Before being invited in 1978 to the Conservatoire d'Art Cinématographique in Montreal to give fourteen conferences on the history of cinema, Jean-Luc Godard had already unsuccessfully proposed a project on the subject, in collaboration with Henri Langlois, to Italian television. To understand Histoire(s) du cinéma, it is important here to mention the considerable role played by the Director of the Cinémathèque Française (who died in 1977) in the training of the filmmakers in the Nouvelle Vague. Through Henri Langlois's programming, which built up a history of cinema based not on chronology but on stylistic or thematic comparisons between films, Jean-Luc Godard had already viewed cinema through associations of ideas. And he constructed his conferences in Montreal using extracts from films. On his return, he gathered them together in a book, Introduction à une véritable histoire du cinéma, "veritable in the sense that it was made up of images and sounds rather than texts, albeit illustrated" 1. In this work, he proposes a confrontation between his own films and those which are already part of History, by means of a montage of texts and photograms, enlarging their frame so that it resembles video. This series of experiments seems to be the origin of the project Histoire(s) du cinéma, which came to fruition in 1987 with French television (ten episodes were then planned).

The first two chapters, Les histoires toutes and Une histoire seule, were presented at Cannes in 1987 and broadcast on television in 1989. Through their unusual matching of sound and image, they inaugurate a specifically Godardian mode of expression, a sort of recognisable trademark which is found in each chapter of Histoire(s) du cinéma, eventually finished in eight episodes.
Since Numéro deux (1975), the director has been exploiting the editing possibilities of video: text inserts, flashes, slow motion sequences and freeze-frame techniques, combined with an increasingly sophisticated, autonomous soundtrack, have become the necessary syntax for the elaboration of reasoning. Although Jean-Luc Godard had already been using such methods, which cause meaning to emerge from confrontation, for a long time, they are the form that exactly corresponds to Histoire(s) du cinéma. Like Fragments d'un discours amoureux by Roland Barthes 2, which sees the work as resulting from a subtle montage of acknowledged literary sources, Histoire(s) du cinéma is an essay on the cinema through cinema via video, which only exists by the reorganised appropriation of quotations which have become the property of everyone, as implied by the indication "NON(C)JLGFILMS". Extremely daring, when you think of the poor consideration given reproducible works of art, particularly since here it involves reproduction of reproductions, this work in progress shows history being written (punctuated by the recurrent sound of the typewriter) and being seen (the sound of the editing table). When he reminds us in the first episode that "video" means "I see", Jean-Luc Godard explains how much "video has taught [him] to see cinema and to rethink cinematic work in a different way" 3.
Histoire(s) du cinéma is the result of an ambitious project: to make individual histories and collective History meet. Jean-Luc Godard confronts his own history - giving the Histoire(s) an autobiographical dimension - and anecdotal stories (Irving Thalberg married to one of the most beautiful women in the world, for example) with archive pictures, making cinema a witness of History. If Histoire(s) du cinéma is a monument, in the sense of a place of memory, which tries to tell "all the stories there have been", the work is not just a magnificent procession of cinematic images through the video player. It is the place where Jean-Luc Godard's obsessive questioning meets a technique which, through slow motion, enables the very essence of cinema to be attained in an archaeological way, until it reveals "all the stories of the films that were never made", as the first episode announces, or in other words, "seeing the invisible" 4. The slow motion sequences are a subtle way of seeing between the different strata of cinema, the fades and superimpositions are ways of glimpsing the apparently incongruous connections between the films, and the freeze-frames and photograms take us back to cinema's earliest years.

