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Godard and Counter Cinema: Vent d'Est

peter Wollen first articu�ated his ideas in Signs and Meaning in the Cmema

(1969) and in subsequent art1cles, particularly in the prominent British film JOUr·
nal Screen. merging structuralist and semiotic film theory with a focus on direc­
tors such as Jean·Luc Godard. Howard Hawks, and John Ford. In 1974 he and
his then-wife, Laura Mulvey, began making a series of six avant-garde feature

films. the most prominent of which was Riddles of the Sphinx (1977). In this
penod. Wollen also co-wrote the screenplay for Michelangelo Antonioni's The
Passenger (1975). Wollen and Mulvey's films reflect the theoretical concerns
that govern their critical work: feminism, sex.uality, the social construction of
identity, experimental aesthetics. and poHtics. Broadly interested in visual cul­
ture. Wollen has also written on the work of Frida Kahlo and Tina Modotti, the
films of Howard Hawks, Smgin' in the Rain, Andy Warhol, and the significance
of dance at the court of Louis XIV. Until retirement he was chair of the depart­
ment of film, television. and new media studies at the University of California,
Los Angeles.
(Another selection from Wollen's work appears in Section VI.)

More and more radically Godard has dcvdoped a counter-cinema whose values
are counterposed to those of orthodox cinema. I want simply to write some notes
about the mean features of this counter-cinema. My approach is to take seven of
the values of the old cinema, Hollywood-Mosfilm, as Godard would put it, and
contrast these with their (revolutionary, materialist) counterparts and contraries.
In a sense, the seven deadly sins of the cinema against the sevt:n cardinal virtues.
They can be st:t out schematically as follows:

Narrative transitivity Narrative intransitivity

Identification Estrangement
Transpart:ncy foregrou ndi ng
Single dit:gesis Multiple diegcsis
Closure Aperture
Pleasure Unpleasurc
Fiction Reality

365
366 FILM NARRATIVE AND THE OTHER ARTS

Obv10usly, these somewhat cryptic headings need. further commentar y.

Fiht, however, I should say that my overall argument is that Godard was right
to break with Hollywood cinema and to set up his counter-cinema and, for this
alone, he is the most important d1rcctor workmg today. Nevertheless, I think
there arc various confusiom in his strategy. which blunt its edges and cv�n. at
times, tend to nullify lt-mamly, these concern lu� con fusion over· the �eric� of
terms: fiction /mysu fication /ideology/! ics/deccption/illmion/represcntation.
At the end of thcse notcs, I shall touch on some of my d1sagrecments. F1rst, somc
remark� on the main topic�.
I. Ncrrmtir'c tnmsitil'ity I'S. rwmllii'C imrausrlil'ity. (One tlung following another
vs. gaps and interruptions, episodic construction, undigest&:d digr�.:ssion.)
13y narrative transitivity, I mean a sequence of events in which each unit (each
function that changes the cours&: of the narrative) follows the one preccdmg it
according to a chnin of cau�ation. In the Hollywood cincmn, thi� chain is usually
psychological and is made up, roughly �penking, of a s�.:rics of coherent motiva­
tions. The beginning of the film starts with establishment, which sets up the basic
dramatic Situation-usually an equilibrium, which is then disturbed. A kind of
chain rc.1ct1on thc:n follows, until at the c:nd a new c:quilibrium is restored.
Godard began to break with this tradition very carly. He did this, at first, in
two ways, both drawn from literature. He borrowed the idea of scparate chapters,
which cn.1bled him to introduce interruptiom into the narrativc, and he bor­
row�.:d from th&: picaresque novel. The picarcsquc ts a psc:udo-autobiographical
kmn which for tight plot construction substitute� a random and unconncctcd
�cries of incidents, supposed to represent the variety and up�-and-downs of real
life. (Thc hero is typically marginal to society, a rogue-errant, often an orphan,
in any c.1se without f.unily tic�. thrown hither and thither by the twists and turns
of fortun�.:.)
Uy the time he arrives at llmt d'Est, Godard has practically destroyed all narra­
tive tramitivuy. Digressions which, in carlicr films, rcprcs&:ntcd interruptions to the
11.1rrativc have hypertrophied until they dominate the film entirely. The basic story,
a� much of it as remains, docs not haw any recognizable sequence, but is mort: like
a series of int&:rmitt&:nt flashes. Sometimes it seems to be following a definitc order
in time, but sometimes not. The constructive principle of thc film is rhetorical,
rather than n.1rrativc, in the sense that it sets out the disposition of an argmm:nt,
point by point, in a sequence of 1-7, which is tlu:n repeated, with a subsidiary se­
quence of Theories A and U. There arc also various figures of amplification and
digres�ion within this structurc.
Ther&: arc a number of reasons why Godard has broken with narrative tran­
�itivity. Perhaps thc most important is that he can disrupt the emotional spell of
the narrative .md thus force the spectator, by interrupting the narrative flow, to
recom:entrate and n:-focus his attention. (Of coursc, his attention may get lost
altogether.) God.1rd's cinema, broadly speaking, is within the modern tradition
established by Brecht and Artaud, in their dife
f rent ways, suspicious of the power
of the arts-and the cin&:ma, above all-to 'capture' its audience without appar­
ently mak111g it think, or changing it.
 GODARD AND.COUNTEA CINEMA 367

2. Jdcutijicatiou JIS. L'Stmngcme/11. (Empathy, emotional invQivcment with a char­

acter vs. direct address, multiple and divided character'>, commcnt:try.)
Identification is a well-known mechanhm though, of course, in the cinema
there arc various special features which mark cinematic identification off as a dis­
tinct phenomenon. In the first place, there is the pos�ibility of double identifica­
tion with the s.tar and/or with the character. Second, the identification can only
take place in a situation of suspended belief. Third, there arc spatial and temporal
lim its either to the identification or, at any rate, to the presence of the imago. (In
some respects, cinematic identification is similar to transference in analysis,
though this analogy should not be taken too far.)
Again, the breakdown of identification begins early in Godard's films and
then develops unevenly after that, until it reaches a new level with Lc Gai
Sa11oir. Early devices include non-matching of voice to character, introduction
of 'real people' into the fiction, characters addressing the audience directly. All
these devices are also used in Vcut d'Est, which take.� c�pccially far the device of
allowing voices to float off from characters into a discourse of their own on the
soundtrack, using the same voice for different characters, different voices for the
same character. It also introduces the 'real-life' company into the film itself and,
in a rather complicated figure, introduces Gian Maria Volante, not simply as an
actor (Godard shows the actors being made-up) but also as intervening in the
process of 'image-building'. As well as this, there is a long and extremely effec­
tive direct address sequence in which the audience is dcscnbed-somewhat
pejoratively-from the screen and invited into the world of representation.
It is hardly necessary, after the work ofDrccht, to comment on the purpose of
estrangement-efe
f cts of this kind. Clearly, too, they arc closely related to the
breakup of narrative transitivity. It is impossible to maintain 'motivational' coher­
ence, when characters themselves arc incoherent, fissured, interrupted, multiple
and self-critical. Similarly, the ruse of direct address breaks not only the f.1ntasy
identification but also the narrative surface. It raises directly the question, 'What
is this film for?', superimposed on the orthodox narrative questions, 'Why did that
happen?' and 'What is going to happen next?' Any form of cinema which aims to
establish a dynamic relationship between film maker and spectator naturally has
to consider the problem of what is technically the register of discourse, the con­
tent of the enunciation, as well as its designation, the content of the enunciate.
3. Trausparcucy vs. Jorrgrouudiug. ('Language wants to be overlooked'­
Siertsema vs. making the mechanics of the film/text visible and explicit.)
Traditional cinema is in the direct line of descent from the Renaissance dis­
covery of perspective and reformulation of the art of painting, expressed most
clearly by Alberti, as providing a window on the world. The camera, of course, is
simply the technological means towards achieving a perfect perspective construc­
tion. After the Renaissance the painting ceased to be :1 text which could be 'read,'
as the iconographic imagery and ideographic space of pre-Renaissance painting
Were gradually rejected and replaced by the concept of pure representation. The
'language' of painting became simply the instrument by which representation of
the world was achieved. A similar tendency can be seen at work with attitudes to
36B FILM NARRATIVE AND THE OTHER ARTS

verbal language. From the seventeenth century onwards, language was increas­
ingly �ecn as an instrument which should cff.1ce itself in the performance of its
task-the conveyance of meaning. Meaning, in its turn, was regarded as rcpre­
�entatlon of the world.
I n his early films Godard introduced the cinema as a topic m his narrative-the
'Lumicre' sequence in Lcs Carabiuicrs, the film within a film in Lc Mcpiis But it was
.

