Jean-Luc Godard’s Unmade and Abandoned Projects

Michael Witt is Professor of Cinema at the University of Roehampton, UK. He is the author of Jean-Luc Godard, Cinema Historian (2013) and the co-editor of For Ever Godard (2004), The French Cinema Book (2nd edition; BFI/Bloomsbury, 2018), and Jean-Luc Godard: Documents (2006).

• List of PlatesAcknowledgementsIntroductionTowards a negative history of cinemaGodard on unmade, unfinished and abandoned filmsThe Godardian non-corpusAims and organisation of this bookChapter 1: LiteratureGodard’s earliest unmade literary adaptations Odile Other unmade or abandoned adaptations of the late 1950s The early 1960s From Éva to L’Écrivain (‘The writer’) Popular genre literature Classics From Guy de Maupassant and the Marquis de Sade to Masculin féminin Unmade adaptations of the 1970s and 1980s Animal films The 1990s and beyond Ramuz again: Les Signes parmi nous (fable) (‘The signs among us (fable)’)ConclusionChapter 2: CinemaRemakes Un simple film Film criticism and the desire for a new type of film journal Jean-Pierre Beauviala, the Paluche, and the dream of a new 35mm camera Collaborations with Francis Ford Coppola’s Zoetrope Studios Voyons ce dont on parle (‘Let’s see what we’re talking about’) Films on cinema history Collages de France, Collèges de France, J-L Godard légende 2006, Never Godard… Self-reflective projectsConclusionChapter 3: TheatreGodard’s theatrical projects of the 1960s Antoine Bourseiller and the theatrical adaptation of La Religieuse (Memoirs of a Nun) Pour Lucrèce and Une répétition de Pour Lucrèce (‘A rehearsal of Pour Lucrèce’)Theatre in La Chinoise Approaches to King Lear Bérénice revisitedThe 1990s and 2000s ConclusionChapter 4: TelevisionThe 1960s Televised sport Adventures in television in Rouyn-Noranda ‘Dreaming on paper’: Moi JeBirth (of the image) of a nationConclusionChapter 5: PoliticsFrom France la douce (‘Sweet France’) to Masculin féminin and La Chinoise The Vietnam War The USA, Cuba and Cub(us)a One American Movie Communications and Un film français (‘A French film’)Down with cinema!Jusqu’à la victoire (‘Until victory’)1970–1: Other projects La Jeune Taupe (‘The young mole’)ConclusionChapter 6: HistoryAdaptations of books by professional historians The Ninth Symphony Imagining France under Russian occupation World War II: The White Rose and the killing of Anton WebernA film about the Holocaust in the early 1960s Jean-François Steiner and Treblinka Le Tunnel Pas un dîner de gala (‘Not a gala dinner’)Le Silence de la terre (‘The silence of the earth’)Projects with Marcel Ophuls A further proposed collaboration with Bernard-Henri Lévy The Kindly Ones and The Lost: A Search for Six of Six MillionConclusionGodard’s Unmade and Abandoned ProjectsGodard’s Principal Completed WorksNotesFilmographySelect BibliographyIndex

It is difficult not to sound excessively complimentary about this book, nor to avoid gushing superlatives, but it is a truly remarkable achievement that manages to be erudite, exhaustive, crammed full with detail that reveals much about Godard and his working methods, but which is also rich in its explanation of the context for the conception and (non-)execution of Godard’s projects.