"one plus one" and the new cinema

Kelsey Conophy New Wave Cinema Final PaperGodard & Baudry Dec 15, 2011

One Plus One and The New Cinema

In Sympathy for the Devil directed by Jean Luc Godard, originally titled One

Plus One, the viewer is accosted by the layering of many different visual and

auditory effects in a way not commonly seen before. Godard layers political events

contemporary to when the film was being created, with the making of the Rolling

Stones’ song “Sympathy for the Devil”, as well as political commentary in line with

Godard’s own beliefs at the time of the film. This layering effect produces a

complex phenomenon of trauma for the audience, and fractures their experience

from the traditional experience created by cinematic productions at that point in

history. This new experience displaces the viewer from his or her usual comfortable

position as the spectator of an exposition as explained by Brecht, and forces him or

her to play an active role in the creation of the meaning of the display. The

understanding of events no longer plays out in the subconscious of the viewers, but

on a conscious plane for all to see and examine together. This fracture is pushed

further by Godard’s constant bearing of the device, which completely erases the

cinematic illusion created in historic theatres that tended to render the viewer

hypnotized. In turn, Godard uses these devices to develop a new culture that the

audience takes an active part in creating; one based on self-examination and

involvement rather than isolation and passivity. This break from the old to create

the new in One Plus One begins to illustrate the concept of trauma as it applied to

New Wave European film after World War II. Through an examination of One Plus

One, we may see how Godard successfully created a New Cinema. Just as Brecht

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states in a letter to “Mr. X”, Godard’s One Plus One “[is] not going to satisfy the old

aesthetics; [it is] going to destroy it”1.

Godard was a close follower of the Brechtian Epic Theatre. He created

cinematic experiences that put into practice theories created by Brecht that were

meant to turn theatre (and cinema in Godard’s case) on its head and create a

completely new kind of theatre that was more in tune with contemporary society.

When One Plus One was being made, it was a time of political activism across the

globe. Many demonstrations as well as violent protest were being carried out in

countries all around the world declaring that citizens would not stand to be told

what to do by their governments when they felt they were being controlled by

capitalism. The masses thus were joining together and gaining a voice, they were

no longer the silent crowd that was all input and no output. In order to celebrate

and promote this collective voice being practiced by demonstrators, Godard utilized

Brechtian theatre techniques to turn classical consumerist cinema on its head. By

layering semiotics within the film, Godard creates a multitude of perspectives with

which the audience can examine the issues put forth by the film2. For example,

Godard uses intertitles throughout the film that play with the meaning of many

different terms, giving even neutral words a political slant, such as

“Freudemocracy” and “HiltonStalin”. He also explores the correlation between

Capitalism and the U.S. government with intertitles such as “FBI + CIA = TWA +

PANAM”. Images can be seen at the end of the paper. He creates confusing scenes

1Brecht on Theatre , trans. John Willett (New York: Hill and Wang, 1964) 22.2 It may be argued however that though Godard appears to present multiple perspectives, they are more biased towards his own view, as he is ultimately the creator of every scene and is choosing to portray events in his own way.

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with the use of jump cuts and montage editing techniques that break the continuity

of action, and layers audio tracks on top of each other so that one sound is almost

always competing with another to be heard. One scene that illustrates this is the

bookstore scene in which pornographic novels are shown while a man reads from

the Communist Manifesto, both visual and audio elements are layered to distract

and disorient the viewer, creating a commentary on the conceptual “porn” created

by consumerism used to placate the masses. Images of this scene can be found at

the end of the paper. Another scene in which this layering is evident is with the

Black Panthers in the shipyard. Multiple Panthers read from the same book at very

slightly different times, while a loud ship horn blows, drowning them all out. All the

while the camera is panning around the scene divulging more information to the

viewers, distracting them further with unexplained events such as the shooting of a

number of white women, which adds not only to the visual distraction of the scene

but also the auditory distraction with random gunshots. Images from this scene can

also be found at the end of the paper.

