Photography and Cinema

suffice here, but together they outline what has been particular about

Godard’s relation to photographs for nearly half a century.Les Carabiniers

(The Riflemen, 1963 ), Godard’s take on the war movie, is a political satire

about two coarse young men joining a king’s army on the promise of riches

and the opportunity to kill. To their girlfriends back home they send

banal picture postcards with equally banal comments: ‘We shot seven

men then had breakfast’ (Godard appropriated real wartime correspon-

dence). On their return the soldiers divide up a suitcase of more postcards,

as if they were conquerors gloating over spoils. ‘We’ve got the world’s

treasures!’ boasts one. ‘Monuments. Transportation. Stores. Works of Art.

Factories. Natural Wonders. Mountains. Flowers. Deserts. Landscapes.

Animals. The five continents. The planets. Naturally each part is divided

into several parts that are divided into more parts.’ They slam down end-

less images of cars, buildings, boats, houses and more. Then come images

of women – from art history, pornography and Hollywood – as if women

too were commodities promised by the state in exchange for their labours.

Intentionally, the scene goes on far too long, making clear the numbing

effects not just of war but also of photographs as casual substitutes for

knowledge and experience.

Godard’s most sustained engagement with photography isLetter to

Jane: An Investigation about a Still( 1972 ). It is a 52 -minute film centred on

just one image, a news photo that had appeared inL’Expressin 1972

captioned ‘Jane Fonda interrogeant des habitants de Hanoi sur les bom-

bardements américains’ (‘Jane Fonda questions Hanoi residents aboutus

bombings’). Fonda had just starred for Godard and Jean-Pierre Gorin in

Tout va bien( 1972 ), as a journalist covering a factory strike. She is faced

with the question of whether to join the workers in solidarity or try to

report neutrally (the role of the intellectual in political life has been cen-

tral to Godard’s work). When Fonda went to North Vietnam to protest

againstusforeign policy, her visit was covered extensively by the Western

media.Letter to Janetakes the rough newsprint image as what it calls a

‘social nerve cell’, and through voice-over the filmmakers attempt to

examine its political functions.^14 Despite her evident concern about the

war, the film sees Fonda as ultimately limited and contained by bourgeois

104 liberalism, whether her own or that of the newspaper’s readers.^15