Jean-Luc Godard’s Use of Sound in Une femme est une femme:

Geared Toward Deleuzian Scholarship Relating to Cinema’s

Ability to Create Thought

Jon Tichenor

SNDS-755-01

Stephen Michael LeGrand

November 15, 2010

 1

It seems as if it would be extremely difficult to not instantly fall in love with Anna

Karina’s character, Angela, within the first minute of the first scene of Jean-Luc

Godard’s 1961 sophomore film, Une femme est une femme (A Woman Is a Woman). Not

only because of her unforgettable and undeniable beauty and grace but, perhaps more

influential, the tune that accompanies her, “Tu t'Laisses Aller.” It is so rich and romantic

in a way that only Charles Aznavour can swoon it. This musical choice is not arbitrary.

Jean-Luc Godard is a master of his craft, both of the visual and aural elements.

Through out his entire oeuvre he consistently uses every means available to push the

boundaries of Cinema to help form something new— the French New Wave. Early in his

career, as a film critic and contributor to the French film magazine, Les cahiers du

cinéma1, he apposed classical forms and conceptions of cinema. Once he began

producing his own films Godard approached it from a very different angle, thus, creating

a new way to not only produce but to critically think on cinema.

Film theorists largely concern themselves with and concentrate on the image but it seems

as if in this modern age of cinema sound plays just as important a role. Michel Chion, a

leading theorist on film sound, wrote in the Preface to Audio-Vision, one of his books on

the subject of film sound, that:

“Theories of the cinema until now have tended to elude the issue of sound, either

by completely ignoring it or by relegating it to minor status. Even if some

scholars have made rich and provocative contributions here and there, their

insights […] have not yet been influential enough to bring about a total

1
The Internet Movie Database, A Woman Is a Woman (1961), http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0055572/
(accessed November 3, 2010).
2
Michel Chion, Audio-Vision (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), xxv.
 2

reconsideration of the cinema in light of the position that sound has occupied in it

for the last sixty years.”2

Perhaps if one were to broaden the scope of which the critical ears’ of film theorists were

examined, newfound concepts of it could bring the “total reconsideration of the cinema”

that Chion is alluding to. Examining Godard’s use of sound, in his films, with a leaning

toward Deleuzian Scholarship new insights about film sound occur. Which, then, call for

a deepening of existing concepts and, thus, conceivably new ones are formed.

Similar to Jean-Luc Godard, Gilles Deleuze was constantly looking for something new.

As a postmodern French philosopher, Deleuze also formed radical new ideas and

concepts towards a multitude of things. According to Jon Roffe, of the University of

Melbourne, “as a constructivist, he was adamant that philosophers are creators, and that

each reading of philosophy, or each philosophical encounter, ought to inspire new

concepts,”3 and Donato Torero, Canadian Journal of Film Studies author, claims “there

are film theories, and then there is Deleuze.” He goes on, “his Cinema books suggest that

cinema runs parallel with philosophy and responds to the history of philosophy.”4

Une femme est une femme is part comedy, part classical Hollywood musical, and part

drama—told in a way that only Godard could; an homage to all these genres while, at the

same time, a sever critic on them. Although it is not seen as Godard’s finest film the

sound design is one of his most unique and it serves as a strong case study into his use of

sound and the affects it has on the image. Godard’s unique use of all three stems of the

soundtrack (Sound Effects, Music, and Dialog) not only help to progress the narrative—

2
Michel Chion, Audio-Vision (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), xxv.
3
Jon Roffe, Gilles Deleuze (1925-1995), July 12, 2005, http://www.iep.utm.edu/deleuze/#SSH8b.ii
(accessed November 3, 2010).
4
Donato Totaro, "Deleuzian Film Analysis: The Skin of the Film ," Off Screen, June 30, 2002,
http://www.horschamp.qc.ca/new_offscreen/skin.html (accessed November 6, 2010).
 3

the typical role of film sound in classic Hollywood cinema—but also allows Godard to

tell it in a new way that is contrary to classical conceptions of film sound.