Brecht explains the significance of layering many different visual, auditory,

and conceptual elements on top of one another, “…the integration is a muddle, so

long as the arts are supposed to be ‘fused’ together, the various elements will all be

equally degraded, and each will act as a mere ‘feed’ to the rest. The process of

fusion extends to the spectator, who gets thrown into the melting pot too and

becomes a passive (suffering) part of the total work of art”3. Thus, by layering all of

the elements on top of each other, one element does not stand out as the dominant

creator of meaning, but rather they all combine to create a completely new organic

3 Willett 37-38.

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meaning that includes the viewer within it. I will go further and state that contrary

to what Brecht claims in the previous quote, in Godard’s films the viewers do not

become passive sufferers, but active critics who are challenged directly by Godard

himself, and the people shown within the film, to make judgments on the issues

brought before them. Godard is challenging the viewers to throw their consumerist

tendencies away and practice their newfound collective voice. It is not an

individualized interpretation Godard is asking for, but a collective opinion, reflecting

his Maoist beliefs at the time of the creation of the film. Godard creates this

collective voice with a fractured experience similar to that of a schizophrenic’s

experience with language, explained by Frederic Jameson, “…schizophrenic

experience is an experience of isolated, disconnected, discontinuous material

signifiers which fail to link up into a coherent sequence. The schizophrenic thus

does not know personal identity in our sense, since our feeling of identity depends

on our sense of the persistence of the ‘I’ and the ‘me’ over time”4. Thus, Godard

attempts to remove the individual from his film by creating a discontinuous,

fractured piece that leads to a collective “we”. By way of the fracture, Godard

removes the possibility for viewers to revert back to the old-cinematic experience of

subconscious, individual consumerist interpretation, and forces a Maoist, communal

examination of issues explored within the film.

Another way that Godard ensures the audience will not fall back into the placated

position of the old cinematic spectator is through bearing the device. In many scenes

throughout the film he makes us aware that we are watching a film; there is no illusion here.

4 Hal Foster, et al., The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture (New York, NY: The New Press, 1998) 137.

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For instance, in the scene with Eve Democracy we see the camera crew following her around

in the woods with all of their equipment. In answering the questions posed to her she not

only addresses the filmmakers, but also the audience viewing the scene. An image of this

scene can be found at the end of the paper. In the final scene of the film as well, we

see the filmmaking equipment yet again, including a huge crane that is featured

predominantly within the composition of the frame. In many cases throughout the film the

actors also directly address the audience, they are making no pretence whatsoever that

they do not know they are being watched. Instead, they take up the Chinese style of acting

as explained by Brecht, and make no attempt to pretend that there is a “fourth wall”

between themselves and the audience5. They know they are on display and they

acknowledge this fact, displaying the knowledge that they themselves are devices, and by

displaying this fact to the audience are so bearing their own device. By bearing these

devices Godard ensures that the audience is detached, creating the distancing effect called

verfremdungseffekt by Brecht. By distancing the viewers from the emotions of the actors

on the screen, the viewers are more capable of using logic and collective thinking to

consider the issues posed to them. As Brecht defines it, “The essential point of the epic

theatre is perhaps that it appeals less to the feelings than to the spectator’s reason. Instead

of sharing an experience the spectator must come to grips with things”6. By so fracturing

the audience’s experience by bearing the device, Godard creates an effect that breaks the

magic of the traditional cinema and destabilizes the individualism of the viewers. This can

be more fully understood by looking to Lacan and his theory of the Mirror-Stage

5 Willett 93-99.6 Willett 23.

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development of the identity7. Lacan claims that when an infant is in his “Mirror-Stage” of

development of identity, the development of his self-identity depends on two elements:

“immature powers of mobility and a precocious maturation of visual organization”8. John-

Louis Baudry likens this stage to when viewers go to the cinema. He states, “If one

considers that these two conditions are repeated during cinematographic projection—

suspension of mobility and predominance of the visual function—perhaps one could suppose

that this is more than a simple analogy. And possibly this very point explains the

‘impression of reality’ so often invoked in connection with the cinema”9. Traditionally in the

cinema this mirror-stage effect was practiced to draw in the viewers to the emotions

displayed within the film. Viewers were deceived by the tricks of the camera and the

projector and were made to forget that they were in a cinema watching a fabricated reality.

