frame 89 | la télévision 2

Hannah and her Sisters | Woody Allen, 1986

Jean-Luc Godard on the pleasure of going to the movies:

What gives me the most pleasure is I don’t have to ask my father and mother if I can do it. The act of entering the cinema is a way to liberate yourself from the permission of mommy and daddy. As far as TV is concerned, daddy and mommy at least three quarters of the time are probably in the room, or next door, or in the same city with the same TV set. So it’s very different from going to a theater. The liberty to enter the dark room [...] – it has something to do with the pleasure of movies. There is nothing forbidden with the act of looking at television.

(quoted from: Meetin’ WA | Jean-Luc Godard, 1986)

* the frame depicts Mickey Sachs (Woody Allen) in a film theater, watching 1933’s Duck Soup, after his failed suicide attempt. A quintessential sequence, for it represents Allens re-evaluation of life (within the narrative) and, beyond the context of this film, his principal view on the basic purpose of cinema.