Issue 38: San Marco 3415

Jean-Luc Godard: “Politics, movies, and literature lie, –not sports.”

Jean-Luc Godard on the Lido in Venice, 1983

The Unlikely Guide un-stacks the Venetian lagoon every other week and celebrates it in all its complexity. It’s a declaration of love to the local people, to the fish, the artichokes, to the Lido, to Murano, to Sant’Erasmo, and to the mud. It is composed under various headlines and features science fiction, fiction, Biennale reports, and the History Channel with stories and myths from the lagoon. Here we go, Number 38:

10 a.m., still alive.

On the morning of September 13, 2022, Jean-Luc Godard watched 13 minutes of his last film, Drôles de Guerres, went to his desk, smoked his last cigar, and called a taxi. It took him to the assisted suicide facility. He had asked his press secretary to make it very clear that he was not ill. Not depressed, but simply exhausted.
At 10 a.m., the world learned of Godard’s suicide from the newspaper Libération. At 10 a.m.—the time of his appointment, but not the time he ingested the toxic substance. This means Jean-Luc Godard was still alive. Exhausted. And deliberately out of sync.
The story of Godard’s death concludes Stanley Schtinter’s book Last Movies. A collection of the films that famous people saw–“during, just before, or close to death”– last in their lives. Franz Kafka watching Charlie Chaplin’s The Kid in 1924. Charlie Chaplin himself seeing Kubrick’s Barry Lindon in 1977. John Dillinger was shot in 1934 leaving the cinema after Manhattan Melodrama. Rainer Werner Fassbinder watching Bette Davis in 20,000 years in Sing Sing by Michael Curtiz from 1932. Then the stroke. In 1982. Bette Davis allegedly watched the 1931 film Waterloo Bridge—in which she starred—at the 1989 San Sebastián Film Festival. In secret.

Schtinter on June 15th. ‘Réplicas’ in front, John Dillinger in the back.

The Portuguese Pavilion has no permanent home in the Giardini. It drifts. This year the location is the Fondaco Marcello. Right on the Grand Canal. The name comes from the Arabic funduq — a merchant warehouse. This years’ curators are Ana Baliza and Ricardo Nicolau, flanked by Marco Bene, also ‘the archivest-in-attendance.’
And they invited Schtinter to perform his book. Last Monday, he showed excerpts from the films, up to the moment when the person died. French writer and singer Boris Vian five minutes into I Spit on Your Graves, from 1959. An adaptation of one of Vian’s books. But an adaptation without permission. Which enraged Vian so much that he had a heart attack at the movie theater. Vian’s friend Louis Malle, the film director, subsequently confirmed that movies can kill. It’s all described very beautifully in Last Movies. In Schtinter’s own words: “Through this approach, a parallel map of recent history—Screen Time emerges, stretching back almost to the inception of cinema itself…”
And just as the last films shape this cinematic dérive, the exhibition shapes the performance. Because RedSkyFalls by Alexandre Estrela is alive. It’s a living, seismic operating system. Connected in real time to the Euro-Mediterranean Seismological Center, reacting to every earthquake with a magnitude of over 4.5 on the Richter scale—no matter where on Earth it occurs. Tokyo, Lima, Taipei, Los Angeles. And no matter when! Soon, before… Quite often actually. And Estrela hasn’t just translated this into sound, but whenever a quake comes in, the small, glowing creatures in the exhibition freeze. They’re called Réplicas. And they’re composed of a fly’s heartbeat. Or of a fish larva’s tail. A rat’s whisker. They freeze in fear. A loud noise, sounding like heavy guitars, can be heard. For about 10–15 seconds. Schtinter takes a walk around the projection wall. Reset. Return to baseline. At first, you think it’s a man-made loop. But it’s the earth that feeds back. We have to accept it. Schtinter continues with Sergio Leone, “the most Italian film director” who died in 1989. His last film: I Want to Live, by Robert Wise from 1958. The best fragment of the night, a film noir based on the true story of the prostitute Barbara Graham, who was executed in the gas chamber at San Quentin Prison for murder. Susan Hayward won the Academy Award for Best Actress for playing Bloody Babs. We watch Estrela’s Réplicas sense the next earthquake. Threshold vibrations. They’re always too early. Just as a catfish perceives changes in the water’s electric field BEFORE a quake strikes. Because charged particles released from the rock under stress dissolve in the water. Infra-small signs, detectable hours before the event. A brief moment of paralysis. We synchronize. The seismic data stream doesn’t arrive all at once. Then Schtinter continues. We find ourselves in the gap between signal and catastrophe.

The Pacific and North American tectonic plates are not in sync: TENSION!

RedSkyFalls is probably getting the most feedback right now from where the San Andreas and San Jacinto faults meet. Anyone who has ever driven from Los Angeles to Las Vegas has crossed the Cajon Pass, where the Pacific and North American tectonic plates are constantly grinding against each other. 24 hours a day. Seven days a week. Because they are not in sync. The plates wedge against each other, building up enormous tension. Underground. Over hundreds of miles. And when this tension is released, the earth quakes. Heavy guitars. And by the way: Right now, the tension is higher than it has ever been in the last thousand years. Hollywood, Silicon Valley…? Arizona could soon be right on the seashore—who knows? Arizona Bay.