Une femme est une femme incorporates a love triangle; a popular theme in Godard’s

works. Angela (Anna Karina) is a striptease artist. She wants to have a baby and tries to

sway her boyfriend Émile (Jean-Claude Brialy) to go along. Émile is not interested, so

she enlists Émile's friend Alfred (Jean-Paul Balmondo) to do the job. Dixon quotes

Godard about the subject of the film as, “a character who succeeds in resolving a certain

situation, but I conceived the subject within the framework of a neo-realistic musical: an

absolute contradiction, but that is precisely why I wanted to make the film.”5

With its shifting opening titles between the above-the-line credits (Producers,

Cinematographer, Music Composer, Production Designer, etc.) along with the words

comedy, musical, theatrical, sentimental, and opera, paired with the sound of an orchestra

tuning and a voice trying to organize the apparent chaos with a bicycle bell accentuating

Godard’s title (the only sound effect in the sequence and one of his favorite and often

used sounds), Une femme est une femme, immediately relates to the viewer Godard’s

intention of the film as “‘the idea of a musical,’ ‘nostalgia for the musical,’ and, most

provocatively, a ‘neorealist musical.’”6 Its first title being “Once upon a time”, suggests

that this is meant as a kind of fairy tale. The first actual dialog in the film is Karina’s

voice-over proclaiming, “Lights, … camera, … ACTION!” (the traditional cue to the

film crew at the start of each take) over silence, while showing the faces, each in

sequence, of Émile, Angela, and Alfred with titles, over the images, of their real last

5
Wheeler W. Dixon, The Films of Jean-Luc Godard (Albany, New York: State University of New York,
1997), 28.
6
J. Hoberman, "A Woman is A Woman," The Criterion Collection, June 21, 2004,
http://www.criterion.com/current/posts/330-a-woman-is-a-woman (accessed November 5, 2010).
 4

names with each word. This reminds the viewer that they are in fact watching a film and

it is about to begin. It also is in English, perhaps a direct homage to Hollywood cinema?

Or is it a critic? Or both? The film begins in silence for about a second with the final

title, “Une femme est une femme”, on top of what turns out to be the view of a busy Paris

street seen from the window of a small café. Enter Angela.

This is where Charles Aznavour’s tune, “Tu t'Laisses Aller”, is introduced for the first

time. The audience only gets to hear the last thirty seconds of it but they get an idea of

Angela and Émile’s relationship—although, this relationship is not immediately apparent

nor is its symbolism. The lyrics are (with an English translation beside them and in

parenthesis):

Redeviens la petite fille (Become that little girl again)

Qui m'a donné tant de bonheur (Who gave me so much happiness)

Et parfois comm' par le passé (And sometimes like in the past)

J'aim'rais que tout contre mon cœur (I would love that close to my heart)

Tu l'laisses aller, Tu l'laisses aller (You let yourself go, you let yourself go)7

At first listen this tune seems to be part of what the audience understands as part of the

score but this changes and becomes source music after Angela approaches the jukebox in

the café near the end and begins the song again. Laurent Jullier proclaims that, “Godard

was concerned not to deceive the spectator about the origins of sounds.”8

During the initial play Angela is heard greeting the barista and ordering a “coffee, very

white” as a gentleman enters and also orders a coffee. This dialog is barely audible under

7
Frank van der Eeden, tu t'laisses aller, August 5, 2008, http://www.english-spanish-translator.org/french-
translation/4034-tu-tlaisses-aller.html (accessed November 6, 2010).
8
Laurent Jullier, "Sound in French Cinema, To Cut or Let Live: The Soundtrack According to Jean-Luc
Godard," in Sound and Music in Film and Visual Media: a critical overview, ed. Graeme Harper, 352-362
(New York: The Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd., 2009), 358.
 5

the tune. Is this suggesting that the song’s lyrics are more important at this point?

