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.e

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)

Seul le cinéma, 26'

Seul le cinéma begins with the filmed discussion that Godard had with Serge Daney in 1988, at the time when the first two episodes were broadcast. Godard amplifies the voice of the critic, which becomes an echo, like a voice dredged up from the far depths of our memory – a manner of representing the time lag between the first episodes of Histoire(s) and episode 2A. The interview, also published in Jean-Luc Godard par Jean-Luc Godard 1, outstandingly fundamental in the critical history of Histoire(s) du cinéma, both for the presence of Daney and for its content, puts the undertaking in its historical perspective. It is significant that Godard should tackle the history of the cinema : already, at the time of the Nouvelle Vague, which, as Daney remarks, appeared in the middle of the century, he was used to taking up a position with regard to the past history of fifty years of cinema. There is a succession of portraits of the film-maker, illustrating a position inherited from his training at the French Cinematheque: the modern film-maker must be also a critic who has seen and analysed the works of other film-makers before making his/her own films.

The title Seul le cinéma (Only the cinema) is explained in the opening images, by a comparison of different histories: the histories of cinema, literature and art. The history of the cinema will be more important than the others because it can project itself. "It is Seul le cinéma that shows that the cinema is the only medium that has really managed to do this: film this history and, at the same time, little stories, musical comedies, little jokes, many things that no-one has found amusing since 1920."2 The title may also suggest a declaration of isolation.

At the end of this episode, the cinema is experienced like a journey. We have the french actress Julie Delpy reading the whole of Charles Baudelaire's Le Voyage, against a backdrop of images from La Nuit du Chasseur and paintings (Klimt, Rembrandt and Courbet's L'Origine du monde). More than a simple journey, the cinema is a visual transport to beyond: "Cinema projects itself", and, as Godard adds, right up to the point where it knocks over its spectators. Here, the author places the emphasis on the cinema's elementary nature, a searing brilliance that is, above all, visual 3. The visual art of Histoire(s) can, in this context, appear as an extension of this retinal aspect, especially in the flashing effects. The episode ends on the power of the cinema to make everything possible, even to "authorise Orpheus to turn round without killing Eurydice".

Marie-Anne Lanavère

1 Interview with Serge Daney published in Libération on December 26^th 1988 ("Histoire(s) du cinéma, Godard fait des histoire(s)", Jean-Luc Godard par Jean-Luc Godard, Paris, éditions Cahiers du Cinéma, 1998, tome 2, p. 161)
2 Interview with Alain Bergala in 1997 ("Une boucle bouclée", Jean-Luc Godard par Jean-Luc Godard, Paris, éditions Cahiers du Cinéma, 1998, tome 2, p. 16)
3 See Cyril Beghin on this subject, "L'invention de l'animation" (Art Press, Hors-Série "Jean-Luc Godard", November 1998), which analyses the visual art of Histoire(s) (throbbing, overprinting).