"...protecting the rights of poor folk." (The class warfare of Arthur Penn's, Bonnie and Clyde)

"They will certainly plant vineyards and eat their fruitage; they will not plant and someone else do the eating."

Isaiah 65: 21,22

In a symbolic gesture of solidarity as simple, righteous, and revolutionary as allowing a poor farmer to keep his money, while robbing a bank of its money, Clyde Barrow (Warren Beatty) legitimizes and justifies everything that he and his gang do, throughout Arthur Penn's lurid manifestation of the French New Wave, Bonnie and Clyde (1967). At least, in my eyes, it legitimizes and justifies everything that they do. But for those obedient, law-abiding citizens who unquestioningly accept the laws that some of us view as nothing more than insidious mechanisms for the perpetuation of the class system, Clyde's gesture--at least--illuminates a legitimate moral counterbalance, against the gang's--otherwise--anarchistic criminality, that is difficult for a conscious soul to ignore.

The actions of Clyde Barrow and his gang--in the spirit of John Steinbeck's mythological, migrant antihero, Tom Joad--highlight the vast gulf that often exists between genuine justice, and the law, and in doing so, call into question the very foundation on which the average citizen bases his or her perceptions of criminals and criminality. And in this respect, no era in American history could serve as a more exemplary contextual backdrop, for a time marked by the confusion of conventional ideas of right and wrong, than the Great Depression. Simply put, in an era when banks ceaselessly and mercilessly throw farmers and their families off of their land--land that these families have commonly farmed for generations--than the banks and the law that protects them, become the enemies of the people. And thus, any form of resistance or retribution is legitimate and justified.

The systematic attrition--and eventual extinction--of the family farmer, is one of the most infuriating and lamentable injustices of the Great Depression, in particular, and in the saga of the class struggle in the United States, in general. And in Bonnie and Clyde, Clyde Barrow--the son of sharecroppers--and his gang, are fighting a war against the shameless enemy of this inestimable number of forsaken farming families. This of course explains the repeated scenes of solidarity we see between the Barrow gang and the farmers that they encounter.

One of the first of such scenes (and perhaps my favorite), is when Bonnie (Faye Dunaway) and Clyde are camped out at an abandoned farmhouse. As they are outside taking target practice with their pistols, the farmer who used to own the farm happens upon them while he is taking one "last look" at the empty house and fallow land that the "Midlothian Citizen's Bank" now owns. As the farmer tells them of how the "bank took it...[and] moved us off," we see that he has his wife and kids, and everything they own, piled high in his truck--assumedly to join the great "okie" diaspora to California (And it was indeed a diaspora, because regardless of natural calamities of drought, wind, and heat, what would ultimately disperse this vast wave of distraught farming families--westward--from the great plains, would be the venal and deplorable proclivities of the banks).

This mournful scenario was played out an innumerable number of times during the Depression, and is lucidly depicted in the following passage from John Steinbeck's invaluable story of this shameful period in America's history, The Grapes of Wrath:

"And a homeless hungry man, driving the road with his wife beside him and his thin children in the back seat, could look at the fallow fields which might produce food but not profit, and that man could know how a fallow field is a sin and the unused land a crime against the thin children....And in the south he saw the golden oranges hanging on the trees, the little golden oranges on the dark, green trees; and guards with shotguns patrolling the lines so a man might not pick an orange for a thin child, oranges to be dumped if the price was low...."

So when Clyde hands the farmer the pistol--after taking a few self-gratifying shots himself--and the farmer and his farmhand, "Davis," (who the farmer had "put in the years" on the farm with) take their shots at the empty house and the "Property-of Midlothian-Citizen's-Bank" sign that is out front of the house, there are smiles on everyone's faces (including us viewers). Not only this, but a conscious, compassionate soul is stirred, and ready to see some banks get robbed.