Contrary to the classic Hollywood approach, Godard often keeps other sounds at the

same level as the dialog track—whether it be music or background ambient tracks. Alan

Williams writes, “as is typical in Godard’s ‘location’ recordings, the spectator strains to

decipher [dialog], the characters seem better adapted to urban noise than the film

audience is made to feel.”9 During Aznavour’s brief intermission Godard keeps the

soundtrack incredibly sparse; only the foley of the gentleman’s coffee cup is audible.

Angela is glancing at the gentleman while he takes his first sip and smiles at him. This

near silence in the soundtrack could be signifying Angela’s pure interest in Man, his

relation to her and the world around him. An idea that is backed up when hearing the

opening lyrics to “Tu t'Laisses Aller” coming from the jukebox; “C'est drôle ce que t'es

drôle à regarder (It’s funny how funny you are to look at).”10 Just as Angela’s jukebox

selection begins anew she realizes she has “Gotta run.” These lyrics are all we hear of

the tune when she turns and walks out of the café as she winks at the camera,

acknowledging the audience for the first but certainly not the last time. Williams

continues, “the sheer weight of this ‘natural’ sound is made […] more evident by what is

[…] the ultimate sound effect: silence, which when it arrives—abruptly, as do most of

Godard’s sounds—is eerily soothing.”11 This abruptness is incredibly apparent in the

next sequence of the film.

9
Alan Williams, "Godard's Use of Sound," in Film Sound: Theory and Practice, ed. Elisabeth Weis and
John Belton, 332-345 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985), 336.
10
Frank van der Eeden, tu t'laisses aller, August 5, 2008, http://www.english-spanish-translator.org/french-
translation/4034-tu-tlaisses-aller.html (accessed November 6, 2010).
11
Alan Williams, "Godard's Use of Sound," in Film Sound: Theory and Practice, ed. Elisabeth Weis and
John Belton, 332-345 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985), 336.
 6

Here we see Angela outside the café in a wide shot from across the street. She crosses the

busy city street with a multitude of people and automobiles surrounding her and yet only

her footsteps are audible. Played at a very low level one must pay close attention to the

soundtrack at this point. An indication of Angela’s feeling of isolation or her sense of

disconnectedness with the world around her? The film cuts again as the audience sees

Angela walking along the sidewalk in a sonically busy city street atmosphere in a

medium shot. We hear not only the sounds of the city street but also the voice of a man

selling some goods curbside with a friend. Angela turns her head as she passes, again

acknowledging Man with a curious smile. As she passes out of frame the camera pans

back to the men now smiling at the acknowledgment. Again, an abrupt cut to a high

angle wide shot from across the street following Angela along the sidewalk but this time

in complete silence for several seconds until Michel Legrand’s film’s score is brought in

sharply which overlaps the next cut as Angela walks into a bookstore. This musical

theme is introduced several times in the film and is reminiscent of a classically romantic

Hollywood film score. As Angela browses the racks of books she glances over and

Émile is revealed. This obvious connection between these two characters as lovers is

expressed through Legrand’s romantic score.

When one reflects on this opening sequence of Godard’s Une femme est une femme,

Deleuze’s theories concerning cinema’s power to create thought and how it goes about it

through a nooshock to form the “action-thought” is brought to mind. Deleuze explains:

“Because the cinematographic image itself 'makes' movement, because it makes

what the other arts are restricted to demanding (or to saying), it brings together

what is essential in the other arts; it inherits it, it is as it were the directions for use
 7

of the other images, it converts into potential what was only possibility. Automatic

movement gives rise to a spiritual automaton in us, which reacts in turn on

movement. The spiritual automaton no longer designates - as it does in classical

philosophy - the logical or abstract possibility of formally deducing thoughts from

each other, but the circuit into which they enter with the movement-image, the

shared power of what forces thinking and what thinks under the shock; a

nooshock.”12

Although many authors on Deleuze suggest that he was apposed to Edmund Husserl’s

ideas, one cannot help but to find a connection here concerning the nooshock –for in

