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by DaveA
Hah, more fun to talk about Godard's overall project than Ken Starr's, isn't it? Echoing what others have said...
Godard didn't invent the jumpcut so much as popularize it as an intentional stylistic choice within narrative cinema. Other techniques were showing parts of scenes out of order (think of the shooting of the cop at the beginning of Breathless or the initial getaway in Pierrot Le Fou) and having the sound and score drop in or out at atypical moments (think A Woman is a Woman but also in his non-narrative films/later work like The Image Book, formally of a piece with the dense cryptic collage quality laid down in Histoire(s) du cinéma).
As I understand it, this had/has a twofold quality.
On the one hand, it was a way of Godard simply being playful, not doing what he was "supposed to do" as a director and editor, as if he was saying... "Why does this sequence need to unfold in conventional order?" "Wouldn't it be more fun or interesting to throw a little wrench in the works?" "Are things so conservative that I have to effectively 'obey' a producer or distributor or the expectations of a 'normal' audience?" "Isn't film form malleable, full of possibilities, and wouldn't a strict adherence to these norms be stifling?" "Can't the film be an entity in of itself, with a 'mind of its own'?" And so on.
On the other hand, there was often probably a confrontational element at play. In highlighting the film as being a film, and not a seamless viewing experience that would aim for full immersion or verisimilitude, Godard was drawing attention to the viewers themselves, who could, as a result of the spell being broken, be made to feel self-conscious. Rather Brechtian, one could argue. But this could go either way, sometimes, in that the viewers of Godard's work could either recoil at feeling implicated somehow and/or put on the spot, at not being able to "tune out" as much as they would like, OR they could feel endowed with more free will/agency, on some level, in that they weren't expected to remain passive, just sit back and relax, etc.
How all of this shakes out, in Godard's work, especially when enmeshed with some of his political aims, has been a subject of much debate, for over half a century. But I would argue that he wasn't just trying to "assault" the viewers in every case, bombard them with his ideas and scenarios. There might be truculent or didactic aspects, some works are going to be more or sometimes less effective than others. But despite his perceived prickliness, ample delicate and warm-hearted moments are at hand, in many works, and there's a lot to chew on if one has the headspace to wade into it. As with "extreme" music or experimental literature, a person could go off the deep end, a large chunk of the populace won't be into it, but there are rewarding qualities, yeah?
ZzzZzzZzzz . . .
New Novel.