Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Haaretz describes Jean-Luc Godard as "Notorious Anti-Semite"!

Will the Academy give an Oscar to a notorious anti-Semite?
Hollywood's Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences intends to award iconic French-Swiss filmmaker Jean Luc Godard with an honorary Oscar.
Jean-Luc Godard No credit
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7 comments:

  1. A little evidence to accompany the assertion would be handy. Godard is on record stating "I am anti-zionist, not anti-semite", but so many people refuse to recognise a difference. As for Truffaut falling out with Godard over his alleged anti-semitism, I read that that falling out was over Godard's attack on Truffat's "La Nuit Américaine". I also read that Truffaut himself was not free of anti-semitism, in spite of his natural father being named Lévy.

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  2. Jemmy, the evidence is not convincing..Here's from Wikipedia (to read cautiously):

    Throughout his career, Godard has been accused of harboring anti-Semitic views. As film critic Richard Brody demonstrates in a recent book, Godard has expressed in interviews the traditional stereotypes of Jews as miserly usurers. In 1985, for example, Godard spoke of Hollywood in the following terms: "What I find interesting in the cinema is that, from the beginning, there is the idea of debt. The real producer is, all the same, the image of the Central European Jew. They're the ones who invented the cinema, they brought it to Hollywood...Making a film is visibly producing debts." In 1981 on television, Godard expressed himself even more clearly: "Moses is my principal enemy...Moses, when he received the commandments, he saw images and translated them. Then he brought the texts, he didn't show what he had seen. That's why the Jewish people are accursed." Brody argues that these views towards Jews are likely the result of a variety of biographical and political elements in Godard's life, such as his pro-Palestinian politics and repugnance towards Hollywood.<sup></sup><span>[</span>6<span>]</span>
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Luc_Godard

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  3. I don't want to make a career of defending Godard - I'm not that crazy about his output - but I think the evidence against him is open to interpretation. The people who throw the term "anti-semite" around are the kind of people who would go for the throat of a director who made a film sympathetic to the Palestinian people.
    Bill Krohn (not a name I'm familiar with) gives Brody's book the thumbs-down in this review -
    http://www.cinema-scope.com/cs38/feat_krohn_brody.html
    where he discusses the evidence against Godard. One of the main charges is that Godard called Pierre Braunberger "sale juif" and Braunberger was offended. Krohn gives the remark context:
    "Since the conversation with Godard had happened over the phone, I assume that the insult came at the end and went like this: 'Au revoir, sale juif.' As Janet Bergstrom has pointed out to me, those are Jean Gabin’s affectionate words to Marcel Dalio when they almost part company near the end of La grande illusion (1937)."

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  4. Thanks for this Jemmy..Effectively I can imagine Godard saying 'sale Juif' as a private joke even if angry at him..He was a great admirer of La grande illusion and couldn't have resisted the temptation to make "une allusion" to Gabin's quote...I think that a general impresssion of anti-Semitism could hardly be avoided when a combination of pro-Palestinian views, well advertised dislikeness to Hollowood's decision makers known to be Jews and such "private jokes", given that Jews are generally sensitive to these kinds of things.
    Finally, for what its worth, Jean-Luc denied vehemently being an anti-Semite..

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  5. <span>"Finally, for what its worth, Jean-Luc denied vehemently being an anti-Semite.."</span>

    Ah, you already wrote that..

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  6. <span>Thanks for this Jemmy..Effectively I can imagine Godard saying 'sale Juif' as a private joke even when angry..He was a great admirer of La grande illusion and couldn't have resisted the temptation to make "une allusion" to Gabin's quote...I think that a general impresssion of anti-Semitism could hardly be avoided when a combination of pro-Palestinian views, well advertised dislikeness to Hollowood's decision makers known to be Jews and such "private jokes", given that Jews are generally sensitive to these kinds of things.  
    Finally, for what its worth, Jean-Luc denied vehemently being an anti-Semite..</span>

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  7. I think that sums it up, TG.  

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