1913 Husserl wrote Ideen I. In it he addresses the de-individualized ego and the two

poles or directions it can take; the noematic and the noetic. These words are derived

from the Greek terms noema (what is thought) and noesis, (the act of thinking).13 It is

important to note that Deleuze never claimed to be a film critic. He merely “used cinema

to suit [his] particular intellectual needs.”14 For him, it was the human mind that creates

this movement in cinema and “it is only when movement becomes automatic that the

artistic essence of the image is realized.”15 Here we are concerned with the ‘sublime’

conception of cinema. For Deleuze, “what constitutes the sublime is that the imagination

suffers a shock which pushes it to the limit and forces thought to think the whole as

12
Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 2: the time-image, ed. Hugh Tomlinson and Robert Galets (Minneapolis,
Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 2010), 156.
13
Marianne Sawicki, Edmund Husserl (1859-1938), July 6, 2005, http://www.iep.utm.edu/husserl/#H5
(accessed November 14, 2010).
14
Donato Totaro, "Part 1: Cinema 1: The Movement-Image; Gilles Deleuze's Bergsonian Film Project ,"
Off Screen, March 31, 1999, http://www.horschamp.qc.ca/9903/offscreen_essays/deleuze1.html (accessed
November 6, 2010).
15
Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 2: the time-image, ed. Hugh Tomlinson and Robert Galets (Minneapolis,
Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 2010), 156.
 8

intellectual totality which goes beyond the imagination.”16 For clarity, Deleuze turns to

Russian filmmaker, Sergei Eisenstein. Eisenstein’s dialectical method of the sublime,

according to Deleuze, allowed “him to decompose the nooshock into particularly well-

determined moments,”17 of these there are three:

1. The initial moment goes from the image to thought: percept to concept; the Whole.

Here the shock takes the form of communication of movement in images and has

an effect on the spirit. It forces the audience to think the Whole. This idea of the

Whole is reliant on montage sequences and can only be thought, for it is “the

indirect representation of time which follows from movement.”18 Deleuze goes on,

“whether it is visual or of sound, the image already has harmonics which

accompany the perceived dominant image, and enter in their own ways into

suprasensory relations. […] This is the shock wave or the nervous vibration,

which means that we can no longer say 'I see, I hear', but I FEEL, 'totally

physiological sensation'. And it is the set of harmonics acting on the cortex

which gives rise to thought, the cinematographic I THINK: […] ‘From the

shock of two factors a concept is born’. […] The cinematographic image

must have a shock effect on thought, and force thought to think itself as

much as thinking the whole […] the very definition of the sublime.”19

Here Deleuze looks to Walter Benjamin; arguably, one of the first theorists to examine

cinematic affect. Paul Gromley writes, “Benjamin’s primary project is to explain the

cinema as art form specific to the age of modernity. Within this historical framework, he

16
Ibid, 157.
17
Ibid.
18
Ibid, 158.
19
Ibid.
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is concerned about ways in which cinema might potentially create a shock to the thought

of the viewer.”20 When one considers the verisimilitude of sound to image, what role

does sound play in the concept of the Whole?

2. The second moment moves from concept to affect. It returns from thought back to

the image and is inseparable from the first moment; cannot tell which came first,

montage or movement-image. It is a process that gives “emotional fullness” and

“passion” back to the intellectual process, according to Deleuze. The whole as

dynamic effect, here, for him, “is also the presupposition of its cause, the spiral.

