Meetin' WA

Godard interviews Woody Allen in New York Two of the greatest minds in modern cinema sit talking at cross purposes. Woody is on the back foot, looking uneasy most of the time, and often quite terrified, as the Godard rambles on in French, waiting for the interpreter to catch up. Allen is amazingly inarticulate, his speech full of false-starts and aborted phrases, seeking words he can't find, letting sentences tail off lamely. He looks like he's doing a very bad job interview. Neither does Godard impress. A film-school exercise in which the students pretended to be Godard and Woody Allen would have been more intelligent and informative. With some frivolous intertitles and dramatic music in the middle of Allen's sentences – quite meaningless sometimes - Godard seems to be deliberately trying to ruin a serious interview. Woody certainly is serious, far too serious, always answering in earnest. The conversation rarely gets going. Godard can speak English enough to make himself understood, but prefers French because he doesn't want to make it easy.

Woody laments at how watching movies on television is a small experience compared to the old cinema days. Godard suggests that television is an evil akin to radioactivity and is affecting his creative potential. Woody takes him literally and in order to politely follow up the point says (quite sincerely) that he's heard standing too close to colour CRTs can give you radiation poisoning. How he must have cringed at that blooper afterwards, worthy of the 'human chameleon' Zelig. He waffles on a little more, having totally lost presence of mind, and is mercifully faded out. You are increasingly aware that Allen is coming across exactly like George in Seinfeld, bluffing his way through a difficult question, his voice and speech mannerisms are bizarrely similar.

After a while it just becomes hilarious. Godard is babbling on in French making himself totally unintelligible, the interpreter is translating simultaneously, Allen is looking backwards and forwards at each of them with his mouth open in bewilderment and terror. By this time we suspect that Godard is taking the urine, and Allen is being made to look a fool.

It's reassuring that the conversation of brilliant people can be so dull and ineffectual, especially when the intention is to create something significant and timeless. This is one of the worst interviews you'll ever see, but a fascinating 25 minutes.

Out of an extremely interesting pairing of influential film personalities comes the most obnoxious interview I have ever seen. Godard cannot refrain from "intellectually" strong- arming another filmmaker if in contact with them. I have never seen an interview as terrible as this one. Not only does Godard torture the viewer on purpose, beginning right after he questions Allen about his then recent release of Hannah and Her Sisters with abrupt recurring title cards meant to scoff at Allen's film and segueing without direction into random and exasperatingly repetitive moments where music swells to the point where it drowns out the clearly uncomfortable Woody and displays inexplicable freeze frames of indeterminable screen time. Godard shows no respect to Allen at all, yet Allen shows a great deal of politeness and respect to Godard even when Godard belts out questions in French without allowing his off-camera translator to catch up or be heard over his voice. Woody makes the effort to mask his discomfort, while Godard seems determined only to sustain that discomfort by employing indirect tactics designed to catch him off-guard.

Godard has now to my knowledge brandished immature affronts to two of the most talented filmmakers working today, Steven Spielberg, accusing him of capitalizing on the tragedy of the Holocaust with Schindler's List, and Woody Allen, for an unclear reason, not to mention Jane Fonda because of her political activism, just subsequent to directing her in one of his films, which itself served as political activism. I believe that, based on what I have seen of Godard's work, which is entirely self-regarding and faux artsy even when it is good, that he is a jealous intellectual snob. He snipes at superior filmmakers for reasons that are only projections of his own faults. Guilty of selling out in order to market his film Contempt in the United States, he falsely blasts Spielberg for selling out. And frankly, Woody and Fonda have potentially similar personalities, people who make artistic careers out of pushing their audiences further toward a more progressive collective conscious, whether incidentally or on purpose. This is something Godard wants to do with his work, if only in his own condescending way, and I believe he finds their similar prompts to be challenges.

What made me anxious to see this film, the longest and most frustrating 26 minutes of my life, was my interest in seeing two greatly admired filmmakers make each other's acquaintance and interact. I believe that they are polar opposites of each other, not in their innate personalities but in their intentions. Out of Allen's entire filmography, including the movies he has made since this terrible episode, he has never made a pretentious film, but strangely the aim he claims with an indifferent attitude are behind his creative process are admittedly self-indulgent. Godard's every effort, no matter how dormantly, panders only to him and leaves the audience to concede to the humble illusion of being below it, yet he claims with suavity to be making social, political and cultural statements as well as the idea inherent in the French New Wave movement, which was to challenge the convention of cinema and perhaps reinvent it. Why is it that Allen almost always succeeds in doing what Godard claims to do without purposely incongruous editing, contrived defiance of sincere film techniques and unfocused stories? Inversely, why is it that Godard succeeds with Allen's claims but has never made a film without a pompous affectation? And then why does Godard have the big head where Woody knowingly demotes himself?

I managed to obtain this from a seller on Ebay (quite expensive).

The picture quality was very, very poor (B- or lower) but from a distance it was watchable. I don't know why I'm complaining - this is extremely rare ! Anyway, this short was a different approach on interviews. I mainly watched it, thinking that Woody Allen was interviewing Godard (the title states the opposite, but I was wishful thinking) but when you watch and observe Godard's curiosity into Woddy's style & structure of film-making, it becomes very profound and interesting.

Godard just sitting there puffing away at his cigar letting his questions just roll off his tongue.

Woody on the other side, sometimes seems nervous - as if there might be an intellectual clash.

It could have been longer but try and obtain a copy if you get the chance

Most people don't understand what Godard's aiming at. That's sad, but not surprising. They're so caught up in conventional storytelling techniques (of which a great non-mainstream auteur like Woody Allen is also part of) that Godard's intellectual Brechtian devices appear to be sickeningly pretentious. In truth, all his jarring visual and tonal interruptions and blanks left for the audience to ponder on serve as a means to scrutinize media manipulation.

And his interview with Woody is one of the finest examples of this method. While Godard's questions and - to a lesser degree - Allen's answers are highly interesting and profound in themselves, particularly those revolving around the issues of television influencing habits of perception, it's really Godard's handling of the material itself that provides ample food for thought. (But, of course, only for those willing to do so.) By the way, Godard's style of film-making should not be mistaken as a lack of respect towards Allen. On the contrary...

8 out of 10 apparently nervous Woody Allens

Okay, Okay...Jean-Luc Godard and Woody Allen; two great names of cinema; two unique, idiosyncratic artists...this has promise. These two great minds could dissect for us deep insights into their films, or at least Woody's films...

The problem is, they just don't, really.

They don't talk about much. There are even a few moments of misunderstanding. The interpreter at times doesn't seem to explain Monsieur Godard's questions (ramblings) very well. There is a distinct sense of Woody Allen being vaguely bamboozled by it all.

At one point, Godard brings up a point, posited somewhat eccentrically, about cultural overload stifling original creativity: Godard refers to it as "cultural radioactivity" disgorged upon us by TV. But because of the rambling nature of his question, the context regarding TV, and the bumblings of the interpreter, Woody misunderstands and takes it as literally referring to cathode tube radiation from the television set. It's all kind of embarrassing. And also unfortunate, because what would have been an interesting question is then quickly brushed over.

Perhaps this was all Godard's intention. Perhaps he's saying something about communication. Perhaps that's why some of his inter-titles don't seem to make much sense. I don't know. What I DO know is, if you want to learn about Woody Allen and his films, this won't help very much.