Godard and Ray, filmmakers poles apart

French-Swiss film director Jean-Luc Godard (1930-2022) and director Satyajit Ray (1921-1992) are two of the masters of world cinema, who attained iconic status both at home and abroad. Yet, no two contemporary filmmakers could be as different. Ray enriched cinema through the classical format of storytelling, investing it with irony, brevity and understatement, and raising it to the level of art that could be universally appreciated.

Godard was more political, experimental, and often rebellious in his approach, breaking away from the conventional narrative style, and cultivating what one commentator described as ‘extreme art cinema’. Though both were widely noticed from the time their first feature was released, one was composed, while the other was restless.

Interestingly, Ray understood best what made Godard sui generis, and wrote on him more than on any of his peers. To Godard, however, India remained virtually non-existent. Last year, Godard was honoured with the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 25th International Film Festival of Kerala in which he participated virtually. Amartya Bhattacharyya made an Odia film, Adieu Godard (2021), whose world premiere took place at the 43rd Moscow International Film Festival.

As Godard’s demise is being widely mourned, especially among art film enthusiasts and historians, it may be interesting to ideate why he remained totally aloof to India and why his Histoire(s) du cinéma is silent about India’s cinematic expressions. In fact, this engagement was wholly one-sided.

In an essay titled An Indian New Wave?, Ray wrote in 1971, “Godard is the first director in the history of the cinema to have totally dispensed with what is known as the plot line. Indeed, it would be right to say that Godard has devised a totally new genre for the cinema. In his recent films, Godard has sacrificed art for politics, but even in his best and most characteristic early works, he has been a bad model for young directors, simply because his kind of cinema demands craftsmanship of the highest order, let alone various other equipment on an intellectual plane.” Ray also observed that Godard could turn convention upside down because he had a firm grip on convention itself.

Godard and some of his peers of the French New Wave took narrative risks and expanded the language of cinema, facilitated mainly by two factors — advances in film technology, and the presence of a sophisticated, urban audience willing to accept departures from the accepted norms of art. Godard was exceptionally gifted, but Ray was concerned that if filmmakers start using the idiom of Godard, “in a do-or-die bid to be contemporary”, the results could be very unsatisfactory.

In an earlier essay, few years after Godard’s first feature Breathless (1960) was released, Ray commented, “Now to a mind attuned to the conventional unfolding of plot and character, such things may well be upsetting. But one can never blame Godard for thwarting expectations, for he is careful to establish his credo from the very opening shots.”

Admittedly, Ray’s interpretation of directors who influenced him such as Jean Renoir or Vittorio De Sica stands at one level, that of Godard at another. Though a conceptual similarity may be noticed between a sequence in Ray’s Devi (1960) and Godard’s Vivre sa vie (1962), evidently none was influenced by the other.

Was Godard unaware of Ray’s oeuvre? Was he oblivious of what Ray had written on him? Ray’s reputation in France, from the time Pather Panchali (1955) was awarded at Cannes Festival to France’s rediscovery of Jalsaghar (1958), was indelible. Cahiers du Cinéma, the influential film journal Godard had been associated with since 1950s, had covered Ray’s films.

Former France President François Mitterrand visited Kolkata to bestow Légion d’honneur on Ray. Shakha Proshakha (1990) was co-produced by Erato Films of France. In this context, Godard’s claim that he wanted to watch Jalsaghar, asked many people to send it, but could not get a print, sounds rather defensive and unconvincing.

If Godard’s consciousness didn’t have space for India, it might be reflective of his intellectual hauteur or artistic indifference. Was he trying to be unconventional, or being rather conventional with his being West-centric? India as a civilisation and the emergence of new India are too significant to be ignored. However, being an unusual genius that Godard was, he might have consciously shut himself up against India. Was he worried that his single-minded pursuit to establish a new identity of cinema be affected otherwise? It may also be that he was just not interested and was truthful about it. Only a researcher can throw some light on the reasons behind this total aloofness.

Whatever it be, both Godard and Ray would be remembered as long as cinema survives, but for very different reasons.