This is why Eisenstein continually reminds us that 'intellectual cinema' has as

correlate 'sensory thought' or 'emotional intelligence', and is worthless without

it.”21 In this moment, we tend to go from thinking of a whole that is presupposed

and obscure to the distressed, muddled images that express it. This is an “internal

monolog” that goes beyond the dream. Deleuze writes that Eisenstein, “develops

a pathos-filled power of imagination which reaches the limits of the universe, an

'orgy of sensory representations.' […] Earlier, we went from the shock-image to

the formal and conscious concept, but now from the unconscious concept to the

material-image, the figure-image which embodies it and produces shock in

turn.”22

3. The last moment is the actual identity of concept and image and is as prevalent as

the previous two. Here the concept is in itself the image and vise versa. This

moment is “action-thought” and “indicates the relation between man and the

20
Paul Gormley, The new-brutality film: race and affect in contemporary Hollywood cinema (Portland,
Oregon: Intellect, Ltd. 2005), 16.
21
Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 2: the time-image, ed. Hugh Tomlinson and Robert Galets (Minneapolis,
Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 2010), 159.
22
Ibid.
 10

world, between man and nature, the sensory-motor unity, but by raising it to a

supreme power ('monism'). Cinema seems to have a real vocation in this

respect,”23 according to Deleuze, and, for these moments, is better suited for

showing the reaction of man on nature or the “externalization of man” than that of

the theater.

Deleuze proclaims that cinema is capable of achieving what theater and opera could

never and points Jean-Luc Godard films as an example. For Deleuze, “Godard’s strength

[lies] in making it a method which cinema must ponder at the same time as it uses it.”24

He continues on, “Godard has used every method of free indirect vision. Not that he has

limited himself to borrowing and renewing; on the contrary, he created the original

method which allowed him to make new synthesis, and in so doing to identify himself

with modern cinema.”25 Cinema is able to reach the “Dividual”, that is, it is able to

“individuate a mass instead of leaving it in a qualitative homogeneity or reducing it to a

quantitive divisibility.”26 Simply put, Deleuze believes that Cinema is able to promote

thought within the masses as a single unit. These relationships between thought and the

cinema: “the relationship with a whole which can only be thought in a higher awareness,

the relationship with a thought which can only be shaped in the subconscious unfolding

of images, the sensory-motor relationship between world and man, nature and

thought,”27 are constantly seen in Deleuze’s movement-image.

Although Deleuze primarily writes here on the images of cinema, it seems as if these

relationships could also relate to film sound; in its relations to itself, the special

23
Ibid, 161.
24
Ibid, 179.
25
Ibid, 184.
26
Ibid, 162.
27
Ibid, 163.
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relationships it has to the image, and perhaps most importantly these relations in relation

to the audience. Deleuze alludes to this when writing about the interstice between images.

Again he points to Godard: “Godard draws all the consequences from this when he

declares that mixing ousts montage, it being understood that mixing does not just consist

of a distribution of the different sound elements, [that is the job of the editor in the sound

business] but the allocation of their differential relations with the visual elements.”28 All

of these relations can be heard within the previously examined opening to Godard’s film,

Une femme est une femme.

The film’s opening credits paired with its sound elements acts as a cue for the viewers to

prepare themselves for the film while creating a kind of anticipation. Edgardo

Cozarinsky’s essay on the film claims that from this approach, “there is a festive

excitement about [it]. But what is celebrated is not easy to recognize. Paris? […] A

certain approach to the ménage a trios comedy? […] Anna Karina?”29 Karina’s opening

voice-over brings this excitement to its climax just before the film begins. Here Godard

exhibits, mostly through the soundtrack, Eisenstein’s first moment of the nooshock.

By incorporating the orchestra warming up and the conductor’s voice, Godard prepares

the viewer for the film and makes them aware that they are, in fact, watching a film. This

is highlighted and enforced by Karina’s voice-over, “Lights, … camera, … ACTION!”

Another instance of this initial moment is when the Legrand’s score begins and seems to

beckon Angela into the bookstore. By Godard initially using Aznavour’s tune, “Tu

t'Laisses Aller”, as what seems to be score music but then transforming it into source

music the viewer is forced to ask themselves about the source of the preceding tune that

28
Ibid, 181.
29
Edgardo Cozarinsky, "Une Femme Est Une Femme," in The Films of Jean-Luc Godard, ed. Ian
Cameron, 26-31 (New York: November Books Limited, 1969), 26.
 12

seems to initially emanate from the bookstore and beckon Angela into it. Is this music

coming from the bookstore and is this why Angela decides to enter? It turns out that this

music is part of the score and is used throughout the film as a theme to Angela and

Émile’s relationship. Godard’s switching between source and score triggers the audience

to continually ask where the music is coming from and what its intention’s are; bringing

it from perception (the initial hearing it) to conception (why is it there?). Although

Godard does eventually and consciously explain and show the source of all source music.

