Filmographie de Gérard Courant.

français

Compression À bout de souffle de Jean-Luc Godard est la réduction de 25 fois sa durée de À bout de souffle, le chef d'œuvre que Jean-Luc Godard a réalisé en 1960, avec Jean Seberg, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Daniel Boulanger, Michel Fabre, Henri-Jacques Huet, José Bénazéraf, Roger Hanin et Jean-Pierre Melville, d'une durée de 1 heure 30 minutes en un film de 4 minutes. Le film est « compressé » à la manière d'une oeuvre de César. Mais à la différence de cet artiste qui compressait des objets usuels, Compression À bout de souffle de Jean-Luc Godard compresse une oeuvre d'art.

Le tour de force et le pari de Compression À bout de souffle de Jean-Luc Godard a été de fabriquer une compression totale : dans ce film, il ne manque pas un seul plan du film original !

(Gérard Courant)

Compression À bout de souffle de Jean-Luc Godard fait partie des 27 films de l'histoire du cinéma qui a été sélectionné dans la première exposition au Centre Pompidou-Metz, en 2010, intitulée Chef-d'oeuvre ?

English

French sculptor César Baldaccini, commonly known as just César (1921-1998), began creating his “directed compressions” of objects in the 60’s, often with his colleague Arman, making monumental series of cars transformed into compacted iron bundles by a hydraulic press. Influenced by these techniques, in the 90’s Courant started making one of his series, out of compressed versions of films.

Espanol

El escultor francés César Baldaccini, conocido simplemente como César (1921-1998), comenzó a crear “compresiones dirigidas” de objetos a partir de la década del ‘60, muchas veces con su colega Arman, realizando series monumentales de automóviles convertidos en volúmenes de hierro compactado tras someterlos a una prensa hidráulica. Con la influencia de la técnica de esos artistas, Courant se dedica desde la década del ‘90 a realizar una de sus series a partir de versiones comprimidas de películas.

L'HOMMAGE DE JEAN-LUC GODARD À GÉRARD COURANT

Dans cette bande-annonce (de Film Socialisme) qui n'en est plus une, l'intégralité des images de Film Socialisme se trouve compressée sur quatre minutes et vingt-huit secondes. Godard rend ici un hommage indirect à Gérard Courant, l'auteur des Cinématons, qui réalisa en 1995, une Compression de Alphaville, réduction des quatre vingt-dix neuf minutes du film à quatre.

(Arthur Mas et Martial Pisani, Explication par la bande (annonce), Independencia, 2010)

JEAN-LUC GODARD REND HOMMAGE À GÉRARD COURANT

En 1995, Gérard Courant a compressé À bout de souffle, le premier long-métrage (1959) de Jean-Luc Godard dans lequel il ne manque pas un seul plan du film original. Un film en hommage aux artistes plasticiens Arman et César qui, eux, compressaient des objets.

Gérard Courant a également compressé d’autres films de Godard (Vivre sa vie, Le Mépris...) et une centaine de classiques du cinéma (Guy Debord, Philippe Garrel, Werner Schroeter, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Howard Hawks, Louis Malle, Otto Premminger, John Huston, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, etc.)

En 2010, Godard a repris le procédé pour la bande-annonce de Film socialisme. Un bel hommage.

(A. Gauvin, Site Philippe Sollers, 7 octobre 2012)

GODARD’S BREATHLESS : THE ENTIRE FILM COMPRESSED INTO FOUR MINUTES

Experimental film maker Gerard Courant has taken Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless and sped up it (or compressed it as he prefers to call it) into a four minute movie.

The French title of Godard’s debut film is À bout de souffle which translates to English as “out of breath.” Courant’s compression is most likely a play on the title.

What I find interesting about the compression is the way it brings Godard’s style and the American noir films he was inspired by to the foreground. The nervous energy of the film, the pans and tracking shots, cigarettes smoked, automobiles in motion, zooms, jump-cuts, and close-ups, all create an angular yet fluid motion that seems driven by forces of destiny - the movie is tumbling into a dark void of betrayal and its opposite - yin and yanging to the beat beat beat of a heart in the throes of atrial tachycardia. No time to catch your breath - you’re breathless.

Fucking with Godard’s masterpiece is very Godardian.

If, as Godard claims, “cinema is truth at 24 frames per second” what is cinema at 524 frames per second?

(Dangerous Minds, 22 juillet 2012)

VIDEO OF THE DAY : ALL OF GODARD'S "BREATHLESS" IN UNDER FOUR MINUTES

Now that we all have the tools to do so, it seems like everyone’s speeding up or slowing down songs, movies, TV shows, and other works of popular art. Most of the time, these tricks are meaningless, but every once in a while, they actually make us think about the original in a new way – « Justin Bieber 800% slower » is unexpectedly sad and beautiful, for instance, and this Rear Window timelapse video brings an entirely new perspective to the film. We would add to that category experimental filmmaker Gerard Courant’s Compression de À bout de souffle, in which he speeds up Jean-Luc Godard’s French New Wave masterpiece so that it plays from beginning to end in three-and-a-half minutes. With Breathless’ plot and dialogue lost, the edit highlights both the film’s frenetic, youthful energy and its unforgettable iconography: bustling Paris and Jean Seberg in her striped top and Jean-Paul Belmondo smoking cigarettes in bed. Enjoy the cinematic adrenaline rush after the jump.

Judi Berman, Flavorwire, 23 juillet 2012)

DO COMPRESSED FILMS HONOR THE ORIGINAL ?

Gérard Courant is a French filmmaker, who, at least until 2011, held the distinction of directing the longest film ever made. Clocking in at 192 hours, and shot over 36 years (1978-2006), Cinématon consisted of “a series of over 2,880 silent vignettes (cinématons), each 3 minutes and 25 seconds long, of various celebrities, artists, journalists and friends of the director, each doing whatever they want for the allotted time.” Ken Loach, Wim Wenders, Terry Gilliam, Julie Delpy all made appearances. And so too did Jean-Luc Godard.

While making Cinématon, Courant also created another kind of experimental film — what he calls “compressed” films. In 1995, he shot Compression de Alphaville, an accelerated homage to Jean-Luc Godard 1965 sci-fi film Alphaville. Then came a “compression” (top) of Godard’s À bout de souffle/Breathless (1960), the classic of French New Wave cinema.

During the 1960s and 1970s, when Courant came of age as a filmmaker, sculptors like César Baldaccini created art by compressing everyday objects–like Coke cans-into modern sculptures. So Courant took things a step further and figured why not compress art itself. Why not compress a 90 minute film into 3-4 minutes, while keeping the plot of the original film firmly intact.

Along the way, Courant asked himself: Do compressed films honor the original? Does one have the right to touch these masterpieces? And can one decompress these compressed films and then return them to their original form? Ponder these questions as you watch the examples above.

(Dan Colman, Open Culture, 11 juin 2015)