One (Mar-Apr 1970)

wind from THE EAST Jean-Luc Godard possesses a complex artistic personality that has had a profound influence on the development of the cinema. His latest work Vent de lest (Wind from the East) represents a revolutionary new film aesthetic that combines Godard’s artistic sensibilities with the strident revolutionary polemics of the A film like This film deals with the events of May 1968 in Paris—the so-called May Revolution. Like British Sounds, which follows it in the chronology of the Dziga Vertov Group films, it visibly reflects Godard’s since-modified theory that revolutionary films must oppose complex sounds to simple images in order first to liberate the medium from an oppressive bourgeois tradition that subjects ‘‘sound’’ to the tyranny of the image. However, it is not nearly as successful an experiment in revolutionary film practice as British Sounds: audiences invariably walk out in boredom, and even Godard’s most ardent partisans find it difficult to defend this film, except in its role as a provocation, where it succeeds admirably: ‘art film’ consumers choke on this film after ten or fifteen minutes, and have been known to turn their wrath on its exhibitors (the only New York showing resulted in a small riot inside Lincoln Center). As the first Dziga Vertov Group film, it does effectively mark a change in Godard’s direction as a film-maker, and separates the career of a film artist from that of a film militant. A Film Like Any Other (Un Film Comme Les Autres) can be described in fairly simple and brief terms. Two basic image sequences which alternate every five or ten minutes are opposed by a complex sound montage made up of four or five elements. One image sequence consists of fast-cut, black and white shots of street demonstrations and Speeches filmed in jerky, newsreel style in the midst of the May events: intercut with this random montage are static long takes, in color, of a group of militants sitting in a sunny meadow outside Paris in June, discussing May and what to do next — here the camera never focuses on the participants in the discussion, preferring instead to place high grass in the focal foreground or frame only the backs, knees, elbows or other anatomical parts of those in the group. On the soundtrack there is a mix of many elements: the discussion on time. Wind From the East has caused a strong reaction from Cannes to Lincoln Center. Loosely conceived of as an Italian Western, there is little narrative to speak of. The plot that Godard found necessary in Pierrot le fou, less so in Weekend and La Chinoise and abandoned in One Plus One, has become allegory for the powerful images that convey the artist’s meaning. Revolution is the concern of Wind From the East. The film is divided into three parts—a statement, a critique of the statement and a call to arms. Images switch from Gidn Maria Volonte dressed as a U.S. Cavalry trooper destroying a peasant house to Ann Wiazemski giving instructions on how to make a bomb, or Brazilian movie director Glauber Rocha standing in the middle of the road answering the narrator's question, ‘‘Which ANY OTHER the grass, street sounds from May, speeches from May, voices’ reading newspaper reports, and in the English version — for surrealist effect (it would seem) as much as for clarification there is the voice of a UN interpreter desperately trying to deadpan a simultaneous translation of the French collage. In French alone, the soundtrack mix is nearly impossible to decipher: in the English version, the viewer is saved the trouble of even trying to separate and understand the sounds, which probably = BS = Se = i ss = = = = = = = = es LN Gorin and Godard is the way to the revolutionary cinema?”’ It is the combination of sound and image that makes Wind From the East move beyond contemporary cinema form and content: If you can handle a film that is not narrative in nature, Wind From the East is an impressive collage of visual and aural dialectics, synthesizing in the spirit of the revolution. It is unlike any other film ever made, a testament to the chaos of the spirit of the time. It is a confusing, frustrating, but more importantly, impressive and rewarding experience. Wind From the East is an important film that will provoke its audience into examining not only their concept of film but their conception of society as well. Bound to divide the critics, it is a film that should be seen by anyone seriously interested in the development of cinema. Jules Lokin were never intended to be literally followed: Godard himself was pleased when he heard Leacock-Pennebaker added this extra level of confusion to the soundtrack, pleased also that the film provoked an outraged mob reaction at its American premiere in Philharmonic Hall. The film runs about 110 minutes, and is mounted on two 2000 foot reels: the film-makers suggest that an audience poll or a flip of the coin be used to determine which reel plays first. Tom Luddy JEREMIAH GOODWIN