Monday, December 20, 2010

Godard and Cars (Alfa Romeo 1962)

In doing research for my paper on how Godard uses cars in his films of the 1960s, I came across a website devoted to cataloging the different makes + models of cars in films, so I thought I'd share the links for the pages for Pierrot le fou and Week-end:


http://imcdb.org/movie_59592-Pierrot-le-fou.html
http://imcdb.org/movie_62480-Week-End.html


People can comment on each photo, and I found a pretty interesting comment for this photo:




According to Esquire (July 1969) page 42, the Alfa Romeo on fire is Jean-Luc Godard's own car. 


That particular car - a 1962 Alfa Romeo 2600 Sprint - was not cheap, nor especially common. Only around 7,000 were produced from 1962-1966, and they cost $5400 - or around $40,000 in today's dollars. If Godard really did throw his own car onto a heap and set it in fire, it gives some indication of how serious he was in the message he's trying to communicate.


The lone source for this comment is from that issue of Esquire, which I am now in search of - it seems to be a pretty neat issue with not only the Godard issue, but McLuhan also featured, as well as lots of moon stuff.



1 comment: