Qual è la differenza fondamentale tra questi due tipi di cinema, il cinema di prosa e il cinema di poesia? Il cinema di prosa è un cinema in cui lo stile ha un valore non primario, non appariscente, non clamoroso: mentre lo stile del cinema di poesia è l’elemento centrale, fondamentale
Only the title of Jean-Luc Godard’s new film is casual and innocent; Weekend is the most powerful mystical movie since The Seventh Seal and Fires on the Plain and passages of Kurosawa. We are hardly aware of the magnitude of the author-director’s conception until after we are caught up in the comedy of horror, which keeps going further and becoming more nearly inescapable, like Journey to the End of the Night.
Jean-Luc Godard’s “La Chinoise” is a satire of new political youth, but a satire from within, based on observation, and a satire that loves its targets more than it loves anything else — that, perhaps, can see beauty and hope only in its targets.
The distinction I make between cinema of prose and cinema of poetry is not a distinction of value, it is a purely technical distinction. If I had to define this distinction I would say that in cinema of prose the protagonists, as in classical novels, are the characters, their history and their environment. In cinema of poetry, on the other hand, the protagonist is style.
Jean-Luc Godard intended to give the public what it wanted. His next film was going to be about a girl and a gun—”A sure-fire story which will sell a lot of tickets.” And so, like Henry James’ hero in The Next Time he proceeded to make a work of art that sold fewer tickets than ever. What was to be a simple commercial movie about a robbery became Band of Outsiders.