Jean-Luc Godard, Cinema Historian

Michael Witt is Professor of Cinema and Co-Director of the Centre for Research in Film and Audiovisual Cultures at University of Roehampton in London. He is co-editor of several books on French film including Jean-Luc Godard: Documents, The French Cinema Book, and For Ever Godard.

Overall, Jean-Luc Godard: Cinema Historian is quite simply a brilliant book, a sustained meditation on Godard's approach to history and his Histoire(s) du cinema, but also an extraordinary summation of Godard's entire career.(Year's Work in Critical and Cultural Theory) Witt provides a thorough account of Histoire(s) du cinéma's genesis and an erudite yet highly readable exegesis of its manifold narratives and ramifications(French Studies) Witt tackles his subject, in what is his first sole-authored book, in such an unfussy manner and without the elliptical quality tainting much Godard commentary—artsy, complicated prose trying to compensate for a kernel of confusion—that the experience of reading Cinema Historian is like a door swinging open.(New Left Review) [T]here is little to find fault with in Witt's methodically argued, rigorously researched and compellingly written text. It almost seems as if he has left no stone unturned in attempting to decipher Histoire(s) du cinéma, even if the futile nature of such an endeavour is freely admitted: there will always, in Godard's work, be elements that remain impenetrable to his exegetes.(Senses of Cinema) What Witt communicates nicely . . . is the richness and depth of Godard's project. Histoire(s) du cinéma is a work that needs to be engaged with on its own terms, but its complexity and strength are only enhanced by the kind of detailed analysis that Witt and others have begun to provide it with.(Film Quarterly) There has been a slew of important books lately devoted to post-60s Godard [] But none seems quite as durable—either a beautiful object or as a user-friendly intellectual guide—as Jean-Luc Godard: Cinema Historian, Witt's superbly lucid jargon-free book about Histoire(s) du cinéma. Copiously illustrated with frame enlargements that complement the text without ever seeming redundant, this examination of the philosophical, historical and aesthetic underpinnings of Godard's masterwork isn't only about a four and-a-half-hour video; it's also about the work's separate reconfigurations as a series of books, a set of CDs and a 35mm feature of 84 minutes.(Sight & Sound) Highly recommended.(Choice) Michael Witt's Jean-Luc Godard: Cinema Historian . . . [is] one of the most vital film books of recent memory.(Spectrum Culture)

• AcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Godard's Theorem1. Histoire(s) du cinéma: A History2. The Prior and Parallel Work3. Models and Guides4. The Rise and Fall of the Cinematograph5. Cinema, Nationhood, and the New Wave6. Making Images in the Age of Spectacle7. The MetamorphosesEnvoiWorks by GodardNotesSelect BibliographyIndex