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Made in the U.S.A: Godard spills the beans on politics and atrocity
Made in U.S.A
Godard spills the beans on politics and atrocity
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Peter Hulm
Anna Karina, who died in December 2019, was more than Jean-Luc Godard's muse. In one film of his, Made in U.S.A, she was allowed an independent existence. Sixty years since Godard’s 'Breathless' burst onto our screens in 1959, it is still only 10 years since the United States premiered this 1966 film by the French-Swiss filmmaker. A meditation about atrocity in politics. it was disguised as a nonsensical private-eye thriller. Today this nightmare version of Alice in Wonderland or Tintin today looks more and more realistic. Peter Hulm pays tribute to an artist who once lived down the hill from him in Vaud and could often be seen on the streets of Rolle as well as filming on location nearby.
JEAN-LUC GODARD – 89 ON 3 DECEMBER
2019 – makes probably the most charmless films in the history of cinema. But this statement should be read as a description not a judgment. His films highlight the extent to which other directors rely on charm to make their movies acceptable: the charms of narrative, character, theme, story, spectacle, display, ‘content’, personality, photography, fluidity of editing, voyeurism, spectator distance, personal involvement, ‘realism’ or wilful fantasy. Godard’s stylistic originality – his strategy of disenchantment, demystification, and deconstruction of efforts to disguise the coercive messages of conventional films – frequently hides from critics the extent to which his films are political, not just in their theoretical monologues, but also in their concern with the practical realities and violence of modern politics, particularly torture and assassination (Le Petit Soldat, Les Caribiniers, and Made in U.S.A., i.e., particularly in his least discussed works).
THE REASON FOR CONFUSION: GODARD’S DESIRE FOR REALISM
In Made in U.S.A. (1966), what is striking in retrospect is his fidelity to our knowledge of politics which modern society provides. As a result, in explicating the film, the normally careful critic Richard Roud confesses: “The plot is extremely confusing. […] The reason for this confusion is quite simple: Godard’s desire for realism. Nobody knows to this day who killed Ben Barka and how it was done […] And, Warren Report or not, no one yet knows the full story of the Kennedy assassination [both referred to in the film]. Any film about these events would, according to Godard, be false and dishonest. Just as Les Caribiniers seemed to many stupid and nonsensical, so Made in U.S.A. seems to many confused and absurd. The reasons are similar in both cases. But at least anyone could follow Les Caribiniers, whereas the same is not true of Made in U.S.A.” Roud’s fellow critic and scholar Ian Cameron points out that Godard says he was inspired by Howard Hawks’s The Big Sleep, but with a woman wearing the detective’s trenchcoat. No-one, not even its author Raymond Chandler or Hawks himself, has been able to make sense of that plot. At least Godard was trying to reflect political realities. Finally, with much hesitation, Roud thought Made in U.S.A. a failure. Godard himself told the critic Colin MacCabe: “Things were too mixed up. I wanted to say too many things.” It was filmed to help out producer Georges Beauregard when Godard had already been commissioned to make One or Two Things that I know about Her. The most common response seems to have been: “It is his slightest film since Alphaville, perhaps even since Bande à Part. Conversely [a word that seems to turn up very often in articles on Godard], it is also one of the most difficult” (Cameron). “It’s no surprise that the film’s Swedish distributors caught a terrible cold with it, for Made in U.S.A. is the least exportable of Godard’s films”.
Its difficulties have been ascribed to his efforts to use anti-narrative techniques and fragmentation of plot at the same time as setting out an exposition of the absurdity of the contemporary world: “In fact, according to traditional views of aesthetics, it is wholly proper to have the form express the content. But this has not been Godard’s way before, and it doesn’t work too well here” (Roud). Cameron, too, recognizes Made in U.S.A. as having a “centre-less structure”. But many of the “meaningless” remarks, Cameron notes, prove to have significance. For example, in a bar Anna Karina notes that “during a war 70+14 make 40” (a reference to three French disasters – the 1870 Franco-Prussian war, the outbreak of the First World War and assassination of the Socialist leader JeanJaurès, and the collapse of French defenses at Sedan in 1940).