not until his contribution to Loi11 tlu flictuam that the decisive step was taken, when
he simply showed the camera on screen. In the post-1968 films the process of pro­
duction is systematically highlighted. I n f'clll d'Est this shows itself not simply in
taking the camera behind the scenes, as it were, but also in altering the actual film
itself: thus the whole worker's control sequence i� shown with the film marked and
scratched, the first time that this has happened in Godard's work. In previous films,
he had not gone further than using special film stock (Lcs Carabiuicrs) or printing
sequences in negative (Lt•s Cambi11iw, Alpltm•illc).
.
At first sight, it looks as if the decision to scratch the surf 1ce of the film brinbrs
Godard into lmc With other avant-garde film makers, in the Amencan 'under­
ground' e�pccially. However this is not really the case. In the case of the American
film makers, marking the film is best seen alongside developments in painting that
have dominated, particularly in the USA, in recent years. Broadly speaking, this
involves a reduction of film to its 'optical' substrate. Noise is amplified until, in­
stead of being marginal to the film, it becomes Its principal content. It may then
be structured according to some calculus or algorithm or submitted to random
coding. Just as, in painting, the canvas is foregrounded so, in cinema, the film is
foregrou nded.
Godard, however, is not interested in this kind of 'de-signification' of the
image by foregrounding 'noise' and then introducing a new constructive principle
appropriate to this. What he seems to be doing is looking for a way of expressing
negation. It is well known that negation is the founding principle of wrbal lan­
guage, which marks it off both from animal signal-systems and from other kinds
of human discourse, such as images. However, once the decision is made to con­
sider a film as a process of writing in images, rather than a representation of the
world, then it becomes possible to conceive of scratching the film as an erasure, a
virtual negation. Evidently the use of marks as erasures, crossing-out an image, is
quite different from using them as deliber:tte noise or to foreground the optical
substrate. It presupposes a different concept of 'film-writing' and 'film-reading'.
Some years ago, Astruc, in a famous article, wrote about /c camera-stylo. His con­
cept of writing-ccriwrc-was closer to the idea of style. Godard, like Eisenstein
before him, is more concerned with 'image-building' as a kind of pictography, in
which images arc liberated from their role as clements of representation and given a
semantic function within a genuine iconic code, something like the baroque code
of emblems. The sequences in which the image of Stalin is discussed are not
simply-or even principally-about Stalin's politics, as much as they are about the
problem of finding an image to signify 'repression'. In fact, the whole project of
writing in images must involve a high degree of foregrounding, because the con­
struction of an adequate code can only take place if it is glossed and conunented
 GODARD AND COUNTER CINEMA 369

upon in the process of construction. Otherwise, it would remain a purdy private

la nguage.
4. Sir�glc dicl, /csis ''s. multri>lc dic,{/csis. (A unitary homogeneous world vs.

heterogeneous worlds. Rupture between different codes and difef rent channels.)
I n Hollywood films, everything shown belongs to the same world, and com­
plex articulatio!'ls within that world-such as flashbacks-are carefully signalled
and located. The dominant aesthetic is a kind of liberalized classicism. The rigid
constraints of the dramatic unities have been relaxed, but mainly because they
were overstrict and limiting, whereas the basic principle remains unshaken. The
world represented on the cinema must be coherent and integrated, though it
need not observe compulsory, statutory constraints. Time and space must follow
3 consistent order. Traditionally, only one form of multiple diegesis is allowed­

the play within a play-whereby the second, discontinuous dicgctic space is

embedded or bracketed within the first. {It should be added that there arc some
exemplary cases of transgression of single diege�is within literatun:, such as
Hoffm ann's Life: 1if Tmucat Murr, which consists of Tomcat Murr's life-the pri­
mary diegcsis-interleaved at random with pages from another text-the life of
Kreisler-supposedly bound into the book by mistake by the bookbinder. The
pages from the secondary diegesis begin and end in the middle of sentences and
are in the wrong order, with some missing. A novel like Sternt:'s Tristmm Slumdy,
however, simply embeds a number of different diegeses on the play-within-a­
play model. Ofcourse, by recursion this principle can be taken to breaking-point,
as Borges has often pointed out.)
Godard uses film-within-a-film devices in a number of his early works. At the
same time the primary diegesis begins to develop acute fissures and stresses. I n Lc
Mcpris, for example, there is not only a film-within-a-film, but many of the prin­
cipal characters speak different languages and can only communicate with each
other through an interpreter (an effect entirely lost in some dubbed versions, which
have to give the interpreter meaningless remarks to speak). The first radical break
with single diegesis, however, comes with Wcc:kc11d, when characters from differ­
ent epochs and from fiction arc Interpolated into the main narrative: Saint-Just,
Balsamo, Emily Bronte. Instead ofa single narrative world, there is an interlocking
and interweaving of a plurality of worlds.
At the same time that Godard breaks down the structure of the single diege­
sis, he also attack� the structure of the single, unitary code that expressed it. Not
only do dif ferent characters speak different languages, but different parts of the
film do too. Most strikingly, there is a rupture between soundtrack and images:
indeed, the elaboration of this rupture dominates both Lc Gai Stwoir and Pmvda.
The text becomes a composite structure, like that of a medieval macaronic poem,
usmg different codes and semantic systems. Moreover, these arc not simply dif­
ferent, but also often contradictory. Vcr�t d'Est, for instance, presents alternative
ways of making a film (the Glauber Rocha sequence) only to reject them. It is one
ofthe assumptions of contemporary linguistics that a language has a single, uni­
tary semantic component, just as it has a single syntax. In fact, this is surely not
the case. The semantic component of a language is composite and contradictory,
370 FILM NARRATIVE AND THE OTHER ARTS