There are indeed a number of other scenes that convey the aforementioned solidarity and appreciation for the Barrow gang's class warfare. For instance, after Bonnie and Clyde have both been wounded, and C.W. Moss (Michael J. Pollard), in desperate need of "drinking water," happens upon a shanty town of homeless, migrant farmers, the farmers not only give the gang water, but food as well. Likewise, when the Barrow gang captures Captain Frank Hamer (Denver Pyle), Clyde--laughing about the confusion of conventional ideas of right and wrong--recalls how "down in Duncanville last year...poor farmers kept you laws from us with shotguns." One again, when the banks, and the law protecting them, become the enemies of the people, than anyone attacking the banks and the law, becomes the friend of the people.

Of course, Captain Hamer, who is a Texas Ranger, catches up with the Barrow gang in Missouri, attempting to catch them and get "the extra reward money" that the banks are offering for them. Here, Clyde appropriately admonishes Captain Hamer's blatant disregard for his duty to protect and serve back in his own state, by reminding him that he "ought to be home protecting the rights of poor folk."

Burning Bridges (addendum)

So, the first part of this...hmmmmmmm...discussion...yeah, sure, this discussion about Jean-Luc Godard's Weekend, was impulsively scribbled right after we viewed that weirdness in class last Tuesday. And now, sitting here at my desk with a hot cup of Cafe Bustelo, in the genial comfort of my apartment, on this delicious Sunday morning--after yesterday's snow-storm--I see that what I wrote last Tuesday, was indeed an emotional harangue...to put it mildly.

And I meant every fucking word of it. And Godard's punk ass would probably be quite pleased about fucking with someone's emotions to such a degree--although he would probably be surprised about what exactly has me so vexed. Because, aside from the utterly pointless slaughter of animals, I feel Godard on pretty much everything he condemns and is pissed about, and likewise, I feel Godard's unique and confrontational ways of expressing these things. Weekend is--quite literally--in a category of filmmaking all by itself. With Weekend, Godard has taken the film, as an art form, and brought it to a disquieting, acrid, and "alienating" (as the truth often is) extreme that transcends the banality and benignity of mere "entertainment." Simply put, Weekend is as close to being a weapon--of sorts--as a work of art can get.

But...

...it is still nevertheless, merely a work of art--and a work of art that caused the completely unnecessary and horrendous suffering of a few innocent, sentient animals. A few animals that some of us consider as precious and important as any human asshole running around. I've physically--had to--hurt (and been hurt by) a number of other human beings over the years, but I've never hurt (or been hurt by) an animal. They simply do not have it coming--at all. Aside from that, there is that mortal debacle that Milan Kundera writes about in The Unbearable Lightness of Being:

"True human goodness, in all its purity and freedom, can come to the fore only when its recipient has no power. Mankind's true moral test, its fundamental test (which lies deeply buried from view), consists of its attitude towards those who are at its mercy: animals. And in this respect mankind has suffered a fundamental debacle, a debacle so fundamental that all others stem from it."

Now, Professor Shaviro, I'm sure that if you understood how serious some of us are about all of this, than I assume that you wouldn't have sarcastically and dismissively commented about not knowing Godard's "culinary politics," during our discussion in class. Fuck Godard and his "culinary politics." With all due respect, to reduce this issue to nothing more than a person's "culinary politics," is to take the typical, benighted, myopic, gluttonous perspective of a consumer. The animal and its well-being, isn't even a factor in that equation. Or as Matthew Scully puts it:

"When you look at an [animal] and see only a pest, or vermin, or a meal, or a commodity, or a laboratory subject, you aren't seeing the [animal] anymore. You are seeing only yourself and the schemes and appetites we bring to the world."

