Black Panthers in the New Wave
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Transcript of Black Panthers in the New Wave
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Black Panthers in the New Wave
Martha Merrill
Film Culture, No. 53-54-55, 1972, pp. 134-145.
RESOURCES:
Agnes Varda in UbuWeb Film
Film Culture in UbuWeb Papers
Presented in partnership with Anthology Film Archives
Jean-Luc Godard's film Sympathy for the Devil (original title One plus One) was on view for the
first time two years ago at the London Film Festival. The Festival had been more sedate than
usualdull if you will. I no longer even paid attention to what I was supposed to see next, and
therefore as I was lounging in th Members' Lounge with my "half of bitter," it was only a rapid
view of tinted spectacles, heavy beard, and an unmistakable anaemic face that presagedsomething slightly more lively for the next two hours' entertainment. Jean-Luc Godard was on
hand, and if his film promised excitement, he himself generally involves even more.
From the beginning the format is slightly altered. A mimeographed sheet is passed out,
entitled "Who Is Eldridge Cleaver." No time to read it; the little master himself is already on
stage with Richard Roud and a black gentleman, bearded Lumumba-style, instead of the usual
pretty starlet. Roud ordinarily translates impeccably from French or Italian for those whose
English is not up to stuffy tastes. Godard, however, wants to express himself, and he is gomg to
bitter-end it in our language even if the audience has to wait all night. He clearly has
something to communicate. He is, however, often incoherent.
He thinks that film festivals like this have become irrelevant. In coming in he has noted that
people were queuing outside. He thinks that is very sad, because when people are standing in
queues, it ordinarily means that they are starving. In this case they are starving for movies.
Some people because of this situation have started a movement to show films in the streets,
for free. He thinks this is good, and for this reason, he has given them his personal print of his
film One plus One so that they can show it outside to the people who couldn' t get in. This is a
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film about language, he says, about the language of blacks and whites, because they don't use
the same dictionaries.
He commends a short documentary made by his compatriot Agnes Varda that has just beenpresented. It showed how the trial and conviction of Huey Newton had galvanized the Black
Panther movement, and goes on to argue that the Oakland police were a repressive fascist
force, both more dangerous and much more violent than the Panthers. Godard repeats that he
thinks Varda's film very fine, but that this evening he wants to go a little further, and that he
has a proposition to make to us, the audience.
He reminds us that we had all paid ten shillings to get into the National Film Theatre. He says
that our doing so was a political act, and that indeed, for him, everything is a political act. He
bitterly criticized those who would sit and watch a film stupidly "like cretins in a church"
without realizing the political aspect of their actions.
Two days ago, he says with emphasis, was a very important date. He explains that Eldridge
Cleaver, whom we had seen in the Varda film, has been supposed to go back to jail and he
hadn't done so. Only a few days before that, he Godard, had been in San Francisco making a
film with Cleaver and at one point he had asked Cleaver's wife whether Eldridge was going to
Cuba or back to jail. She answered that he wouldn't go to Cuba because he wouldn't leave his
own country, but that he wasn't going to go back to jail either. He asked her whether, if herhusband were caught by the police, he would shoot. Her answer was "only if they shoot first."
As it happened, just two days ago Eldridge Cleaver had in fact disappeared. He emphasizes the
significance of this dateit is, he explains, the first time an American black movement had
gone underground.
He tells us that it is not very important to see a film. In this particular case, he says, you may
not be able to see the right version because the producer wants to change the ending. But in
any event, the message will not be lost. The case of Eldridge Cleaver is important, however,and that is why he has a proposition he wants to make to the audience. At this point, many
people, thinking they have got the message, start reaching in their pockets and rattlin florins
and half-crowns as a handy sum to contribute. But he keeps insisting on the fact that we have
all paid ten shillings to get in, and he says he knows that there are some people in the
audience for whom ten shillings represents quite a lot, and consequently his proposition was
that instead of seeing this film everyone should go to the box office, demand a refund and
send his ten shillings to the international committee to defend Eldridge Cleaver. His
involvement and sincerity are evident, so much so that the audience becomes a bit uneasy.
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At this point, there is a shout from the audience. "Can't we do both, see the film and send the
money?" Godard says no, that if anyone is prepared to send the ten shillings without giving up
the film, they should forego the film in any event and send twenty shillings to the defense
fund. During the course of this exchange he takes out a check and tries to hand it to director
Richard Roud but Roud smilingly keeps his hands to himself, so Godard puts the check on the
stage floor. Presumably it is intended to reimburse the National Film Theatre for the refunds
they will give patrons.
