The Image Book

Oct 11, 2018

1h 28m

★ 6.4

Nothing but silence. Nothing but a revolutionary song.

Overview

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.

Genres

Drama

Documentary

Production Companies

Casa Azul Films

Écran noir productions

The Image Book Trailers

Cast

Narrator (voice)

Jean-Luc Godard

Narrator (voice)

Anne-Marie Miéville

Narrator (voice)

Jean-Pierre Gos

(archive footage)

Buster Keaton

(archive footage)

Jean Gabin

(archive footage)

Douglas Fairbanks

(archive footage)

Jean Marais

(archive footage)

Jean Cocteau

(archive footage)

Wallace Beery

(archive footage)

Jules Berry

(archive footage)

Eddie Constantine

(archive footage)

Roberto Cobo

In a career spanning more than half a century, Bernard Blier has shot more than 180 films. He alone represents a history of French cinema without having spent his time cultivating its legend. He crossed his century as an actor with the modesty of a craftsman. He believed in learning, know-how and transmission. He considered himself, like the butcher or the cabinetmaker, as a man useful to his fellow men. Bernard Blier found in Louis Jouvet, who was his teacher at the Conservatory, a master at playing, a mentor and even a spiritual father. Jouvet taught Blier the love of acting, theater and Molière. And if he knew how to take hold of Michel Audiard's best tirades like no one else, notably those of the "Tontons Flingueurs", it is to this apprenticeship that he owes it.

7.2

Alain Delon, a unique portrait

Nov 2, 2015

Biography of a star and figure study : This fascinating portrait is for anyone who wants to know more about the man behind the mask. By the end of the film, you will view this famous French icon in a totally different light. Delon speaks in a series of surprising interviews, spanning nearly 50 years.

6.5

Paranoid Park

Jul 12, 2007

A teenage skateboarder becomes suspected of being connected with a security guard who suffered a brutal death in a skate park called "Paranoid Park".

8.0

Dream of the Wild Horses

Jun 1, 1960

The horses in Denys Colomb Daunant’s dream poem are the white beasts of the marshlands of the Camargue in South West France. Daunant was haunted by these creatures. His obsession was first visualized when he wrote the autobiographical script for Albert Lamorisse’s award-winning 1953 film White Mane. In this short the beauty of the horses is captured with a variety of film techniques and by Jacques Lasry’s beautiful electronic score.

6.4

Here and Elsewhere

Sep 15, 1976

Here and Elsewhere takes its name from the contrasting footage it shows of the fedayeen and of a French family watching television at home. Originally shot by the Dziga Vertov Group as a film on Palestinian freedom fighters, Godard later reworked the material alongside Anne-Marie Miéville.

6.8

The Cousins

Mar 11, 1959

Young provincial Charles arrives in Paris to stay with his cousin Paul while studying law. Paul is a decadent, bohemian pleasure-seeker who shows the meek, diligent Charles the thrills of city life. When Charles falls for Florence, one of Paul's acquaintances, relationships begin to shift.

7.0

Alain Delon face au monde

Jul 1, 2021

No overview available.

7.2

The Last Metro

Sep 17, 1980

In occupied Paris, an actress married to a Jewish theater owner must keep him hidden from the Nazis while doing both of their jobs.

7.0

Inland Empire

Dec 6, 2006

As a Hollywood actress begins to adopt the persona of her character in a film, her world becomes nightmarish and surreal.

7.7

Vivre Sa Vie

Sep 20, 1962

Twelve episodic tales in the life of a Parisian woman and her slow descent into prostitution.

7.6

Jules and Jim

Jan 23, 1962

In the carefree days before World War I, introverted Austrian author Jules strikes up a friendship with the exuberant Frenchman Jim and both men fall for the impulsive and beautiful Catherine.

6.0

The Dinosaur and the Baby

Mar 15, 1967

An hour-long discussion between Fritz Lang and Jean-Luc Godard in which they discuss a variety of art forms, the role of the cinema, their collaboration together, and much more. (Filmed in 1964 but released for TV in 1967.)

7.9

Michel Gondry: Do It Yourself

Sep 4, 2023

A portrait of French filmmaker Michel Gondry, creator, for three decades, of an imperfect, astonishing, fascinating, damaged and poetic work.

7.5

My Journey Through French Cinema

Oct 12, 2016

Famous French director Tavernier tells us about his fantastic voyage through the cinema of his country.

6.1

A Trip Elsewhere

Sep 18, 2024

During the Covid-19 pandemic, four anxious strangers take a record-breaking dose of LSD, catapulting them into a shared psychedelic dream where they must find solace and redemption before they can return to the real world.

8.0

Les Charlots en folie

Aug 27, 2024

Documentary on Les Charlots, known as The Crazy Boys in the English-speaking world, a group of French musicians, singers, comedians and film actors who were popular in the 1960s, 1970s, and early 1980s.

6.5

Hippocrates

Sep 3, 2014

Benjamin is meant to be a great doctor, he’s certain of it. But his first experience as a junior doctor in the hospital ward where his father works doesn’t turn out the way he hoped it would. Responsibility is overwhelming, his father is all but present, and his co-junior partner, a foreign doctor, is far more experimented than he is. This internship will force Benjamin to confront his limits… and start his way to adulthood.

7.8

Passion Fanny Ardant

Sep 27, 2023

A portrait of the famous French actress Fanny Ardant, who has worked with great figures of cinema such as Agnès Varda, Alain Resnais, Michelangelo Antonioni, Sydney Pollack and, above all, François Truffaut (1932-84), with whom she had a sentimental relationship and whose death marked the rest of her life.

6.6

Totally F***ed Up

Aug 19, 1994

Gay, alienated Los Angeles teens have a hard time as their parents kick them out of their homes, they don’t have money, their lovers cheat, and they are harassed by gay-bashers.

6.0

Grid

Oct 22, 2021

A ritual of grids, reflections and chasms; a complete state of entropy; a space that devours itself; a vertigo that destroys the gravity of the Earth; a trap that captures us inside the voids of the screen of light: «That blank arena wherein converge at once the hundred spaces» (Hollis Frampton).

The Image Book

Overview

Genres

Production Companies

The Image Book Trailers