Godard completely rejects this concept and through bearing the devices by which he has

created his film, he breaks the spell of the cinema. He illustrates to viewers that they are

not watching a reality play out on the screen; they are watching a farce that has been

created by himself and his cinematographic tools. He is thus bringing viewers out of this

passive infant stage of being fed what to believe is their identity, which he likens to

consumerism, and forcing them to make their own choices and bringing them back into the

actual reality: that they are simply watching a film in a theatre. As Baudry states, “Both

specular tranquility and the assurance of one’s own identity collapse simultaneously with

the revealing of the mechanism”10. Once again, Godard ensures the collapse of the

individual interpretation of the film while promoting a collective examination. By fracturing

7 Charles Hackett, “Psychoanalysis and Theology: Jacques Lacan and Paul,” Journal of Religion and Health , Vol . 21 , No . 3 Fall 1982: 186.8 Jean-Louis Baudry and Alan Williams, “Ideological Effects of the Basic Cinematographic Apparatus,” Film Quarterly , Vil . 28 , No . 2 Winter 1974-1975: 45.9 Baudry 45.10 Baudry 46.

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the continuity of the film further by bearing the device, Godard makes it difficult for the

viewer to simply watch without questioning. Jameson also states one position on the

theoretical basis of individualism, stating, “…today in the age of corporate capitalism, of the

so-called organization man, of bureaucracies in business as well as in the state, of

demographic explosion—today, that older bourgeois individual subject no longer exists”11. If

this view were true, it would in fact be necessary for Godard to create a new type of cinema

that addresses this lack of individualism. So, by forcing the audience to examine issues

on the conscious plane together, he is taking issues away from the individual

subconscious and placing them on a collective plane. He is in a sense creating

collective understanding, creating a Maoist reaction to cinema, in stark contrast to

the traditional consumerist cinema with competing values and goals.

This fracture creates a trauma in itself that allows the film to break from the

old and create a completely new form of cinema, just as Brecht said his Epic

Theatre would. This New Cinema is not only created by one director or practiced in

one film, but is brought to being by the very transformation of society as a whole

who in turn becomes a willing recipient of this new form of cinema. Without an

evolved audience the evolved subject and method would never come to being. It

must be remembered though that every member in society does not develop at the

same time. Some members who are aware of these transformations in society or

maybe who have even created these transformations, may be aware of these new

devices and approaches to cinema, while others may be completely ignorant of

them. So, when a new form of cinema has been created it can be used as a tool to

propel the changes within society and accelerate the acceptance of these new

11 Foster 132.

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values by members of society who are still living in the un-transformed world.

Brecht explains, “It is understood that the radical transformation of the theatre

can’t be the result of some artistic whim. It has simply to correspond to the whole

radical transformation of the mentality of our time”12. Without the transformation of

society, Godard would not have been able to create his New Cinema. Conversely,

without Godard, some groups within society would not have been able to continue

transforming completely either.

Just as Europe was forced to rebuild a new society from the rubble of World

War II, Godard rebuilt a New Cinema from the rubble of the monopoly that

consumerist cinema held before he destroyed it. He chose to challenge the viewers

to not only question issues he saw in the world, but also form collective responses

to them. Godard’s New Cinema focused on action, inclusion, and challenging the

status quo, in complete contrast to the old cinema that attempted to numb viewers

and create fantasy worlds to distract them from reality. Godard’s fracture from

traditional cinema by using Brechtian techniques of bearing the device, and by

layering semiotics, visuals, and sounds, creates its own unique trauma that he

forces his viewers to confront and overcome. Unlike the older generations that took

part in the war who refused to speak about the events that had passed or even

acknowledge them, the new generation Godard addressed was being forced to pick

up the pieces and form answers based on assumptions13. It is necessary once again

to reinforce the fact that Godard’s New Cinema would not have been possible were

society not ready to receive it. Had the younger generations growing up after World

12 Willett 23.13 W.G. Sebald, On the Natural History of Destruction (New York, NY: The Modern Library, 2004) 3-43.

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War II not been confronted with the dilemma of a lack of information on the

destruction of the world as everyone had known it, and thus a lack of healing, they

would not have been so ready to accept Godard’s proactive, inclusive stance

towards cinema.

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"one plus one" and the new cinema

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