permitting undemanding on one level, mimnderstanding on another. Godard

systematic.t lly explore� the areas of misunderstanding.
5. Cf<,surt· liS. npcrturt·. (A self-contained object, harmonized within its own
bounds. v�. open-endedm:ss, overspill, intertextuality-.tllusion, quotatio'! and
parody.)
It has often been pointed out that in recent years, the cinema has become
'sdfcomcious', m contrast to the 'innocent' days of Hollywood. I n Itself, however,
'sdfconsciousness' 1s qu1te compatible with closure . Then: is a usc of quotation
and allus1on that simply operates to provide a kind of 'surplus' of meaning, as the
scholastics used to say, a bonus for those who catch the allusion. The notorious
'Tell me lies' sequence in Lc Petit St,fdnt, borrowed from)'''"''')' Guit11r, is of this
kind: it docs not make much difference whether you recognise it or not and, even
if you do, it has no effect on the meaning of the sequence. Or else quotation can
be simply a sign of eclecticism, primarily a stylistic rather than semantic feature.
Or, as wtth Makavejev\ usc of quotation, the objective may be to impose a new
meaning on material by inserting it into a new context: a form of irony.
Godard, however, uses quotation in a much more radical manner. I ndeed, his
fondness for quotation has always been one of the distinguishing characteristics of
his films. At the beginning of his career, Godard used to give instructions to the
cameraman almost entirely in terms of shots from previous films and, at a more
explicit level, there arc endless dtrect quott:s, both from films and from pamting
and literature. Whole films contain obvious dements ofpastiche and parody: U11c
Ft•mmc <'SI tmc Femme IS obviously derivative from the Hollywood musical, Lcs
Cnmbi11icrs from Rossellini, Lc •Hepris is 'Hawks and Hitchcock shot in the manner
of Antoniom' . . . It would be possible to go on endlessly.
However, as Godard's work developed, these quotations and allusions, in­
�tead of being a mark of eclecticism, began to take on an autonomy of their
own, as structural and significant features within the films. It becomes more
and more impossible to understand whole sequences and even whole films
without a degree of familiarity with the quotations and allusions which struc­
ture them. What seemed at first to be a kind ofjackdaw mentality, a personality
trait of Godard himself, begins to harden into a genuine polyphony, in which
Godard's own voice is drowned out and obliterated behind that of the authors
quoted. The film can no longer be seen as a discourse with a single subject, the
film maker/auteur. J ust as there is multiplicity of n arrative worlds, so too there
is a multiplicity of speaking voices.
Again, this takes us back to the period before the rise of the novel, tht: repre­
sentational painting, to the epoch of the battle of the books, the logomachia.
Perhaps the author who comes most to mind is Rabelais, with his endless coun­
tt:rposition of quotations, his parodies, his citation of authorities. The text/fihn
cnn only be understood as an arena, a meeting-place in which different discourses
encounter each other and struggle for supremacy. Moreover these discourses take
on an independent life of their own. Instead of each being corked up in its bottle
with its author's name on it as a label, the discourses escape, nnd like genies, nrc
let out to intermingle and quarrel.
 GODARD AND COUNTER CINEMA 371

