Fine Cuts: The Art of European Film Editing

1   Montage, Mon Beau Souci

(Montage My Fine Care, Jean-Luc Godard – Cahiers du Cinéma, December 1956) © Les Cahiers du Cinéma, 1996

This is an extract from the article referred to by Agnès Guillemot in our conversation where Godard says ‘If direction is a look, montage is a heartbeat’. Considering that when he wrote this piece he had yet to make a full-length film, it is a surprisingly elegant insight.

… montage is above all an integral part of mise-en-scène. Only at peril can one be separated from the other. One might as well try to separate the rhythm from the melody. ‘Eléna et les hommes’¹ and ‘Mr Arkadin’² are both models of montage because each is a model of mise-en-scène. ‘We’ll save it in the cutting room’: a typical producer’s axiom, ...