His transformation between source and score creates a certain harmonic effect between

the two which produces a shock and, as Deleuze puts it, forces “thought to think itself as

much as thinking the whole”30; sublime.

An instance of the second moment—that moment when the concept moves to affect,

happens quite quickly and could be missed by the casual observer. When Godard’s title

appears in the opening the sound of a bicycle’s bell is heard over the orchestra’s segment.

As mentioned earlier, this is one of Godard’s favorite and often used sound effects. What

is the meaning of this cue? It has no direct correlation to the title nor does it seem to fit

in with the sounds of the orchestra. Perhaps it is meant solely to draw attention to

Godard’s name, bringing his importance in the film, as director, to the forefront. The

simple fact that one has to ask this question is enough to qualify it as fitting into this

second moment from concept to affect.

Aznavour’s tune also incorporates the second moment as described by Deleuze. After

one processes the song’s lyrics in relation to the film certain correlations can be drawn

between Angela and Émile. Depending on the point in the film that this tune is played

30
Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 2: the time-image, ed. Hugh Tomlinson and Robert Galets (Minneapolis,
Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 2010), 157.
 13

the viewer is able to draw conclusions about Émile’s feeling toward Angela and,

reversely, Angela’s feelings toward Émile. Jullier quotes J. Aumont, “by preventing the

melody from developing, [Godard] draws attention to a different musical quality.”31

Godard’s skillful selection of lyrics from the tune at certain times allow for different

interpretations of it throughout. When bringing selected lyrics of the song to the listener

(presenting the conception) Godard is able to draw conclusions about its meaning, thus an

affect is formed. Another instance of this is heard when Godard incorporates silence in

the street sequence. By using this technique he is able to produce a shock on the listener

which forces them to question the silence and its meaning, in this case, in relation to

Angela. They are forced to ask questions such as the ones asked earlier. Des O’Rawe

writes, “in Godard’s cinema, silence becomes an instrument of fragmentation, a base

element that assists the processes of separation and reconciliation that are integral to

Godard’s artistic principals and practices.”32 O’Rawe continues, “a Brechtian influence

is undeniable, but it should not be misunderstood: Godard’s interruptions utilize the

‘Alienation-effect’ to transcend it. […] In such modernist films, the disruption of sound,

like the diffusion of citations and rich coincidence of connections and disconnections,

liberates the cinema from the prison-house of narrative and the banality of

synchronicity.”33 For Jullier, Godard’s use of sound in this sequence acts as a type of

manifesto: “Anna Karina walks on the Grand Boulevards like a flâneur; sometimes we

only hear the ticking of her heels. Sometimes the ticking is masked by the noise of the

31
Laurent Jullier, "Sound in French Cinema, To Cut or Let Live: The Soundtrack According to Jean-Luc
Godard," in Sound and Music in Film and Visual Media: a critical overview, ed. Graeme Harper, 352-362
(New York: The Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd., 2009), 357.
32
Des O'Rawe, "Silence: Film Sound and the Poetics of Silence," in Sound and Music in Film and Visual
Media: a critical overview, ed. Graeme Harper, 87-99 (New York: The Continuum International Publishing
Group Ltd, 2009), 96.
33
Ibid.
 14

Grand Boulevards and sometimes it is replaced [by music]—each combination according

to an unpredictable casual logic.”34 He continues, “to cut or to let live here becomes an

equilibrated dilemma, when to let live was almost the only choice in the Golden Age of

subtractive classicism”35; yet another example pointing to Godard’s importance in

creating a type of modern film sound language. Godard’s abrupt sonic transitions

between silence and ambient sounds also display characteristics of the third and final

moment in its relation to each other.