I cannot overstate how much I share Godard's disgust and disillusionment with things, or how much I agree with him about pretty much everything I've seen him attack in his films--especially consumerism. And even more so, the United States' malignant and ruinous extreme of consumerism. But Godard's irreverent disregard for the value of something as simple and precious as the life of a pig, is--in my eyes--the same kind of disregard that underlies consumerism, and it is also a lucid manifestation of the same kind of cursed human audacity that defined the United States' behavior in Vietnam. It is this same kind of infuriating disregard and human audacity that has culminated in the ceaseless, industrialized, torturous, systematic, merciless slaughter of over 700,000 animals--700,000 sentient creatures--every hour of every day, in our country's modern "factory farms." That breaks down to--among all of the other animals killed daily--over 90,000 cows and calves every 24 hours, over 355,000 pigs every 24 hours, and over 14,000 chickens every motherfucking minute.

"The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way in which its animals are treated."

Mahatma Gandhi

Burning Bridges

As this final section of our semester has run its course, and the Godard films have--as we were warned they would--become increasingly non-linear, unsettling, "alienating" (as the truth often is), abrasive, confrontational, and idealistic, I have increasingly dug what I have been seeing. I--feel I--completely understand why he was so disgusted with what was happening throughout the late 1950s, the 1960s, and the early 1970s. I do think that those particular fifteen-to-twenty years were a dismal watershed for the planet as a whole--but especially for all of the countries that can be lumped into the ignominious category of "the west."

My increasing fondness for Godard and his films, is not simply the result of my perspective of mankind's social, political, and industrial structures being from as far left as Godard's increasingly was. You do not have to be a communist or a socialist to be mortally disheartened and infuriated by circumstances like the United States' barbaric behavior in--among other places--Vietnam, or the increasing pervasiveness of the hollow and cursed consequences of western consumer culture, or the ceaselessly widening gap between rich and poor, or the all-out industrial/technological assault on the environment.

But it helps--to at least channel this anger and concern. The recurrent and acute anti-Americanism in Godard's Pierrot Le Fou (1965), Masculin Feminin (1966), Two or Three Things I Know About Her (1967), and finally Weekend (1967) is by all means warranted. The United States was and is the breeding ground for pretty much every deplorable, regrettable, and ruinous debacle plaguing this planet--either directly or indirectly, you can trace most of it back to "the good ol' U. S. of A." So for the most part, I have been increasingly on the same page as Godard, as we have been following him along his filmic evolution--or devolution.

But...

...with Weekend, Godard has lost--even--me. For one gigantic fucking reason that I couldn't ignore if I tried--he actually kills animals. I am one of those anomalies that does not exalt human life over any other creature's life, and by slaughtering animals in his film, Godard--in my eyes--has reduced himself to the level of any murderous American soldier running around in Vietnam, annihilating "women and children." Fuck him--if I'd of been there when they disemboweled that pig, I'd of grabbed that motherfucking sledgehammer that they knock the pig in the head with, and knocked Godard up against his motherfucking head.

In Weekend, by actually slaughtering actual, living animals just for the sake of "art," Godard has--in my eyes--descended to the absolute nadir of hipsterdom. Which is something I've mentioned in class anyway. If he had half of the heart he seems to have become obsessed with portraying in his films, he'd of picked up a gun and started some shit. Instead of trying to shock and offend people with some half-ass, jive bullshit about cannibalistic, hippy, revolutionaries going "back to the land," throw a fucking pipe-bomb through the window of a police station, start the shit, and get it over with--incite the change.

That's my whole fucking problem with hipsters and artists (which plague this city), instead of taking part in relevant forms of resistance, rebellion and civil disobedience, they just self-indulgently produce cowardly, hollow, half-hearted, only-when-it's-convenient, banal "works of art" about revolutionary bullshit. Yeah yeah, Godard illuminates some relevant and fundamental problems with the world in Weekend, and I understand why he would want to burn the proverbial bridge between him and the film industry, the art world, and the popular culture of the time--but when he slaughtered some innocent animals in the process of doing it, he burned the bridge with me as well. I'll bust that motherfucker in his head if I ever see him...

"...I cannot expect mercy if I am unwilling to give it."

Dominion

Matthew Scully

                 

"...the bill to come."

