The point in time: Precise chronology in early godard

Abstract

This essay considers the significance of reference to chronologically specific material (including newspapers, magazines, radio broadcasts, graffiti) in Godard’s first three films of the 1960s - Le Petit soldat/The Little Soldier (made 1960, released 1963), Une femme est une femme/A Woman is a Woman (1961) and Vivre sa vie/My Life to Live (1962), and in Pierrot le fou/Crazy Pete (1965) - arguing that such ephemeral traces of a period can serve as a means of access to the political import of these films, and also are part of a larger concern in Godard with questions of time and history, questions that he is still asking thirty or forty years later, in works like Histoire(s) du cinéma/Histories of Cinema (1998) and Éloge de l’amour/In Praise of Love (2001). © Intellect Ltd 2003