Douglas Morrey writes, “the unexpected cutting in and out of sound is a device designed

to make us hear this noise as noise, to disrupt our comfortable association of it with what

we see on screen.”36 This relationship between the silence and ambient sounds, what

Morrey is calling noise, exemplifies this third moment. It is the moment of action-

thought and “indicates the relation between man and the world, between man and nature,

the sensory-motor unity, but by raising it to a supreme power ('monism')”37. Here

Godard forces thought on the viewer through his interstices of silence within the film to

great affect.

One of the first and perhaps most important steps to understanding film sound is

discussed in Michel Chion’s book Audio-Vision. In the introduction he suggests that

there is no “natural and preexisting harmony between image and sound.”38 Patricia

Pisters expands on this: “We relate images and sounds with our brain, and filmmakers

34
Laurent Jullier, "Sound in French Cinema, To Cut or Let Live: The Soundtrack According to Jean-Luc
Godard," in Sound and Music in Film and Visual Media: a critical overview, ed. Graeme Harper, 352-362
(New York: The Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd., 2009), 356.
35
Ibid.
36
Douglas Morrey, "The Noise of Thoughts: The Turbulent (Sound-) Worlds of Jean-Luc Godard,"
Culture, Theory & Critique 46, no. 1 (2005), 62.
37
Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 2: the time-image, ed. Hugh Tomlinson and Robert Galets (Minneapolis,
Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 2010), 157.
38
Michel Chion, Audio-Vision (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), xvii.
 15

can experiment with these relations. […] Nevertheless, since the official introduction of

sound film, the soundtrack has been constructed largely as a function of the

representative realism effect.”39 Godard rejects these constructions and through his

incorporation of silence in certain sequences with “natural” ambient sounds he is able to

create a discontiguous sense of the world that causes the viewer to question their relation

to the perceived natural order of the world; thus, creating action-thought.

Another instance of this moment concerns Legrand’s score with the image. Once Angela

is in the bookstore and Legrand’s theme is being played we see her peruse a book titled

I’m Expecting A Baby. While she flips through the pages of this book the score of the

film transitions to a kind of sexy jazzy feel hinting towards Angela’s femininity and

sexuality that becomes more apparent later in the film. With this musical choice Godard

shows, as Deleuze puts it, “the reaction of man on nature or the ‘externalization of

man.’”40 It is important to point out that this is a reaction of and by the audience after

seeing and hearing this shot. “Godard’s films attest to the desire to represent the

complexity of human experience and to resist any discourse that would simplify or reify

that complexity,”41 proclaims Morrey.

The early films of Jean-Luc Godard helped to propel cinema into the modern age. His

imaginative use of sound paired with unique ideas about the use of visuals and editing put

him in a class that few were members and many desire—that of La Nouvelle Vague; the

New Wave. His inventive film style parallels that of French philosopher Giles Deleuze.

39
Patricia Pisters, "(De)Territorializing Forces of the Sound Machine," in The matrix of visual culture:
working with Deleuze in film theory, 175-215 (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2003), 178.
40
Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 2: the time-image, ed. Hugh Tomlinson and Robert Galets (Minneapolis,
Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 2010), 157.
41
Douglas Morrey, "The Noise of Thoughts: The Turbulent (Sound-) Worlds of Jean-Luc Godard,"
Culture, Theory & Critique 46, no. 1 (2005), 68.
 16

Much like Deleuze was, Godard is in constant search of the new. On Deleuze’s ideas

concerning the cinema, Gregg Lambert writes, “cinema behaves like an art when it allies

itself with the force of chaos in order to form new visions and new sensations, which it

uses in its struggles against the reestablished clichés and ready-made linkages of images

and thought.”42 Jullier quotes Godard as saying in his film Histoire(s) du cinéma (part

4b) that his aim was to make “links between things that have never been linked before

and do not seem to be disposed to be so.”43 Godard accomplished both of these ideas of

Lambert and Jullier.

