CERCLITUDES

In Le Livre d’Image, Jean-Luc Godard recycles existing images (films, documentaries, paintings, television archives, etc.), quotes excerpts from books, uses fragments of music. The driving force is poetic rhyme, the association or opposition of ideas, the aesthetic spark through editing, the keystone. The author performs the work of a sculptor. The hand, for this, is essential. He praises it at the start. “There are the five fingers. The five senses. The five parts of the world (…). The true condition of man is to think with his hands. Jean-Luc Godard composes a dazzling syncopation of sequences, the surge of which evokes the violence of the flows of our contemporary screens, taken to a level of incandescence rarely achieved. Crowned at Cannes, the last Godard is a shock film, with twilight beauty.

The leader of a marching band demonstrates an unusual way of writing music.

After writing for Cahiers du cinéma, a young Jean-Luc Godard decides making films is the best film criticism. He convinces producer Georges de Beauregard to fund a low-budget feature, and creates a treatment with fellow New Wave filmmaker François Truffaut about a gangster couple. The result? Breathless, one of the first features of the Nouvelle Vague era of French cinema.

William K.L. Dickson plays the violin while two men dance. This is the oldest surviving sound film where sound is recorded on the phonograph.

A chemist carries out a bizarre experiment with his own head.

King of the slack wire. His daring feats of balancing as he performs his thrilling feats in midair show that he is perfectly at home.

Adrien is a young pianist prodigy. He collapsed psychologically having failed in a renowned competition and henceforth works as a piano tuner. As remedy to this life, he invents a blind person's mask to penetrate into the intimacy of his customers. This subtlety allows Adrien to get back the taste for music. But since he sees things he should not see, Adrien ends up witnessing a murder.

In an underground city in a dystopian future, the protagonist, whose name is "THX 1138 4EB", is shown running through passageways and enclosed spaces. It is soon discovered that THX is escaping his community. The government uses computers and cameras to track down THX and attempt to stop him; however, they fail. He escapes by breaking through a door and runs off into the sunset. The government sends their condolences to YYO 7117, THX's mate, claiming that THX has destroyed himself. Electronic Labyrinth: THX-1138 4EB is a 1967 science fiction short film written and directed by George Lucas while he attended the University of Southern California's film school.

Stan and Ollie join the French Foreign Legion after Ollie's sweetheart rejects him.

Longing for a baby, a stripper pursues another man in order to make her boyfriend jealous.