And of course, when your head hurts and you can’t take another flash of color or text on screen or random light, or a scene out of sequence, there are always, always beautiful women in Godard’s films. I am not a lesbian, but Contempt is one of my all-time favorite films and certainly one of my favorite Godard films, not necessarily for the plot — although it’s a good one, about a misunderstanding and subsequent loss of love between a man and a woman, and about the film industry as well — but because of Brigitte Bardot’s ass. Godard would probably hate to hear that, since apparently the only reason we get to see it is that his producer wanted to see more of Bardot naked in the film. This was Godard’s one and only big-budget film and he obliged the producer somewhat, but when the film failed outside of France, Godard blamed the producer for forcing him to compromise his vision. The producer, of course, blamed Godard, for not showing more of Bardot.
     Which brings us to another recurring element in Godard’s films: body parts. In nearly if not all of his films, when characters speak of love, they inevitably list off all the things they love about their partner: your nose, your eyes, your shoulders, your ass. And inevitably the laundry list is followed by, “So you love all of me?” It’s a perfect example of what drove some of Godard’s critics mental but which enables him to keep his films as teaching devices from which audiences may keep their distance and thus learn: he has a penchant for characters with no real soul. Never do their loved ones mention their heart, brains, intellect, spirit. They are two dimensional, and intentionally so. After all, we’re not to forget that they are actors.
     With nearly seventy movies, Godard is by far the most prolific of the New Wave directors. He’s also the only guy still around. There is a very moving moment in the last film in his series Histoires du Cinema, which is equal parts video essays on art, film, and literature, and a series of self-portraits of himself, in which he says, “Becker, Rosselini, Lang, Truffaut: They were my friends.” Watching it, it’s hard not to feel as though the last of the great masters will leave us soon, and there’s no one waiting to take his place.