Film theorists largely concern themselves with and concentrate on the image but it seems

as if in this modern age of cinema sound plays just as important a role. Godard’s use of

sound is worthy of closer investigation. Through his imaginative use of sound he was

able to form new concepts and ideas of thought into cinema.

Here we have examined parts of Gilles Deleuze’s ideas on cinema’s ability to create

thought and then applied these ideas to the opening sequence of Jean-Luc Godard’s film

Une femme est une femme. Thus, formed new insights about film sound’s abilities.

Perhaps if one were to continue to turn a critical ear on Godard’s unique use of sound

with a Deleuzian scholarship in mind new formulations about film sound would occur.

This approach would then call for a deepening of existing concepts and then, perhaps,

form new ones on it.

Whether it be through Godard’s use of silence, his juxtaposition between what the

audience hears and what they see, his dissected music scores, or his use of non-

42
Gregg Lambert, "Cinema and the Outside," in The brain is the screen: Deleuze and the philosophy of
cinema, ed. Gregory Flaxman (Minneapolis, Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 2000), 265.
43
Laurent Jullier, "Sound in French Cinema, To Cut or Let Live: The Soundtrack According to Jean-Luc
Godard," in Sound and Music in Film and Visual Media: a critical overview, ed. Graeme Harper, 352-362
(New York: The Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd., 2009), 357.
 17

synchronous sound, one is able to draw many conclusions and find many examples of a

new type and usage of film sound—thus, is able to form new ideas and theories about it;

a technique and approach to film sound not often examined. Jullier concludes his essay

on Godard’s sound editing technique by writing:

“Modernist sound cutting never convinced a great audience and remains weird to

untutored ears. Despite old modernist claims, very few actually perceive

unsynchronized sound and images in the way mass audiences now look at Van

Gogh’s sunflowers and Monet’s cathedrals. It seems sonic experiment in film is

success-proof: maybe we are too intimately bound up with vertical causality to

like seeing it broken.”44

Godard’s creative use of sound in his film Une femme est une femme acts as a strong case

study to draw examples and form new conceptual ideas about film sound when examined

through Deleuze’s ideas about the cinema (which draw from numerous other theorists),

specifically its ability to create thought through its ‘nooshock’; that is to say, the shared

power of what forces thinking and what thinks under the shock within Deleuze’s

movement-image.

Here we have examined this idea of Deleuze’s in regards to Eisenstein’s dialectical

method of the sublime. Which, according to Deleuze, allowed “him to decompose the

nooshock into particularly well-determined moments.”45 These moments: “the

relationship with a whole which can only be thought in a higher awareness, the

relationship with a thought which can only be shaped in the subconscious unfolding of

44
Laurent Jullier, "Sound in French Cinema, To Cut or Let Live: The Soundtrack According to Jean-Luc
Godard," in Sound and Music in Film and Visual Media: a critical overview, ed. Graeme Harper, 352-362
(New York: The Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd., 2009), 361.
45
Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 2: the time-image, ed. Hugh Tomlinson and Robert Galets (Minneapolis,
Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 2010), 157.
 18

images, the sensory-motor relationship between world and man, nature and thought,”46

are constantly seen in Deleuze’s movement-image and, when translated into a film sound

vernacular, can be heard in Godard’s opening sequence to his sophomore film, Une

femme est une femme, as we have discussed.

Many more correlations and connections can be made in regards to Deleuze’s thoughts

on Thoughts and film sound that far outweigh the breadth of this essay. Presented here is

merely an initial look into the possibilities of such correlations and connections. Much

like Williams proclaims in the introduction to his examination of ‘Godard’s Use of

Sound’: “Godard is one of the most able and original manipulators of recorded sound in

the history of cinema, and merely to detail the broad outlines of his use of sound is a task

that can only be begun here”47, this essay considers the possibilities of looking at his use

of sound within the scope of Deleuzian Thought theories. To properly examine in totality

of these ideas on thought as heard in Godard’s work would require a Master’s Thesis.

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