- Title
- Two or three things I know about her
- Creator
- Ford, Hamish
- Relation
- Senses of Cinema Vol. 66, Issue March
- Relation
- http://sensesofcinema.com/2013/cteq/two-or-three-things-i-know-about-her
- Publisher
- Senses of Cinema Inc.
- Resource Type
- journal article
- Date
- 2013
- Description
- Deux ou trois choses que je sais d’elle (Two or Three Things I Know About Her, 1967) is a very special entry in the remarkable filmography of Jean-Luc Godard, a figure I believe Geoffrey Nowell-Smith is justified in lavishly, yet also precisely describing as “the most important and revolutionary filmmaker of the last fifty years”. Largely post-dating his earlier interest in genre and evidencing only the earlier stages of his political radicalisation, what makes this film stand out most of all from Godard’s other 1960s cinema is its lack of surety. There is an uncharacteristically self-doubting tone to Two or Three Things when compared to the breathtakingly assured narrative and genre games that often (but not always) feature in his first half-decade – crowned by the twin 1965 glories of Alphaville and Pierrot le fou – or the increasingly “engaged” politically-themed films culminating with La Chinoise (1967) and Weekend (1967), then further escalating across the “Dziga Vertov” period. Without either of these twin rails, Two or Three Things – in many ways alongside the less political and more romantically-tinged Vivre sa vie (1962), which in addition to also treating the theme of prostitution likewise suppresses genre and the primacy of narrative with “documentary” techniques and qualities – contains arguably the most inquisitive, open, genuinely self-reflexive, philosophical, aesthetically innovative, at times lyrical and often funny cinema Godard has made.
- Subject
- Jean-Luc Godard; film review; documentary techniques; self-reflection
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1058157
- Identifier
- uon:16344
- Identifier
- ISSN:1443-4059
- Language
- eng
- Reviewed
- Hits: 2846
- Visitors: 1344
- Downloads: 0
| Thumbnail | File | Description | Size | Format |
|---|