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)

3A La Monnaie de l'Absolu, 26'

In La Monnaie de l'Absolu, - the title is borrowed Malraux – Jean-Luc Godard enlarges the scope of his reflection, making Histoire(s) du cinéma the locus of a political position on the history of the 20^th century – he concentrates mainly on the wars. Godard wants to underline the fatalism with which the world, like the cinema, depends on history: "So, there's a kind of absolute, to whom you have to pay the price: you have to pay."1 The episode starts with the reading of a text by Victor Hugo, which is troubling because of its accuracy and current relevance " An entire people is being murdered. Where? In Europe. Are there any witnesses to this event? One witness: the whole world. Do the governments see what is going on? No. […] Civilisation is in the people, barbarity is in the governments. […] But a single action by the governments of Europe would be enough to prevent this…". The text is accompanied by images of wars taken from films and paintings.

The relationship between the weakness of the contemporary world and that of the cinema is quickly established 2, illustrated by this statement familiar to Godard: "What is the cinema? Nothing. What does it want? Everything. What can it do? Something." This raises the issue of the cinema's impotence in stemming the flow of history, now relayed by the spectacle of the media ("the triumph of American television and its groupies".). Here, we are watching the most pessimistic, but also the most political episode of Histoire(s), which clearly announces the death of the cinema. This is something that Jean-Luc Godard doesn't hide and continues what he fisrt mentioned  in interviews and conferences: "If the cinema was made primarily for thinking, we would forget about it immediately, but it's another history, the flame will be snuffed out completely."

The second part of the episode is devoted to the Second World War and the relationship that the cinema has had with this period. In this part, which appears to have been made in 1944, Jean-Luc Godard expresses his indignation at the hypocrisy of the French government when it commemorates the Liberation of 1944 – turning a blind-eye to collaboration and endorsing its past as a "resistant". According to the author, the French war-time cinema was not a cinema of resistance, unlike poetry (Aragon, Marguerite Duras, Ossip Mendeestam). Because the word "resistance" should not only be understood in its historic sense of activity relating to the 1939 – 1945 conflict, but also in its ideological sense in the struggle against the standardisation and Americanisation of the cinema. Unlike other European countries, "the only film, in the cinema sense, that resisted to the American occupation of the cinema was an Italian film: Rome open city". Images from Rossellini's film are then followed by a homage to the Italian cinema (the other films of Rossellini, Pasolini…) over a song by Cocciante, to express the idea that, in those years, only the Italian cinema was able to give birth to "A thought that forms (trains). A form that thinks ".

Marie-Anne Lanavère

1 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. 17)
2 Alain Badiou: "It has been said that Godard's subject was the genealogy of the power of the cinema. But isn't the real issue its impotence?" ("Le plus-de-voir", Art Press, Hors- Série "Jean-Luc Godard", November 1998)