We felt it could go either one way or the other. It seemed only by chance that the tone at the
outset was set against Godard.
"Do you want us to suffer or do you want to help Eldridge Cleaver?"
"If people are dying in the desert, we don't help them any if we ourselves don't drink water."
(this from an African-accented voice)
Godard replies that that is just the standard liberal argument.
"If you are supposed to be a Communist, why are you bullying us?" Godard finally says he
wants a show of hands for all of those who want to deprive themselves of the film and send
their ten shillings to the Eldridge Cleaver Defense Fund. Very few hands go up. "That's just
what I expected." The shouts from the audience become a well of noise after this. "Cut out the
talk and get on with the show!" "I have a train to catch!" Godard breaks and runs for the exit,
in passing rounding a healthy poke at a young face in the crowd that has hitherto taken no part
in the events. As he disappears into the knot of people around the door, at stage left, he turns
back. "You're all fascists!" he shouts.
During the couple of dazed minutes that follow I finish reading "Who is Eldridge Cleaver?" He
is: "The first major American political figure to have gone underground rather than yield to a
system of justice which had sworn to see that he would not remain free to fight for black
liberation. . . . He is the first, but will not be the last, fighter against American imperialism
abroad and repression of its citizenry, to choose clandestine activity rather than certain
death."
A few people start leaving, but it is difficult to tell by their expressions whether they areleaving in sympathy or disgust with Godard. The young man who has been assaulted walks to
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stage center holding his mouth. He turns out to be a representative of the producers, Cupid
Productions, and he says that he is not involved in Godard's Black Power discourse, but that he
wants to say something about the film. He would seem to be about 25, has shoulder-length
hair and is dressed in rather elegant what-passes-for-Hippie style: lace shirt, velvet suit.
Through the tumult, directed at him, Godard, and nameless other individuals, he manages to
communiate that Cupid Productions has given Godard everything he wanted to make the film,
that it was a private financing arrangement, and that having put up the entire and indeed very
large sum of money required to finance the picture, the company felt that it should have some
right of control over its final content, which, he says, was in fact the legal arrangement which
had been made with Godard.
Roud then comes back to stage center saying he wants one more vote to be sure what were
the audience's wishes. With all stops out, the audience indicates quite vocally that it would like
please goddammit to see film. Okay, says he, and incidentally it will be shown with both
endings, first Godard's, then Cupid's.
In the meantime Godard is outside addressing a group of nonfascists assembled on the cold
ground under Waterloo Bridge who are there to see a showing of his personal copy. His fans
are of a mind to storm the Film Theatre, but he, apparently, is not, and he says in any case he
isn't English, they don't need a star to help them, that they can do it on their own. Some days
later he says that it is not a problem for him not to be of the same nationality in order to take
an active part in politics. ("It' s a reflex that we have learned from the bourgeoisie orimperialism.") He stays only for a minute, and then glassy-eyed, begs off, saying that he has a
plane to catch the next morning, and so departs for dinner with Bernardo Bertolucci and a few
other luminaries.
The film opens in an automobile graveyard, a car dump, full of black men. The wrecks that we
have tried to bury. The cast-oils of the white, industrial, capitalistic, consumer societyboth
blacks and cars. White women are brought inin virginal white nightgowns. A black man in a
Panther T-shirt says, "Is there anything so beautiful as a white woman's hair blowing in the
wind?" Their white virginal nightgowns are bloodied. Another black intones paeans to love,
patience, brotherhood and non-violence. The virginal whites are machine-gunned . These men
are the old and new black men at oncewe hear people say words that seem no longer to
have any meaning, we see acts that do.
A title flashes on screen "alL abOut eVE." Pretty little white girl in a wood. In her modern Eden,
Eve even has a telephone. She is calling peoplelike Lumumba. They don't answer. The white
Eve no longer tempts the black man. White men come to interview her. She answers yes to a
series of clichs and niceties . Example: "The lower classes have more sexual vitality than the
upper classes." Answer: "Yes." She is the voice of liberal democracy.
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Anglo-Saxon society (really America, for to Godard, England is a colony of America "that
doesn't even have the force to be a real slave") is fascistic, violent and dirty-minded. It is
symbolized by a bookstore where nothing but books of violence or pornography are sold
covers liberally illustrated with swastikas. Mein Kampf is intoned. Two bloody prisoners whocry for peace in Viet Nam are ritually slapped by all who enter the store, even a sweet-looking
little girl. The commentary states that the Americans have just what they wanta bit of war
and shooting, all covered by color television.