The entire time I was watching Jean-Luc Godard's, Two or Three Things I Know About Her, I was thinking about Mathieu Kassovitz's invaluably jarring film, La Haine. Especially during the scene where Juliette (Marina Vlady) is speaking in some random courtyard of a French housing project, and Godard has shot her only from the neck up. Even if those housing projects were not vast, sprawling, towering "rat cages" for human beings--which they indeed are--by only shooting Juliette from the neck up, Godard shrinks her presence in the scene to an even greater degree, and in doing so, lucidly conveys Juliette's--lamentable--insignificance in the grand scheme of what passes for "progress." The "housing project" in general, as a solution to the housing of large numbers of poor, forsaken people, has proven to be an utter failure--no matter what country they are in. And as a remedy to the societal debacle they are supposed to be ameliorating, they will go down in history as one of the worst examples of human indifference towards the well-being of other human beings.

The aforementioned relationship between Two or Three Things I Know About Her, and La Haine, can be expressed with the simple equation of cause and effect. In the repeated conveyances of human-forsakenness, and perpetuations of "class discrimination" that are inherent in "the planning of Paris," as depicted by Godard in Two or Three Things I Know About Her, we have the cause. And in the logical, inevitable, and understandable violence and unrest in La Haine, we have the effect.

In general, Godard is lamenting the sprawling freeways and--exponential--covering-up of the countryside with vast tracts of cement and concrete. "A landscape is like a face," is repeated in the dialogue, and the faces we see, are the mutilated and burned faces of Vietnamese citizens (the United States' deplorable war in Vietnam, of course, being another primary focus of condemnation in this film). So if a landscape is indeed, "like a face," than the face that Godard saw around Paris back in 1967, was a gruesome and scarred one. The manic sense of "progress" that was/is gripping the western world, not only continued at the expense of a vast multitude of human beings, but at the expense of the land as well.

In Two or Three Things I Know About Her--"Her" being Paris--Godard's condemnation of what was occurring, shows a prophetic foresight for what seems to be the inevitable consequences of mankind's manic sense of "progress"--this manic sense of "progress" being illustrated continuously throughout the film by repeated shots of construction. Aside from stranding large numbers of poor French citizens far from the hubs of activity, commerce, and employment, and expecting them to live in vast, sprawling, towering "rat cages" for humans, you then add to these already volatile circumstances, the pervasive police brutality and repeated, "accidental" deaths of youths in these housing projects, which are depicted in La Haine, and one has to ask: why wouldn't the people attack police stations, and periodically have country-wide uprisings? 

In this regard, Two or Three Things I Know About Her, is a lucid illustration of the early stages of the kind of human-forsaking, manic sense of "progress," which would ultimately result in the kind of country-wide riots that France has been rocked by in recent years. Despite a line in this film, where it is said that "no one knows what a city of the future will be like," Godard seems to have an idea. Back in 1967, as the Paris countryside was being destroyed, and large numbers of human beings--whose biggest sin in this world was being poor--were beginning to be corralled and housed like animals, Godard seems to have been one of the few to realize that there was going to be an--understandably--costly and destructive "bill to come."

No future.

Evolution is a process too slow to save my soul

But I've got this creature on my back

And it just won't let go

If I am only an animal

Then I can do no wrong

But they say I'm something better

So I've gotta hold on

Manimal

Darby Crash (The Germs)

But Darby Crash, did not hold on. After disbanding earlier in the year, the seminal punk-rock band, The Germs, got back together to play--what would end up being--their last show, on December 3rd, 1980. Then, four nights later--on the eve of John Lennon's death incidentally--Darby Crash killed himself with $400 worth of heroine, in the poolhouse of his friend's mother's home (the girl who was supposed to die along with him, but survived).

