A film in which Godard has utilised the intimacy and complexity of his recent video productions for a self-portrait on the cinema screen. The director is shown in his editing room, like a painter in his studio, but the term ‘self-portrait’ should not be taken too literally. Godard shows – in pictures – what he thinks about film in our era. The melancholy and contemplative tone and the improvised character of the film led Thierry Jousse (Cahiers du Cinéma) to make a comparison with jazz music. Music also plays an important role in a literal sense: just as Godard uses free editing to fuse the pictures from various historic films into a new visual narrative, he also edits fragments from classic pieces of music into a striking film score. An important element in the sound track is Godard’s voice-over, occasionally interrupting himself or talking at the same time. The visual argument and that on the sound track are relatively independent of each other. Godard’s argument is deliberately at odds with conventional logic and is closer to poetry than to the essay.