Titles give us many clues to the meaningtitles randomly painted on cars, walls or signboards
by Godard's wife"Sovietcong," "Cinemarxist."
It is the last two titles and the final scene that tells us what are really the central ideas of the
film. One title is "Changes in a society" with the letters ONE emphasized. The other, "Under
the stones, the beach," with URSS (French for USSR) and ONE emphasized. The second is a
translation of one of the now-famous graffiti of the May-June 1968 "French Revolution." The
moral to be had from their addition is that revolution will bring about Communism, but that to
Communism must be added the continuing possibility to criticize that society. This is the one
plus one of the Godard title. The message is reiterated in the very last scene as the body of a
white girl, killed by black men, white gown spattered with her red blood, is lifted into the sky
flanked by the solid black and solid red flags used together, among other places, in the French
student revolution. They are the flags of anarchy and Communism. The first must temper the
second, but the body of white liberal democracy (she is the same girl) must be offered up on
the altar of the black revolution to add One Plus One.
The final irony in the Godard ending is that the screen goes black and the sound track fumbles
and runs down and the Rolling Stones never finish the song entitled "Sympathy for the Devil"
they have been singing as a sort of basso continuo throughout the film. For Godard the
Revolution is not finished. It remains to be done, and he wants no facile endings. It is in fact
not quite as simple as One Plus One. For him, we have not yet learned to add.
The producers have learned to add, because they deal in money. In their ending the Rolling
Stones finish their song, and for American consumption the song's title becomes the film's title
and the package is neatly tied. All the teeny-boppers who will pay money to hear the Stones
want to hear the Stones. It adds up.
The producer, the ogre, the panderer to the public, the moneyman who massacres art andgets boffed on the chin. Who was he anyway? Answer: Iain Quarrier, Canadian, under 30.
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Leather jacket, mustard velveteen pants, paisley shirt, paisley tie. Floppy fedora-type plush hat
of deeper mustard. Long, vaguely mustard-color curls. He never doffs the Fedora, no matter
the surroundings. It is Wednesday. He has been in bed since Saturday. He says he got his discs
reworked when falling into a piano after Godard's punch in the jaw. His jaw doesn't hurt, but
his back does. He talks easily.
He is living with the black model Donyale Luna, and she comes along. On the few occasions
when she does talk, she does not seem to, nor does she seem to move, no, though alive, even
to live. She is not "photographic," at least not in the sense of photographic women who
instinctively turn and play and pose, waiting for you to find the view of them which you want
for yourself. She is sculptural, standing motionless in the round, still, ever so still. If you are to
see her beauty, you must move around her, she will not move for you. She is proud but not
vain.
Quarrier used to split the rent with Roman Polanski, but now that they've both made it,
Polanski has a house across the street. He has played in two Polanski films, Cul de Sac and The
Fearless Vampire Killers. He's been a stage manager and TV director , as well as an actor, and
has tried his hand at writing. "Polanski has been my mentor and guider. He's why I'm where
I'm at today."
"I only want to work with two kinds of people
the Godards, Tony Richardsons, the NicholasRays or the new directors. I'm responsible for this money. I've raised it and I want to be able to
use it to encourage lesser known film-makers, those that aren't such hustlers."
The money comes from a friend, Michael Pearson, the son of an English lord. He inherited. He
is only 23. "This guy has a half a million pounds that he has made available for films. We are
willing to do without profit, which is pretty unusual, but we just want the money back to keep
going. I disagree with my friend Godard. Films cost a lot of money to make, therefore they
have to be related to things that aren't related to art. He talks of film like any art. The canvasof the painter costs practically nothing. The canvas of the cinema means money. If I don't get
back my money from the Godard film, I can't give any to a new director who doesn't important
as the director. Then that should include the producer as well, and so why all this controversy
about the ending's being changed? I asked Godard why should films be free if bread is not free.
He answered 'I'm not a baker.' "
"In my opinion, if culture is free you don't want it. The museums are free in England and they
are less well attended than in France where they're not. After all Godard made the film for a
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commercial organization. But now that I think of it, he does have the idea that one can exploit
capitalism."
He'll jump at anything, he is a beautiful man, he parodies democracy, he may not be honestwith himself. I found Godard in Paris, in his study. He talked as if he weren't really there, as if
what he said had nothing to do with him. I had to strain to catch the words, but the meaning I
sometimes didn't.
