01 June 2008

The movie I last saw


Although I could go on (maybe later) about Jean-Luc Godard's Le Mépris, I leave you with a quote you may not catch as you watch the first ten minutes of the film, which is without English subtitles—too bad. There are several memorable moments in Le Mépris, but at the end of the day it is this quote that still leaves an impression.

Godard wrongly attributes the quote to André Bazin, when, in fact, it is French film critic and playwright Michel Mourlet. You can find it in his article, Sur Un Art Ignoré, in the paragraph titled Prééminence de l'acteur.

…le cinéma est un regard qui se substitue au nôtre pour nous donner un monde accordé à nos désirs.

Which roughly translates to "...cinema is a glance which replaces ours to give us a world granted to our desires."

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