The Germs were part of the "first generation" of punk-rock (the mid to late 1970s)--and a vital part of the Los Angeles contingent of the...uh...movement. Darby Crash's performances, as singer of the Germs, were often marked by bleak gestures such as self-mutilation, and showering the audience in food and blood. Crash (like Sid Vicious) was the epitomization of the fatalistic nihilism and disillusionment that summarily defined that particular generation of punk-rock--before of course, pockets of positivity and revolutionary vitality started forming later in the 1980s.

I begin my discussion of Jean-Luc Godard's ingeniously "alienating" (as the truth often is) and non-linear, Masculine Feminine, by talking about the fate of Darby Crash, for one primary reason. And it lies deep within the fate of a generation defined by the utterly irreconcilable paradox of "Marx and Coca Cola." Darby Crash is the tragic poster-child for the fatalistic nihilism and existential torment, of the generation that was the aftermath of Godard's "Children of Marx and Coca Cola." I do indeed believe that the generation that Godard's "Children of Marx and Coca Cola" embody, was a profound watershed. Not only had the Marxist revolution failed (as the ultimate inconsequentiality of France's student/labor uprisings of 1968 illustrates), but the essential ethics of struggle and sacrifice, that are necessary for such a revolution, were buckling under the sheer gravity and pervasiveness of the gospel of possession, convenience, and leisure, that was/is Western consumer culture. 

Which was no big deal, if you were a child of the bourgeoisie and upper classes. But if you were a child of the vast majority--or the lower classes--which did not get to enjoy any of the comforts and conveniences, terminal disillusionment inevitably followed the realization that the war was over with, and they won. And within a decade, came the nihilistic desolation of punk-rock.

Godard efficaciously illustrates the confusion of ideals and motives of France's youth of the time, in a number of different ways. For instance, the polling-interview that Paul (Jean-Pierre Leaud) does with "Miss 19." She has won a bit of a prestigious status that has given her the benefits of consumer culture. She knows little--if anything--about the wars occurring at that moment in the world, she owns a car, she doesn't know what "socialism" is, and doesn't care. But more importantly, she has been to the United States, and loved it. She is very attracted to what she feels it means to be an American--or as she says, it's like "Being somebody [and] having lots to do."

On the other hand, one particularly odd scene seems to convey--presciently--the forthcoming nihilistic tide. This is the scene where Paul is chased out of the arcade by the young man with the knife, who then illogically commits suicide, by stabbing himself. Another suicide occurs when a man lights himself on fire in front of the American Embassy to protest the Vietnam War (but I guess that suicide is noble, although that is a whole other discussion in and of itself). But in general, the male characters in this film, seem to be struggling to reconcile the irreconcilable--like Paul attempting to act like he cares about the labor or class struggle, and at the same time, get along with Madeleine (Chantal Goya) and her acutely narcissistic desires for fame and success.

Which brings us to the girls in Masculine Feminine. Enough has been said about Godard's misogynistic tendencies. There's no sense in going on about them here...but...considering the roles that women play in this film, it seems quite...uh...fitting that Elisabeth (Marlene Jobert) is eating an apple throughout her whole interview scene. The apple, of course, being a rather universal symbol of the--allegedly--inherent proclivities of women, towards such regrettable tendencies such as betrayal and desire and covetousness. Whether we buy that whole original sin crock or not, and despite her aspirations and moderate level of success as a pop-singer, Madeleine leaves us on as much of a dismal and doomed note at the end of the movie, as any other character or occurrence. After all, the last thing we hear her say--after indifferently agreeing with Elisabeth's version of Paul's death--is that she considers "a curtain rod" to be her most viable option in dealing with the life growing inside of her...

...no future indeed. 

...Dragged on a table in a factory

Illegitimate place to be

In a packet in a lavatory

Die little baby screaming

Body screaming fucking bloody mess

Not an animal

It's an abortion

Body! I'm not an animal

Mummy! I'm not an abortion...

