inventing history
by Douglas Messerli
Jean-Pierre Gorin and Jean-Luc
Godard (screenplay and directors) Tout
va bien (All’s Well) / 1972
Starring Yves Montand and the
American actress Jane Fonda, Gorin and Godard’s Tout va bien has often been described, somewhat mistakenly, as
Godard’s return to commercial film after his four-year involvement with the
Dziga Vertov Group films, for which he created works, as J. Hoberman described
them, that were “were openly tendentious in their more or less Maoist analysis
of the political situation in various countries.” While clearly espousing strong
leftist positions—Fonda’s journalist character even describes herself as being
the authority on leftist causes—Tout va
bien is also a work which questions and even mocks Godard’s own work of the
past. Indeed, it begins almost cynically, arguing for a movie that might make
enough money to support the endless costs (an early scene showing checks, one
by one, being torn away for all the actors, sets, costumes, designers, etc.) by
bringing together major stars—which, of course, is what Godard’s film features.
Yes, the narrator admits, there must be a society in which the characters
exist, but the central genre it proposes for itself is a “love story.” And, in
the very first scene, we see Montand and Fonda, walking, hand in hand,
repeating lines from the “what do you love about me” scene between Michel
Piccoli and Bridgett Bardot in Contempt.
And, in some senses, Tout va bien
repeats the film about film tropes of Godard’s Pierrot le Fou of 1965.
More importantly, Montand plays a filmmaker, formerly part of the New
Wave, who has now turned to making (quite awful, if the scene we are shown is
any evidence) commercials, a “more honest” way to make money. Although both
husband and wife have formerly been involved in the French revolutions of the
1960s, they now speak of their involvement with some distance and questioning
of their own sentiments and actions. Fonda’s journalist figure can no longer
bear the “single-voiced” broadcast scripts she is forced to repeat and yet does
not evidently have the ability to craft her own.
The main action of the film is an almost accidental confrontation
between the two and a group of activist laborers in a meat-packing plant, who,
tired of union inaction, take over the plant, destroying files and offices on
the very day that the journalist has had an appointment with the manager to
speak about modern management techniques. Having locked away the manager in his
own office, the plant revolutionists capture Fonda and Montand—who has
inexplicably joined her for the interview—throwing them into the office with
the manager.
There the manager, in a spot-on satire of corporate managerial
self-justifications, lectures the two before, out of disgust with the manager’s
words, the journalist begins interviewing the holed-up workers, each of them
attempting to tell her the “real” truth about working conditions and the
society in which they live, while simultaneously feeling as they speak that
they failed to say anything new.
The question is asked once again, as the directors show us another
assignment that the journalist undertakes as she visits a large French grocer,
reminding one of a kind of American Wallmart. Into this world of row after row
of ringing cash registers, the activists return, challenging an old-fashioned
leftist who cannot ever answer for the rhetoric in his book before filling up
their shopping carts with mounds of food and other goods and, after capturing
the store’s microphone, announcing to all customers that everything is free.
For a few minutes, it appears, their actions have created the desired effect,
as the silent shoppers suddenly fill their carts and move toward the doors
without passing by the expectant clerks. But here too, the revolution ends, as
the police, in full riot gear, move forward, clubs in hand, beating the
customers and revolutionaries both as they proceed. Has anything been won?
In short, the film, while espousing Godard’ politics, becomes itself an
intense questioning of his and others' deep beliefs. What can alter the course
of corporate greed, of a masculine-dominated marriage, of a culture that no
longer seems to embrace change? And, in that sense, Tout va bien is perhaps a more moving expression of how to make
films “politically” than were Godard’s Dziga Vertov films. In the end, the only
answer to these questions seems to come in the notion that what is important is
that each of us ask these questions, write them down and attempt to answer
them, play them out in our minds, so to speak. Whatever answers we come to will
be the definition of our histories, of history itself—as differently as each of
us respond. For me, that is a profound realization: the fact that the most
important thing is that the questions are asked and answered to the best of our
abilities by each of us, not simply received from a dominating party or group.
At film’s end, the directors even allow that the marriage between the
couple might be saved— or perhaps not. But Montand returns to Fonda, Fonda to
Montand. Whether their meeting again will result in good or bad, no one can
say, but it is the coming together of people, a meeting of the minds, that
truly matters.
In hindsight, Tout va bien, a
film that was disastrously attacked upon its first showing, seems a perfect
bridge in Godard’s long and distinguished career, a work that was not afraid of
questioning his own methods and direction.
Los Angeles, September 16, 2012
Reprinted from World Cinema Review (September 2012).
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