The Island of Jeanne Moreau

Saw Rear Window and Vertigo at the theatre tonight.

It’s a funny thing, but seeing Sans Soleil after you’ve seen Vertigo and then seeing Vertigo again really helps you appreciate each film all the more - bizarre, when you consider the Vertigo segment in Sans Soleil only goes for about 5 minutes. But nonetheless, the connection between the two on the whole is pretty strong, in that they both deal with the concept of memory as an unattainable ideal. Also, emu:

But the more you watch Japanese television, the more you feel it’s watching you.

Chris Marker, Sans Soleil (1983).

Video games are the first stage in a plan for machines to help the human race, the only plan that offers a future for intelligence. For the moment, the inseparable philosophy of our time is contained in the Pac-Man. I didn’t know when I was sacrificing all my hundred yen coins to him that he was going to conquer the world. Perhaps because he is the most perfect graphic metaphor of man’s fate. He puts into true perspective the balance of power between the individual and the environment. And he tells us soberly that though there may be honor in carrying out the greatest number of victorious attacks, it always comes a cropper.

“

—	Chris Marker, Sans Soleil.

My personal problem is more specific: how to film the ladies of Bissau? Apparently, the magical function of the eye was working against me there. It was in the marketplaces of Bissau and Cape Verde that I could stare at them again with equality: I see her, she saw me, she knows that I see her, she drops me her glance, but just at an angle where it is still possible to act as though it was not addressed to me, and at the end the real glance, straightforward, that lasted a twenty-fourth of a second, the length of a film frame.
All women have a built-in grain of indestructibility. And men’s task has always been to make them realize it as late as possible. African men are just as good at this task as others. But after a close look at African women I wouldn’t necessarily bet on the men.

Chris Marker, Sans Soleil (1983).

My personal problem is more specific: how to film the ladies of Bissau? Apparently, the magical function of the eye was working against me there. It was in the marketplaces of Bissau and Cape Verde that I could stare at them again with equality: I see her, she saw me, she knows that I see her, she drops me her glance, but just at an angle where it is still possible to act as though it was not addressed to me, and at the end the real glance, straightforward, that lasted a twenty-fourth of a second, the length of a film frame.

All women have a built-in grain of indestructibility. And men’s task has always been to make them realize it as late as possible. African men are just as good at this task as others. But after a close look at African women I wouldn’t necessarily bet on the men.

Chris Marker, Sans Soleil (1983).

Borrowed Chris Marker’s Sans Soleil from the library in anticipation of seeing Vertigo at the theatre. Did you know that there are emus in the Île-de-France?

It also contains the brilliant La jetée. Stoked.