...Fuck this and fuck that

Fuck it all and fuck a fucking brat

She don't wanna a baby that looks like that

I don't wanna baby that looks like that

Body, I'm not an animal

Body, an abortion

Bodies

The Sex Pistols

"A nice grog..."

grog  \noun\  [Old Grog, nickname of Edward Vernon (1757) Eng. admiral responsible for diluting  the sailor's rum] : alcoholic liquor; esp : liquor (as rum) mixed with water

Was Francois Truffaut's, L' Histoire d' Adele H., supposed to be a comedy, because that shit was funny as hell? By the time Adele has lied about being pregnant and married to that poor fool, Lieutenant Pinson, and in that one scene where he is out riding around with his army regiment, and Adele is straight lurking in the bushes stalking his ass, and then she just pops out of the bushes--in front of all of his soldier friends--pulls out the pillow that, I guess, was suppose to be her fake pregnancy, and then throws a fistful of money at his ass...shit...that shit's as funny as that scene in Next Friday, when that Tawana chicken-head has keyed Dae-Dae's BMW, and maced him on his front lawn.

Nah, but seriously, L' Histoire d' Adele H. is pretty much the most boring, average, garden variety, Hollywoodish film (movie) we have seen yet. Which isn't necessarily a criticism...I guess...just more of an observation and/or impression. I guess it's also an excuse for the fatuous nature of what follows from here on out in this blog entry. With this film, at this point in Truffaut's career, and especially compared to the innovative uniqueness of films like, Les Mistons and Les Quatre cents coups, he seems to have--for good or ill--adopted a much...uh...safer formula for filmmaking. This circumstance, combined with the fact that this film is based on historical events (and I don't feel this is the time or place for a historical discussion) has left me--for the second time this semester--at a loss for thoughtful things to say. And consequently, I am--once again--forced to express myself outside the parameters of insightful, scholarly discussion. Or in other words, what follows is going to be a lucid example of oblique, evasive shit-talking and babbling. In fact, this particular blog entry, it is safe to say, and academically speaking, will be the most worthless entry I will write this semester, and I will apologize here for the fact that, whomever does read it in its entirety, will walk away stupider than they were before they read it. 

For instance, I'm not saying that--in real life--it would be amusing or entertaining to witness the gradual and systematic decay and collapse of a young girl's mental and physical health, due to a broken heart, but by the end of this film, it starts to seem pretty fucking funny. I mean, I thought that the character, Alphonse, in Truffaut's, La Nuit Americaine, was a hysterical dingbat when it came to dealing with the opposite sex, but mother of babbling god, compared to Adele Hugo, Alphonse is "too cool for school." Jesus, Adele Hugo, at least as her story is told by Francois Truffaut, is the poster-child for male-celibacy. In fact, if poor Adele Hugo's story illustrates anything, it illustrates the benefits of being a genuinely vain, shallow, and utterly self-absorbed person, because if Adele was such a person--as plenty of us can attest--it is quite difficult, if not downright impossible to become so enamored of any particular person (except of course, for that beautiful motherfucker in the mirror every morning). Holy shit...did I just say that?

Aside from all of that doggerel, I like these filmic depictions of "olden" times, because them fools talked funny, and shit was just weird. Like when that amiable old SOB, Mr. Whistler comes over to see how Adele is feeling, and she can't come down and see him because she's in bed with a case of pleurisy. What the? And speaking of Mr. Whistler, I like how dude owns a book store, and when Adele comes in looking a little...uh...sallow, he offers her "a nice grog"--at a book store, in the middle of the day. I want some "nice grog," at a book store, in the middle of the day. That shit's as funny as that one time back in one of the other days, on Saturday Night Live, when Bill Murray had to go see the barber (it was "olden" times), for a "good bleeding," because while he was "over celebrating at the festival of the vernal equinox," he had "a little too much mead, and dotted out in front of an ox cart." I love that shit...

Some money for the whorehouse...

"The only reason I'm in Hollywood is that I don't have the moral courage to refuse the money."

