Watch: A Jean-Luc Godard Homage in Blue, White and Red (NSFW, a little)

This homage to Jean-Luc Godard by Cinema Sem Lei focuses on his enduring use of blue, whites, and reds in the films ‘Contempt,’ ‘A Woman Is a Woman,’ ‘Pierrot le Fou,’ and ‘Made in U.S.A.’ Watching it, you might be tempted to say,Is that all there is to it? Just a collection of red, white and blue scenes? What’s the point? I could do that. Etcetera. In so doing, you might miss the point you’re looking for. Watching this little collection, one is reminded of a crucial element of Godard’s early (and to a certain extent later) style: that point where what we might consider a narrative element (the way a person dresses, for instance, as an indication of character–or a part of a setting) turns into something else entirely: a cog inside a large symbolic machine, not a shirt, not a neon letter, not a doorway, not a floodlight, but something else. You can use the word "sign," if you wish, or the term "visual vocabulary," or "visual language," but the three-way-rally exchange is the same: from the screen to the eye to the mind, lingering a little in each.