In this sense, Godard is like Ezra Pound or James Joyce who, in the same way, no
longer insist on speaking to us in their own words, but can be seen more as ventrilo­
quist's dummies, through whom arc speaking--or rather being written-palimpsests,
ntultiple Niedersclrriftm (Freud's word) in which meaning can no longer be said to ex­
press the intention of the author or to be a representation of the world, but must like
the discourse of the unconscious be understood by a di fferent kind of decipherment.
In orthodox logic and linguistics, context is only important as an arbiter between al­
ternative meanings (amphibologics, as they arc called in logic). In Godard's films, the
opposite procL'SS is at work: the juxtaposition and re-contextualization of discourses
leads not to a separating-out of meanings but to a confrontation.
6. Pleasure vs. rmplcasurc. (Entertainment, aiming to satisfy the spectator vs.
provocation, aiming to dissatisfy and hence change the spectator.)
The attack on 'entertainment' cinema is part of a broader :lttack on the whole of
'consumer society'. Cinema is conceived of as a drug that lulls and mollifies the mil­
itancy of the masses, by bribing them with pleasurable dreams, thus distracting them
from the stern tasks which are their true destiny. It is hardly necessary to msist on the
asceticism and Puritanism-repressiveness-of this conception that unflinchingly
seeks to put the reality-principle in command over the pleasure-principle. It is true
that the short-term (cinematic) dream is sometimes denounced in the name of a
long-term (millenarian) dream, and short-term (false, illusory, deceptive) satisfac­
tions contrasted with long-term (real, genuine, authentic) satisfactions, but this is
exactly the kind of argument which is used to explain the accumulation of capital in
a capitalist society by the saving principle and postponement ofconsumption.
Drccht was careful never to turn his back on entertainment and, indeed, he
even quotes Horace in favour of pleasure as the purpose of the arts, combined,
of course, with instruction. This is not to say that a revolutionary cinema should
distract its spectators from realities, but that unless a revolution is desired (which
.
means noth ing less than coinciding with and l!mbodying collective f.1ntasics) it
will never take place. The reality-principle only works together with the plea­
sure-principle when survival itself is at stake, and though this may evidently be
the case in a revolutionary situation, it is not so in the advanced capitalist coun­
tries today. In a situation in which survival is-at least rclatively-nonproblcm­
atic, the pleasure-principle and the reality-principle arc antagonistic and, since
the reality-principle is fundamentally adaptive, it is from the pleasure-principle
that change must stem. This means that desire, and its representation in f.·mtasy,
far from being necessary enemies of revolutionary politics-and its cinematic
auxiliary-arc necessary conditions.
The problem, of course, concerns the nature of the fantasies on the one hand,
and the way in which they arc presented in the text/film on the other hand, the
way in which fantasy scenarios arc related to ideologies and belief.� and to scien­
tific analysis. A revolutionary cinema has to operate at different lcvels-f.·mtasy,
ideology, science-and the articulation of these levels, which involve dif ef rent
modes of discourse and different positions of the subject, is a complicated matter.
In Vclll ci'Est the 'struggle against the bourgeois notion of representation' cer­
tainly docs not rule out the presence of fantasy: f1ntasy. of shooting the union
372 FILM NARRATIVE AND THE OTHER ARTS

