I sat down to watch Passion, a Jean-Luc Godard film from his 80s Second Wave period of filmmaking and was immediately reminded of his 60s film Contempt: there’s a film director trying to make a film about paintings where a camera floats through a frozen moment in time (a little bit similar to that bit in Tarkovsky’s The Mirror when the grenade drops). This is a little similar to Fritz Lang in Contempt, a disgruntled film director trying to adapt The Odyssey by making an art film about statues of Greek Gods. There’s some beautiful shot composition in Passion: long uninterrupted, dream-like takes of the set as the camera glides through what feels like a three-dimensional painting. But Godard never hides the set or the crew – the delicately crafted images are always juxtaposed against something modern. For instance, there’s a weirdly polarising shot at one point of a nude woman’s back in the foreground with a model braiding another model’s hair and a camera monitor in the background. Doesn’t sound like much of a deal on paper, but within the context of the movie it is visually pretty interesting. And there are more moments like this throughout.

Both of them were films that took me a while to understand. Sometimes it’s hard watching Godard films without knowing of the period, his life at the time or his ideologies as he puts so much of himself into his work. With Contempt I had a few problems that were later rectified – I was a little put off by how emotionless and stitled the delivery of Bardot’s lines were. At the time I thought it might’ve been a deconstruction or a parody of romance as depicted in the mainstream French cinema of the time, and since Contempt was Godard’s first and only foray into mainstream cinema I guess it wasn’t that far-fetched of a theory. He seems very critical of the way producers and major studios work in Contempt – in fact, his real life producers were reportedly furious when they found out he hadn’t included a single nude Bardot scene, which is why there’s that amusingly tacked on scene at the beginning of the film. Even though my reaction to Contempt was one of confusion I was still quite affected by portions of it. It seemed to be one of those inconsistent Godard films where the good is astonishingly good and the rest is either incomprehensible or just leaves me cold. I still think Contempt is inconsistent in quality, but my confusion was entirely cleared up by a documentary I watched months later called Godard, Love and Poetry, a fun, informative film about Godard’s relationship with Anna Karina and the period of films they made together that spanned from Breathless (he’d known her before the shoot, but her first appearance was in his official second film, Le Petit Soldat) to a dramatic conclusion in Pierrot le Fou. As the documentary points out, Pierrot le Fou was surely intended to be the definite end to the period, as Pierrot utters the same words as Michel does in the beginning of Breathless before the film’s literally explosive ending.

The documentary also puts forward a theory that Pierrot le Fou is an anthology film as well as a means to an end, pointing out the similarities between it and his older films: the bathtub scene is the beginning is suspiciously similar to the one in Contempt; Karina’s hairsyle in the car scene is the same as Odile’s in Bande A Part; Belmondo intentionally acts like his character from Breathless, and the scene where Pierrot has the sheet pulled over his head is uncannily close to that iconic scene in Le Petit Soldat. The documentary then cleared up my confusion, stating that Contempt was in fact a big autobiography of his relationship with Anna Karina. Halfway through the film, Bardot dons a black wig to represent Karina at her most turbulent, and their repetitive, formulaic arguments are meant to be a parody of one of their rougher moments. Anna Karina herself sets it in concrete by telling us that a lot of Bardot’s written dialogue came from Karina’s own mouth, the obscenities and declarations of hate directed at Godard. There’s a scene where a poster for My Life to Live can be seen, and then shortly after Bardot puts on a wig which is noticeably similar to Nana’s hairdo from that same movie. And the main character, who I already assumed was meant to represent Godard, both as a man having a relationship crisis and a frustrated artist pressured by his producers – he wears a hat that belonged to Godard! It almost throws Contempt into a whole new light for me, I really needed that context to take it in and understand it. I supposed if you were a filmmaker like Jean-Luc Godard and were experiencing some sort of marital crisis, you would make a film about it. It’s like what Jerzy says in Passion, “You have to live it to write it”. With Bardot’s goddess-like posing and how those shots correspond to the Greek statues, I wouldn’t be surprised if Godard worshiped Karina in a similar way. You only have to look at how delicately photographed she was in the opening credits of My Life to Live (and famously, the scene where she is crying over The Passion of Joan of Arc) to realise how in love Godard was with her. He really does seem to have a strong, exploratory fascination with the female form as evidenced in the delicate shots of Karina in My Life to Live, Une Femme Mariee’s countless closeups of the character’s naked body, and above all, Passion. Taking into account the meticulous details of the film within the film, the mass loads of money spent in order to complete the director’s vision and his imploding frustration, there’s no doubt in my mind that Passion is another autobiographical work, only it focuses far less on his mojo and deals with his passion and motivation as an artist. Both films are revealing, so if you have an interest in Godard they are two very interesting films to watch.

Also this is irrelevant, but StudioCanal really chose some strange Godards for their collection. What is this Crazy Pete shit? I thought it was universally accepted as Pierrot le Fou! It’s nearly as bad as Lukas Moodysson’s Fucking Amal being marketed as Show Me Love in English speaking countries. Also, no Masculin Feminin? Week End? My Life to Live? Bande a Part? While they’ve included some masterworks (Passion being a real surprise) they have also selected some mediocre movies like Detective and Made in USA. It just surprises me as they’re not exactly acclaimed by critics, cinephiles or Godard himself.

Not complaining, though: $14.99 a Godard is pretty darn reasonable.