                                                                                     

                                             Marlon Brando

All of a sudden I feel like my blog entries are all becoming malevolent and sardonic--my last entry for Jean-Luc Godard's, Contempt, after all, is downright hateful. But then I remember that the current film I'm writing about, Francois Truffaut's "self-conscious" "feature," La Nuit Americaine, as well as Godard's, Contempt, are both films about...well...making films. And their "insider's" look at the degenerate nature of the small class of people who populate this gratuitous and nonessential (if not downright detrimental) industry, of course explains my rancor. Although Truffaut's film shows a...uh...more benign and "romantic" side of filmmaking, it still illustrates the childish dysfunction and acute narcissism of a class of people that I would just assume see collectively tied to cinder blocks, at the bottom of the Detroit River. Included in this desire, would be the veritable ocean of insignificant, sycophantic, "aspiring," desperate, groveling underlings doing all of the "behind-the-scenes" work as well.

But since we are discussing the French New Wave, and not--directly--the pervasive detriment of Hollywood and our modern media juggernaut, it is necessary to not get carried away here. And anyway, my entry for Godard's, Contempt, is probably as much as I need to say about all of that. La Nuit Americaine is Francois Truffaut's filmic admission of his life-long love and obsession for the art of filmmaking. And in its purest, most unspoiled form, before money, fame, and success have profaned it, that is a love I can dig and respect. Perhaps the sincerest conveyances in this film, of Truffaut's love and passion, are nothing more than a couple of brief, dreamy interludes. Of course, there is the repeated flashbacks to Truffaut's childhood mission, of stealing Citizen Kane posters from a theatre. But the most elegant and subtle conveyance of Truffaut's love, is simply the brief interlude where we hear the beautiful and melodic score over the telephone (and in the diegesis), as we see Truffaut thumb through a number of books on films and his favorite auteurs. I feel that this is a graceful and dignified gesture of respect and admiration to his influences and inspirations.

But that is where the poetry ends. The rest of the film is--consciously or unconsciously--one dizzying and irritating example after the other, of what a sordid, dysfunctional, contemptible, pampered, unreasonable class of people populate the film industry. From Severine's (Valentina Cortese) inebriated vacuousness, to Alphonse's (Jean-Pierre Leaud) fatuous pitifulness, we are continuously subjected to the kind of melodramatic bullshit that one expects from spoiled children. And what makes this all worse, is the unarguable fact that there is no exaggerating exactly how fucked most of these kind of people are. Despite the harmlessness of Julie's (Jacqueline Bisset) admittedly laughable request for "tub butter," as she balances on the brink of--yet--another emotional collapse (after sleeping with that pitiful dingbat, Alphonse), it still makes a conscious human being want to throw her out of the fucking window. Or at least start looking for the aforementioned cinder blocks. And likewise, when that miserable wretch, Alphonse, finally leaves his room after being--understandably--dumped for the stuntman, and declares that he needs some money for the whorehouse (although that is pretty fucking funny--pitiful, but funny).

In this context, and combined with the myriad of other obstacles and challenges the director faces, it is--indeed--easy to say that La Nuit Americaine is an extremely "romantic" depiction of an artist's struggle to simply finish his film. Which seems fine. Truffaut obviously loved the art of filmmaking, and as I've already stated, I can respect that. Any condemnation I have, does not lie in the accuracy of this film's portrayal, of the formidableness of making a "feature"--I'm sure, that in this respect, the film is dead on. My vehement condemnation and animosity lies with the actual class of human detritus this film portrays. And in this respect, I wouldn't be honest, if I didn't say that Truffaut himself, sounds like he was a little too self-indulgently shrouded in "romantic" subjectivity, if he was indeed confused (actually, his own word was "tormented") about the question: "Is cinema more important than life?" That sounds like the kind of Hollywood director that would spend twice as much time and money making a film about some kind of awful tragedy, than what he would spend in time and money to actually help ameliorate it.