Although Histoire(s) du cinéma 1A and 1B have been widely seen and have featured in many articles since their broadcast by Canal+ in 1989, a ten-year gap of silence separates them from their long awaited sequel. Obviously the first fruits of a 'work in progress', the first two episodes were finished in an official manner in 1995 with episodes 3A and 4B. They were shown at the Locarno festival and then at Cannes that same year.
In addition to the time that Jean-Luc Godard spent as a historian, the protracted negotiations with Gaumont for the indispensable broadcasting rights added lengthy delays. In a historical context of criticism, it is interesting to note that, in order to make up for the lack of information during this waiting period, a network of transmission of the written word grew up to replace the non-existent visual material. This phenomenon – and one wonders if Jean-Luc Godard didn't anticipate this himself – has played a significant part in making Histoire(s) du cinéma a living legend. What happened during this period was that some of the episodes were shown to close friends of Jean-Luc Godard, who were given the task of reporting the experience. That is how the first major article on the subject, by Jonathan Rosenbaum, came to be published in issue n° 22 Trafic, closely followed by an article from Dominique Païni, in issue n° 221 of Art Press, in May 1997.
Finally, 1999 saw the publication of the four books, faithful to the project described in the 'Introduction à une véritable histoire du cinéma'. This was followed a few months later by the four videocassettes and, more recently, by the soundtrack CD's. Apart from the commercial aspect of the operation, these media show the triple-entry possibility of 'reading' Histoire(s).
Histoire(s) du cinéma is now offered in the form of four pairs of two chapters, making a total of eight episodes: 1A, 1B, 2A, 2B, 3A, 3B, 4A, and 4B. Each episode is built on the same structure: an opening consisting of two dedications is followed by the producers' credits (Gaumont / Périphéria…). The sounds and images are inter-cut by the eight titles of Histoire(s), in order, one after the other, and in Capitals, like a leitmotif that helps viewers to place what they are watching in the context of the project's larger ensemble. It's only at about the mid-point of the video that the number and title of the chapter are announced, and the episode ends with "to be continued" (all except the last episode, because Histoire(s) is finally achieved now).
Even if the first two episodes have been slightly modified since the original version, Histoire(s) conserves its recurrent traits of the Godard style that were already present in 1988: the sound of the type-writer (like the "chatter of a machine gun), the title table with its typography in capitals, there to temper the flow of signs and the film turning at the editing bench. Super-impression, slowed images and the superimposition of sounds are still the syntactic matrix of Histoire(s). The more one watches Histoire(s), the more they come to resemble an ultimate proposition, in this conclusion of the 20^th century 5, of the possibility of bringing the arts closer together on the lines of Malraux and Langlois. Yet once one has admitted the critical and historical importance of Histoire(s), and its standing as a unique work, one can't help being surprised at the lack of contemporary references – literary, cinematographic and artistic. The illustrative use of works, the absence of artist's beyond Nicolas de Staël and Francis Bacon 6, an almost complete silence on today's writers, the weakness of the contemporary cinema in Jean-Luc Godard's eyes, all contribute to the expression of eventual reserves on the aesthetic scope of Histoire(s) in the context of contemporary art. This is even more relevant as Godard has adopted a rather withdrawn position on this subject. Outstandingly subjective and coloured by nostalgia, Histoire(s) du cinéma is a work that is primarily addressed to its author, who directs (bare-chested and wearing a cap, or miming an orchestral conductor…) the production of his own mémoire. In the end, in spite of appearances, Histoire(s) du cinéma talks relatively little of the cinema but rather in terms of archive images. One gradually notices that the author shifts the focus of his study: the real subject is not so much the cinema as it is contemporary history as seen by Jean-Luc Godard.

1 Jean-Luc Godard, preface to Introduction à une véritable histoire du cinéma, Paris, éd. Albatros, 1980.
2 Roland Barthes, Fragments d'un discours amoureux, Paris, Le Seuil, 1977.
3 Jean-Luc Godard, in an interview with Alain Bergala on 12th March 1985 at Rolle ("L'art à partir de la vie", Jean-Luc Godard par Jean-Luc Godard, les années Cahiers, Paris, Cahiers du Cinéma / éditions de l'Etoile, 1985).
4 Expression by Jean-Luc Godard taken from Scénario du film Passion (1982).
5 Gilles A. Tiberghien has quite rightly compared Histoire(s) du cinéma to Victor Hugo's La Légende des siècles: "Histoire(s) du cinéma is a vast visual poem, an epic poem, the legend of a century that has listened at history's door. It's this Hugo-esque aspect of Godard of which Elie Faure and Malraux, his mentors in criticism are the direct descendants." (Art Press, Hors-Série "Jean-Luc Godard", November 1998)
6 "The images of works of art are 'exploited' in just the same way as the other images – cinematographic, documentary or advertising images. In fact, his choice is very 'classic', barely contemporary – there's nothing more recent than Picasso and Bacon and nothing on figurative art […]. As an art historian, what do you feel about this lack of respect?" ("Histoires d'images", an interview between Hans Belting and Anne-Marie Bonnet, Art Press, Hors-série "Jean-Luc Godard", November 1998)

