Lynna Borden

Brian Henderson�s “Toward a Non-Bourgeois Camera Style”

In his essay “Toward and Non-Bourgeois Camera Style,” Brian Henderson discusses the technical qualities of Jean-Luc Godard’s “later period” films and more specifically his 1967 film Weekend. Henderson argues that Weekend is built upon the laterally moving tracking shot, which is the primary characteristic of Godard’s new later period camera style. These tracking shots are described as creating a parallel plane between the subject or scene and the eye of the camera, which Henderson claims renders the film flat, linear, objective and detached. For Henderson, Weekend is emblematic of these formal and stylistic features and employs them to demystify and critique the historical bourgeoisie as well as to allow the audience to examine their culture with ease.

Henderson explains that Godard’s tracking shots lack composition-in-depth as well as its values of “greater realism, greater participation on the part of the viewer, and a reintroduction of ambiguity,” which Andre Bazin views as “the essence of the [tracking] shot” (425). Instead Godard’s tracking shots construct a single layer, as opposed to the multiple layers of composition-in-depth, which the viewer can take in all at once and evaluate in its totality. In this way Godard appropriates and changes the conventional long take to use for his own ends.

Henderson emphasizes the idea that Godard’s tracking shots create “a band or ribbon of reality” but to more deeply understand how this concept works it must be analyzed in its viewed context. Thus Henderson begins discussing these kinds of shots within a network of specific films. He finds that La Chinoise also utilizes the tracking shot but in a much more supplementary way than Weekend. Apart from tracking shots La Chinoise also makes use of both montage and college. Henderson defines montage as a fragmentation of “reality in order to reconstitute it in highly organized, synthetic emotional and intellectual patterns” while collage on the other hand “collects or sticks its fragments together in a way that does not entirely overcome their fragmentation” (426-27). In Henderson’s view the element of collage is absent in Weekend because of the film’s use of a continuous and linear visual band and almost wholly singular camera range.

Weekend is thus characterized as purely flat but Henderson stresses that this flatness is not necessarily a negative quality (in the sense that it does not mean the film is a failure) and that we must define it in less generalized terms in order to fully understand its possibilities. He then contrasts flatness to cinema’s “walk-around capability,” which takes advantage of the availability of a third dimension. The fact that Godard intentionally eliminates this aspect as well as the strategies of close-up, medium-close, and often medium shot ranges in Weekend hints at the artistic intentions of the film. From this Henderson concludes that Godard’s formal qualities of flatness, depthlessness, singularity, parallel planes and linear character placement serve to criticize bourgeois values and reveal their own cultural flatness.

Thought Questions:

• Are there any instances/shots in Weekend where the “single camera range” and “continuous visual band” deteriorate? What are they and what purpose do they serve?
• Do the formal qualities of flatness, linear character placement and detached camera work in Weekend result in the de-individualization of its bourgeois subjects and the treatment of them as part of a singular mass instead of as unique characters? How does Godard’s characterization add to or detract from his critical stance on the historical bourgeoisie?
• Does Godard’s emphasis on surface instead of depth in camera style translate to less formal complexity and therefore a less compelling film?
• Is this element of flatness visible in any of the other Godard films we have seen? If so, does it serve the same purpose in them as it does in Weekend?