.
delegate, f 1ntasies of killing �hoppers in a supermarket. Indeed, as long as there are
. .
image� at all, it is impmsible to eliminate f 1ntasy. But the f 1ntasics are :.tlmost en­
tirely sado-masochistic in content, and chis same f .1masy content also seems to
govern the rdatiomhip between film maker and �peccator, rather on the lines of the
relationship between the flute-player in the film and his audience. A great many of
the devices Godard mes arc designed to produce a collective working relationship
between film maker and audience, in which the spectator can colbborate in the
production/consumption of meamng. But Godard's view of collective work is con­
ceived of in very imprcci�e term�. 'Criticimt' consi�t� of insult� and interrogation.
.
The f 1nta�y coment of the film IS not articulated correctly with the ideology or
political theory. This, in rum, seems to spring from a suspicion of the need for fan­
tasy at all, except perhaps in the �ado-masochi�tic form of provocation.
7. Fictiou 11s. reality. (Actors wearing make-up, acting a story vs. real life, the
break-down of representation, truth.)
Godard's dissatisf.tction with fiction cinema begim very early. Already in
Vir,rc sa rdc non-fiction I S mtroduccd-the chapter on the economics and sociol­
ogy of prostitution. There is almost no cmrume drama in Godard's career, until­
ironically enough-l'c:ntti'Est. Even witlun the framework of fiction, he has stuck
to contemporary life. Hi� science-fiction films (1'1/phallillc, Alllicipatitm) have all
been set in a kind of future-in-the-present, without any paraphernalia of special
effects or �ets.
As w1th all the feature� I have described, the retreat from (and eventually
attack on) fiction ha� proceeded unevenly through Godard's career, coming
forward strongly in, for imtance, Deux <'II trois cll<lscs, then receding again.
Especially since May 1968, the attack on fiction has been given a political ra­
tionale (fiction = my�tification
= bourgeois ideology) but, at the beginning, it
is much more closely connected with Godard'� fascination (Cartesian, rather
than Marxist} with the misleading and dissembling nature of appearances, the
impossibility of reading an essence from a phenomenal surface, of seeing a soul
through and within a body or telling a lie from a truth. At times Godard seems
almost to adopt a kind of radical Romanticism, which sees silence (lovers' si­
lence, killers' silence) as the only true communication, when reality and repre­
sentation, essence and appearance, irreducibly coincide: the moment of truth.
Obviously, too, Godard's attitude to fiction is linked with his attitude to
acting. This comes out most clearly in Uuc Femme A·laricc, when the actor is inter­
rogated about his true self, his relationship to his roles. Godard is obsessed with
the problem of true speech, lying speech and theatrical speech. (In a sense, these
three kinds of speech, seen first in purdy personal terms, are eventually politi­
cized and given a class content. The bourgeoisie lies, the revisionists lie, though
they should speak the truth, the revolutionaries speak the truth, or, rather, stam­
mer an approach to the truth.) Godard has long shown a horror of acting, based
originally on a 'logocentric' antipathy to anybody who speaks someone else's
words, ironic in the circumstances. Eventually, Godnrd seems to have reformu­
lated his attitude so that actors arc distrusted for speaking other people's words as
if they were their own . This accompanies his growing recognition that nobody
 GODARD AND COUNTER CINEMA 373

ever speaks in their own word,, hence the unpo�o;tbtltty of genuine dialogue and
the reducuon of dialogue to rectprocal-or often unilateral-interviewing. In
Vc11t d'Est there is almost no di.tlogue at all (only a number of v.mams of mono­
logue) and this must relate to the caricature of collective work Godard puts
forward.
Interviewing is, of course, the purest form of hnguistic demand, and the
demand Godard makes ts for the truth. Yet it never seems to be forthcoming,
not surprisingly, since it c.mnot be prodm.ed on demand. It is as tf Godard has
a lingering hope that tf people could find their own words, they nnght produce
it miraculously in our presence, but if not, then tt h.t, to be looked for in books,
whtch arc the residues of rc.tl words. Thi' kmd of problematic has been tor­
menting Godard throughout his cinematic career. In 11 Bmu de sm�l}lr. for in­
stance, there is the central contrast between Mtchcl Potccard/Laszlo Kovacs-an
honest impostor-and Patrici.t, whme m.tnia for hone�ty reveals her Ill the end
as a deceiver.
The early films tend to explore tim kmd of problem as one between different
levels, but in the post-1968 films, there seem<; to have been a kind offtattcmng out,
so that fiction = acting lying deception = reprc'icntation illmion = mys­
• • =

tification= ideology. I n fact, a'i anybody reflecting on Godard's earlier films must
surely know, these arc all very different categories. Ideology, for instance, docs not
depend primarily on he'i. It depends on the acceptance of common values and
interests. Similarly mystification is dtfferent from deception: a priest doe'i not de­
ceive his congregation about the miracle of the ma�s 111 the same way that a con­
jurer decetves his audtcncc, by hiding something from them. Agam, the cmema is
a form of representation, but this ts not the same a� illusion or 'trompe l'oeil'. It is
only possible to obliterate the�e di,tinctions by defining each of them �imply in
terms of their departure from truth.
The cinema cannot show the truth, or reveal it, because the truth is not out
there in the real world. waiting to be photographed. What the cinema can do is
produce meanings, and meanings can only be plotted, not in relation to some
abstract yardstick or criterion of truth, but in relation to other meanings. This is
why Godard's objective of producing a counter-cinema is the right objective. But
he is mistaken if he thinks that such a counter-cinema can have an absolute exis­
tence. It can only exist in relation to the rest of the cinema. Its function is to
struggle ag:1inst the fantasies, ideologies and aesthetic devices of one cinema with
its own antagonistic f.1 ntasit!s, ideologies and aesthetic devices. In some respects
this may bring it closer-or seem to bring it closer-to the cinema it opposes than
1.-brt d'Est would suggest. Vent d'Est is a pioneering film, an avam-gardc film, an
extremely important film. It is the starting-poim for work on a revolutionary
cinema . But it is not that revolutionary cinema itself.
1972