4A Le contrôle de l'univers, 27'

While the interpretation of the first six episodes – once one overcomes the fear of an over-abundance of signs – finally appears to be easy enough to decode, Contrôle de l'univers is the opposite. Its meaning remains obscure and its association of references is so complex that the viewer is often excluded. Here, the confusion desired by the author should be noted, a confusion that comes out of all of Histoire(s). According to Dominique Païni, the work "places the entire cinema in a general tone of strange anxiety: familiar obviousness and terror. What we thought we knew about him, more precisely, what we thought we knew about his history – chronology, influences, the antagonism of art and money – all of this is much more confused and not just complex ".1

The first part of Contrôle de l'univers, a lot more literary than visual ( in this case the books, published by Gallimard, prove extremely useful), is a long interrogation on the nature of power. From the out-set, power is described in contradictory terms: the "threat of thunder", the "presence of the absolute" can come from "a soft and weak voice" or a "whispered power", that Godard illustrates with portraits of women (Virginia Wolf, Camille Claudel…). This power of the spirit is opposed to the other forms of power: state, police and propaganda, which allow terror (Hitchcock's The Birds) and misery (Dreyer's Jeanne d'Arc) to reign. But the author also reminds us that "this tyrannical god" is also a creation of man. He raises the question of humankind's responsibility – while human beings have the power to create beauty with their thoughts and hands, they can also create horror ( Freaks, pornographic images, the camps).

Next, the episode concentrates on the figure of the artist and his action on the real. Jean-Luc Godard reveals a series of portraits of Robert Bresson, Fritz Lang, Rainer Fassbinder, up to contemporaries Eric Rohmer and Philippe Garrel 2. He then pays a major tribute to Alfred Hitchcock: "If Alfred Hitchcock was the only cursed poet to meet with success, it's because he was the greatest creator of forms of the twentieth century." This boundless enthusiasm for the film-maker is already present in the entire work of Histoire(s) du cinéma, but here, it is precisely linked to the question of control of the universe – Hitchcock having "succeeded where Alexander, Julius Caesar and Napoleon failed". Jean-Luc Godard's relationship with the cinema is always an affectionate one; that's why he doesn't hesitate to analyse Hitchcock's films subjectively – his mind has retained some icons from them: "a handbag", "a bus in the desert"...

The third part becomes more obscure and more doubtful again, enlarging the theme to a reflection on the difficulty of defining the cinema. When Alain Cuny reads a long, lyric text in his cavernous voice 3, it is through him that Jean-Luc Godard – wearing his most melancholic expression – maintains a personalised relationship with the cinema, in the same way as a believer personifies his/her god: "the cinema doesn't cry over us, it doesn't comfort us, because it is with us, since it is ourselves […]. It is still there when we grow old, when we are staring at the coming night, it is still there when we are dead …" Difficult to bear, this part of Histoire(s) expresses again the disillusionment that underlies all of Histoire(s), Jean-Luc Godard assimilating the death of the cinema (Maria Casarès in Orphée : "All this is already past history […] it manages to fix itself. Forever. In a marble past, like statues …") with his own death, in an existential terror (That I should be cursed, that I should be forgotten", over images of murder and music by the french singer Léo Ferré).

Marie-Anne Lanavère

1 "Que peut faire le cinéma?" (preface), Art Press, Hors-Série "Jean-Luc Godard", November 1998.
2 He is often reproached for the lack of contemporary elements in his references: "You get the impression that all the images date back to the period from the 1920's to the 1940's […]. Apparently, the most contemporary film-makers are Fassbinder and Lynch. Has time come to a stand-still?" wonders Anne-Marie Bonnet (Art Press, Hors-Série "Jean-Luc Godard", November 1998)
3 It seems to come from the grave, like Jean-Luc Godard's voice throughout Histoire(s) du cinéma. Dominique Païni accurately described it as "the clamour of the century that has just ended", steeped in "terribilità". "Histoire(s) du cinéma is primarily that: the combat (of an Angel?) against the sounds of the century – the noise of massacres, the cries of people being exterminated or the shouts of indignation recovered by the obscenity of the spectacle of what the cinema has finally stooped whereas we had the right to expect everything of it!"