NECSUS (Apr 2015)

In search of Godard’s ‘Sauve la vie (qui peut)’

  • Michael Witt

DOI
https://doi.org/10.5117/NECSUS2015.1.WITT
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 4, no. 1
pp. 3 – 26

Abstract

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This article examines a little-known compilation film titled Sauve la vie (qui peut) that Jean-Luc Godard created in 1981 within the framework of a series of lectures on cinema history that he delivered in Rotterdam in 1980-1981. To make this compilation film he combined sections from his Sauve qui peut (la vie) with extracts from four other films. Based on archival research, the article considers the context for the screening, the film’s structure, Godard’s wider engagement with the filmmakers whose work he incorporated, the prints he used, my attempts to reconstruct the film, and its reception in 1981 and today.

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