Anna Karina and László Szabó in Jean-Luc Godard’s “Made in U.S.A.” (Photo: Rialto Pictures)
For a “slight” film, Made in U.S.A. carries some heavy political baggage: “References to Kennedy, to Ben Barka, to the murder of the mayor of Evian and to the fates of the 17 witnesses to the Kennedy assassination as well as to the fact that Paula [Anna Karina] wanted to write a book on Lee Harvey Oswald, underline the impression that assassination is the international reserve currency of politics. Richard [Paula’s murdered boyfriend] wrote that ‘le fascisme était le dollar de la morale’ [Fascism was the
POLITICS AS WAR... THE ILLUSION OF WAR AS A GAME
currency of morality]” (Cameron). Similarly, “torture is a normal part of the political underworld’s activities. Marie Dufour [one of the briefly seen characters] was tortured with a razor blade. Mme Celine, the charwoman from Une Femme Mariée, turns up walking with a limp. We learn that she has been tortured. (She says: ‘Toujours le sang, la peur, la politique, l’argent. [Forever blood, fear, politics, money]”.) Twice the film insists, via the cover of a paperback book, that the revolutionary left is back to its starting point: “gauche année zéro”, as Cameron also notes. The film ends with an observation that Left and Right are outdated notions. Questions have to be posed in other terms. Cameron also picks up on Godard’s concern with politics as war (“since Le Petit Soldat”), the illusion of war as a game (in Les Caribiniers), war as entertainment (in Pierrot le Fou), and politics as a bad movie. Towards the end of the film, Godard’s commentary asserts: “We were certainly in a film about politics: Walt Disney plus blood”. Writing at the turn of the millennium, Colin MacCabe draws a conclusion that differs from earlier critics: “What the film actually demonstrates is the complete inability of the form to deal with the reality of a politics which eludes the easy solutions of the thriller genre. In some ways, the simple and sombre message of the film is the inability of the left to cope with the development of consumer capitalism”. Godard described his aim around that time as “to show and to show myself showing” (MacCabe). Made in U.S.A. represents the last of his films working within the old narrative structure (many of the characters are named after Godard’s favourite American directors and thriller writers), demonstrating through its manipulation of the plot elements and scenario the disintegration of such strategies in the face of modern politics. In the later 266-min. Histoire(s) du cinéma (1988- 98), Godard’s technical expertise, an attempt to tell the history of cinema visually, was not just a demonstration of formal mastery: “The failure to prevent or record the [Nazi concentration and extermination] camps is one of the major, if not the major, theme of the Histoire(s)” (MacCabe). The juxtaposition of Elizabeth Taylor’s (supposedly) smiling face with footage of the concentration camps became “the most discussed sequence” from the first part. In fact, she was not smiling and Godard’s commentary points out that George Stevens, director of the film A Place in the Sun from which the Taylor still is taken, made his first film in colour at Auschwitz and Ravensbrück. Godard’s commentary also brings to the forefront the double reality hidden behind these stills: “He analyses the force of Taylor’s smile in terms of Stevens’s desire to celebrate life after this experience of death. On the other hand, this scene fits into the major theme of the histories – that the cinema is guilty for allowing the camps to happen, for not recording history accurately enough either to stop the killing from happening or to understand what happened” (MacCabe). Accepting that Godard considers Made in U.S.A. less than satisfactory (“It is not very good because there are a lot of extremely confused things in it” – 1980), the explanation for its confusions is instructive. Whereas the film he was making in parallel introduces us to Godard’s favorite device of the unreliable commentator (a voice-over whose statements are not to be taken on trust), Made in U.S.A. represented a fiction he had constructed “purely commercially. What was most interesting was above all the colours: there was a certain
amount of research into colours; but that does not make a film” (156). Godard, however, is not the most reliable judge of his films (he later condemned Breathless/A bout du souffle! at a time when he wanted all films to be political). In reality, he had adapted (extremely loosely) a book by Richard Stark (Donald E. Westlake), The Jugger. But the producer had not completely paid for the rights, and never did, since only about a minute of the original was used and the tough hero became Anna Karina. But Godard told the magazine Sight & Sound he was making a film from a Stark thriller, and Westlake sued for copyright infringement. The case took years but the author eventually won. Westlake received U.S. distribution rights (Europe Jean-Luc Godard interview in a 2019 television interview. was less protective). No-one in America was interested in showing the film and Westlake thought it was his worst book (though later critics disagreed). The film finally had its U.S. premiere on 1 April 2009, some months after Westlake’s death. See The Westlake Review, which sums it up: “A crazed auteur turned [Westlake’s] story into a weird abstract political diatribe dressed up in noir clothing, that seems to have something to do with the Vietnam War […], and features a drop-dead Danish dame playing the roughest of all rough-hewn American tough guys. Westlake not only didn’t get paid for this, but he had to drag the producers into court, and then settle for the U.S. rights to a movie he hated, that only diehard Godard buffs would ever pay money to see, and he didn’t see a franc until just before he kicked (if then).” “In one of the most shocking moments of the film, Karina asks the character Donald [Siegal] (played by Jean-Pierre Léaud), ‘If you had to die, would you prefer to know beforehand or would you rather it was sudden?’ ‘I’d rather it was sudden,’ he replies. She shoots him, and all we hear from him as he dies are his cries for his mother” (MacCabe). She also murders the investigator David Goodis (!) to keep him from revealing the truth about an atrocity. In a Montreal seminar on Made in U.S.A., Godard suggests that detective thrillers are so popular because the investigator “corresponds to the notion of liberty which people have (which is not necessarily freedom) – someone who walks around hands in pockets [as Karina does in the film], who does nothing, who is not forced to work at a machine like a factory worker, who does No wonder Godard didn’t want to speak much about it. not have any heavy governmental responsibilities or anything like that, who smokes a cigarette, who can go The 1990s onwards, with the films of Quentin Tarantino, David Lynch, Spike Jonze and Paul Thomas Anderson, as well as David Cronenberg’s more adventurous experiments, have put Made in U.S.A. in a into a pub, who can grab someone by the collar and ask them questions…It must represent the ideal of freedom for the West. Those are the real heroes, the police officers, even if people do not like them” (1980). less absurd light. The same kind of confusion (of the spectator) in Made Made in U.S.A. is full of such characters. in U.S.A. can be found in David Lynch’s Eraserhead, Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive. Given Godard’s experience with the inadequacies of narrative to deal with political horror, one can understand his complaint to New York’s film critics (refusing their award in 1995) that they had failed “to prevent Mr Spielberg from reconstructing Auschwitz” in Schindler’s List (MacCabe). “From very early on,” writes Colin MacCabe, “Godard held that the only way to film the camps would be from the perspective of the home life of one of the guards” (ibid). Through the fractured elliptical style, its black jokes, and acceptance of the social framework in which torture Some authors’ failures are more instructive than others’ successes. Made in U.S.A. bristles with ideas – about the ubiquity of disruptive sounds in everyday life, about the use of colour (and this is an exceptionally beautiful film), the refusal to pretend that the actors are characters from the script, and the frustration of audience expectations of narrative, film scripts or standard realism. The absurd math of politics is laid bare in a bar where a zombielike Marianne Faithful sings her most famous song with no-one taking any notice (‘Tears go by’), and a workman spouts nonsense sentences over his glass of wine. routinely takes place, Made in U.S.A. gives us Godard’s picture of society as viewed by society’s guards. PETER HULM is our deputy editor based in Erschmatt,Switzerland.
A film-maker’s journey Village of the Forgetful Madeleine Dallmeyer
Several years ago, Berlin-based film-maker Madeleine Dallmeyer came across a magazine with an unusual story. It was about a Swiss initiative – the Martin Woodtlis Project – which seeks to help foreign patients with Alzheimer’s or dementia by providing them with comparatively inexpensive, one-on-one care in a ‘village’ setting in northern Thailand. The article intrigued her. Taking advantage of Thailand’s growing medical tourism industry, basically quality care at affordable prices, the project emerged as one way of dealing with a problem increasingly affecting aging populations back in Europe. Initially skeptical, Dallmeyer looked more closely at the photographs. The patients appeared to look relatively happy. She decided to investigate, ultimately producing a two-hour documentary. With COVID-19 threatening to undermine Thailand's traditional mass tourism, selective quality "medical tourism" is expected to increase with more expatriates to take advantage of less costly and longer-term living possibilities.
THE SUBJECT FASCINATED ME AND I FOUND MYSELF
thinking about it for days after. One of the reasons is that my own grandmother had suffered from dementia in her old age. This presented enormous difficulties not just for friends and family, but for her. She was an exceptionally proud woman with an acute sense of culture, intellect and independence. And she treasured this. So it was hard to witness how she slowly began to lose her faculties and particularly her sensibilities, all characteristics which she had found so important in life. Nevertheless, we considered it important for her to remain at home in surroundings. This was something which she knew and which might help ensure that at least a certain familiarity remained. And then I read this article, which seemed to claim that certain people are simply ‘dumping’ their relatives in Thailand because it is cheaper. But as I read further, the photographs drew me in. I felt less infuriated. Somehow, the people radiated happiness. I decided to contact Martin Woodtli and asked him if we could chat. One thing lead to another. I felt that there was a film.