John Giorno’s early Poem Painting, Life is a Killer, 1989, and Rumney’s psychogeographical dérive from 1957

Survey on an S Wave is the title of a parallel programme curated by Marco Bene intervening Alexandre Estrela’s show with a Portable Seismic Archive. 126+ works about collapse, ruins, endings. Quite a few of them come from the collection of New York gallerist Emily Harvey, which she established here in Venice in the 1990s. Like No. 105–John Giorno’s Life is a Killer. And the Seismic Archive includes Ralph Rumney’s The Leaning Tower of Venice from 1957, No. 102—that dérive through Venice for the Situationist International, which we covered in Issue #09 of the Unlikely Guide.

At the end of the evening, Stanley Schtinter reaches Godard. Announcement of the Film ‘Phony Wars’ (1st shoot). As if there would be a second shoot. Schtinter shows a long part and the Réplicas plop and tock, and popp. The heavy guitars. It comes all together. Drôles de Guerres ends on Israel and Palestine. Not here. Here it ends on Carlotta and Saint Laurent. The tension. The gap. 10 a.m.. Still alive.

Fifty years earlier, there had already been reports that Godard had died—on June 9, 1971. In a way, the story made sense: Godard was the most rebellious of the Nouvelle Vague filmmakers, destined to shine brightly and die young. And his films had always dealt with suicide and/or death. But in June ’71, he was riding fast with his motorcycle through Paris and hit a delivery van. And was immediately taken to an intensive care unit. In the end, he outlived everyone else from the Nouvelle Vague. Truffaut, Chabrol, Resnais, Marker, Varda.
The last of the Mohicans, as he called himself.

A cheerful French intellectual who doesn’t want to complain.

After his motorcycle accident, Godard retreated with Anne-Marie Miéville to the small Swiss town of Rolle on the northern shore of Lake Geneva. He built himself a video and sound studio and was now able to make films in a completely different way. And to explore them. With Timecode. Which brings sound and image together when recorded separately. Now Godard was able to freeze time, slow it down, or speed it up. Putting things in sync which don’t belong. The Ton-Bild-Schere. Adding titles, give new meaning. Something that previously could only be done with scissors and paper—he could now do with film.
And his second first film was the result: Sauve qui Peut, [la vie] in 1980, Slow Motion in English. His best film. Sorry. An incredible film. When Godard presented it on Dick Cavett’s show in America in 1980, he speaks of his characters, saying they have no bitterness. Just like him.
He has “no anguish."

JLG: “For the character and for myself as a director of the movie, there was no complaint, feeling of complaining about something.”
And Cavett somehow misunderstands this as having nothing left to lose:
Cavett: “Because the characters aren’t complaining, they must have given up.”
JLG: “No, they’re just coping with reality, but no complaining about nothing.”

Godard was in a good mood. It all started with those fantastic lectures in Canada, 1978: Introduction to a True History of Cinema and Television. And when his film Prènom Carmen was in competition at the 40th Venice Mostra in 1983, there are quite a few photos of him smiling and looking completely relaxed.

With Maruschka Detmers the lead actress, in St. Mark’s Square

There are also these images of him playing tennis on the Lido. Excellent style! The grounds belonged to the Hotel Excelsior back then. In the 1930s, there were even tennis courts right on the beach. Today it’s called Tennis Club Venezia, a place with a nice restaurant and access to the beach that is, anyway, the most beautiful club in the world. In fact, it was voted one of the 100 most beautiful.

Godard was playing here, on Court 4, you can tell by the small brick wall.

There are several studies suggesting that Tennis is the healthiest sport—also for the brain. One that extends life. Godard lived to be 91. All his life he wanted to play Roland Garros. “And win” he told L'Équipe in 2001. John McEnroe was his favourite player. Who else?

Venice 1983: Godard and Michelangelo Antonioni, in the background Ōshima, Bertolucci und Rafelson

Jean-Luc Godard won the Golden Lion with Prénom Carmen at the Lido. And not even the fact that Michelangelo Antonioni also got one (for-lifetime-achievement) could put him in a bad mood. In the Jury were among others: Bernardo Bertolucci (President), Peter Handke, Nagisa Ōshima, Agnès Varda, and Bob Rafelson. What a line-up! Rafelson! Second to last in Stanley Schtinter’s book. He died shortly before Godard. Rafelson’s last film? The Joker?

L’oncle Jeannot in Prénom Carmen

In Prénom Carmen, Godard plays Carmen’s (Maruschka Detmers) uncle, a musician and filmmaker who is himself somehow out of sync. Very funny! And confined to a psychiatric clinic. Everyone in the film keeps trying to get in sync with one another: Carmen, the terrorist, with Uncle Jean. The uncle with his niece; Joseph, the bank security guard, with Carmen. They wedge against each other, building up tension. Chaos and sensuality. The cries of the seagulls and Beethoven’s strings. It has an incredible stylistic density. And energy. Godard’s best film. Really! At one point, Uncle Jeannot says: “What do these young people actually want? They didn’t invent the blue jeans nor the cigarette.”

The day after Schtinter’s performance Portugal’s President António José Seguro visited the pavilion. He is a socialist and won the election in February with 66%, the highest in Portuguese history, defeating a far-right candidate. And he had spent ten years farming before returning to politics. Later the president met with his Italian colleague Sergio Mattarella and King Felipe VI of Spain, on San Giorgio Maggiore. ‘Rethinking Work in the Age of AI:…” In the gap between signal and catastrophe, Christine Lagarde joined them as guest speaker.

The Portuguese Pavillon: San Marco 3415. Tue- Sun, 10am - 6pm, Free entry. Ciao fioi, a presto! With #39. Play some tennis! And don’t complain!