The Baan Kamlangchay Centre, located in Faham village a few kilometres outside of Chiang Mai, was set up by Swiss citizen Martin Woodtli in order to help care for people suffering from Alzheimer’s and dementia. He started the project in 2004 when his own father commited suicide, considering himself unable to look after his wife, an Alzheimer’s patient. Woodtli then assumed responsibility for her. Maintaining that no proper institutions existed in Switzerland capable of providing proper care, both medically and financially, he took her to Thailand, a country he knew well having volunteered there for Médecins sans Frontières. He slowly created a structure which is now shared with a dozen Swiss, German and Austrian patients living in several houses in the village itself. I first make a short ‘reccy’, an exploratory trip to Thailand. I wanted to see whether the project was worthwhile doing. During this initial trip, I made friends with some of the centre’s inhabitants and carers. From their reflections and experiences, I started shaping a first draft of a potential script. Curiously, my final film was not far off this original draft. The film itself was my first since completing my studies, so I had a very small budget. Right from the beginning it was clear that this could not be a pure factually-based, journalistic report. It had to be a proper documentary based on real encounters. It needed to offer a sense of atmosphere as to what is really happening. For this, however, one need a lot of time and, of course, funding. But I was lucky to have a team who were equally smitten by the subject. When I first told Anne (the camerawoman) and Aljoscha (the sound technician) about the project they became so enthused that they immediately committed, even though our production fees were paltry. Then there was Nam, our Thai production assistant and interpreter. She joined us because she was also interested in the subject matter. She wanted to be part of it, so she fell in perfectly with our team. Our budget did not even cover the return flights from Berlin to Chiangmai. We therefore decided to remain for a longer period by integrating our ‘vacation’ time into the trip. We did this by taking a break on one of Thailand’s beautiful, tropical islands, so it was an incredible opportunity for all of us. So we made the film as part of a group of friends. Overall, we spent nearly two months on the ground. We began shooting almost immediately on arrival. Normally, I would wait before going into production but we wanted to use all the time available, such as getting to know better both the camera and various filming angles. Furthermore, our protagonists, the patients, often forgot who we were, and what we were doing, sometimes right in the middle of a conversation. We had to reintroduce ourselves everyday and to re-explain what we were doing. Of course this is very tragic, but we took these ‘Groundhog Day’ situations with a lot of humour as well. Under normal circumstance, I consider it important to lend them a ‘feel’ for the film and how they would appear. Given their medical condition, this was obviously impossible. Even getting to know them was a laborious process. At the same time, one cannot simply dismiss or underestimate such individuals. We got to know them better day by day. This helped better understand and tolerate the usual irritations of filming under difficult circumstances. In fact, this proved to be our biggest surprise. Even when dealing with their dementia, it was possible to develop friendships. Take Kurt, for example, with his mischievous sense of humour. I got to know him well enough that I could always make him laugh. Even if I had to renew our relationship almost every day, I believe that he saw in me an unknown woman whom he could in fact trust. We always managed to converse on normal terms. It was the same with others. Even Geri, who lived in a different world, sort of became my friend. In fact, they all became our friends. For me that was the best present to emerge from the entire production. Of course, outsiders then asked: what’s the point in becoming friends if they don’t even remember who you are? My response is that it’s not a matter of remembering. Experiences should not be based solely on memories. What remains is the feeling of happiness that would often
emerge, if only for a short period. For the carers, most of them Thai nurses or helpers, this is also important. Even if everything is based on the ‘here and now’, the carers provided an unbelievable sense of warmth. Then there were the amusing misunderstandings. One of them is incorporated in the film. Martin, one of the main figures, completely forgot within a span of 10 minutes the purpose of the microphone, which I had attached. Again and again, he would take the box out of his pocket and give it back to me with wonder. The only thing he really understood is when I explained that I wanted him to take care of it for me. The same goes for the large microphone. Anyone who knows what a film microphone looks like will understand why such confusion can arise. If you look at the film, you can see the protagonist looking up with no uncertain dismay at the microphone above him.
MEDICAL TOURISM: IS IT REALLY APPROPRIATE?
One issue that immediately arises with such a film is how does this all fit in with the concept of medical tourism? Perceived as a form of cheap health care when compared to most western countries, the industry is steadily expanding in countries such as Thailand, India or Sri Lanka. People fly in for Los Angeles, Paris, London or Sydney in order to benefit from relatively inexpensive but usually high-quality medical care or dentistry. Such medical trips are often combined with holidays. The cost is often one quarter of what is offered in Europe or North America. International hospitals and health centres specifically designed for expatriates are now a standard feature in Bangkok and other main centres in Thailand and providing significant employment for many of its well-trained medical personnel. Martin Woodtli is very aware of this. A material imbalance clearly exists in today’s world, notably that