Why had he made the film in England and not in America? "Because the money was there.
Because it was in English, and England is a colony of the United States. I had tried to do it with
Bobby Seale and he agreed, but it was awfully complicated because he had to be accompanied
everywhere, he had to be paid, and they didn't want to pay him. Still the pornography scene
would have been stronger in a shop on 42nd Street than elsewhere. Pornography and Nazism.
It's striking. There are swastikas on all the pornography books. In New York, three-quarters of
them: it's very connected. And the longer the War in Viet Nam goes on the more the women
on the covers of pornographic magazines spread their legs. I really only know New York, the
enormous garbage heap. They keep building, but it falls down so fast that one gets the
impression that the leprosy of the cave grows at the same rate as renewal, that everything is
getting filthy."
Why had he gotten involved with Cleaver and the Panthers? "Because it had become political.It's like the struggle of the FLN in Algeria, because there was racism there as well, worse even
than for the blacks."
What did he think about an armed revolution by the blacks? "I think that there will come a
moment when they will be too much oppressed and then they will. North Viet Nam did. Others
have."
What's your opinion of violence? (Roud's book quotes Godard as saying that violence
"threatens the happiness of us all.") To me he says "Like President Mao, I think it's necessary
to attack by nonviolence and to defend oneself by violence, whereas imperialism attacks with
violence and on the contrary defends itself by non-violence. To force television programs,
trucks or advertising on people who don't want themthey don't call that violence. For them
violence is shooting someone with a pistol, but there's a big part of the world for whom
violence is the other thing. That's imperialism, but they say no, no, it's liberalism, we have to
have order in the streets, it's nice and calm. It's the father who sends his sons off to bed
because it's 8 o'clock and children ought to be in bed at eight. Children think of that as
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violence, but the father says, no I'm being very nice, I'm only seeking your well-being. That's
imperialism for you."
Did he know personally any blacks in the United States? "Oh very few, very few. There is anoppression of the culture, of the language, of everything that has been completely stolen. They
are quite right in acting as they do, just as the workers are right in fighting against the culture
of the bosses. Perhaps theirs is a completely different world, and perhaps it's the white world
that got the upper hand, but there's no particular reason for it. One could learn about George
Washington because he lived in the United States, but there is no reason to teach an American
black about the Queen of England or the Russian Czars. On the contrary, they ought to learn
about Africa and that sort of thing, because they have been struck off the list. There is no
reason to write them off because they know perhaps how to do some things that others don't
know how to dowithout being either inferior or superior. I think it's normal that in Algeria
they say that one must learn Arabic, and that one must learn math in Arabic. After all, all math,
arithmetic was born in the Arab culture, and they will perhaps find interesting things that the
whites wouldn't find. And the blacks, it's exactly the same thing as far as music is concerned.
Leroi Jones is quite correct. Whites stole black music and transformed it to suit their taste."
"Culture has to come from the bottom up rather than the top down. It must involve more
those who are themselves involved in revolutionary action. Take myself, for example, I can't
talk about blacks, but I can record their statements. Very few people do."
Yes, but aren't you still on the top of the culture pyramid ? "On top, yes, but one must stop
being on top. Either by stopping completely and working in a drugstore or in a dimestore or
waiting until things evolve and one is finally obliged to cut oneself off."
And at this point, would there still be films? "I don't know. Not many I think. If you are good at
it, then you could do that. If not they'II find you something at which you are better."
Don't you think that this would simply recreate a system of classes in which those who are
good at making films would again constitute an elite? "That's what mustn't happen, because
everything will be better, they will be better criticized. One will be told, 'Your film is bad, so for
a year you can't make any more films, someone else will.' Whereas now they say, 'Your film is
bad,' and the director goes right on and makes another crummy film the next year."
And who will be the critics of these films? Will it be those who work in the factories? "No, butsociety will be better, so the problem won't be the same."
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What would he give as a definition of fascistic culture? "The problem is that one can't give
definitions just like that. One can give good examples. A film from the Hollywood of today. The
New York Times is a lesser example of fascist culture."
Did he know Cleaver personally? "In a film that I was making in the United States, I asked to
have an interview with him, a week before he disappeared . It's a film in 16 millimeter, a bit
amateurish, called One American Movie. It's associated with people from Channel 13, who
won't show it because they are like the New York Times. There's also an interview with Tom
Hayden. The theory was to interview people and then afterwards have the interview done
over by actors. People I chose arbitrarily. Well really it was to find, particularly at the
beginning, someone who symbolized America, that is money and imperialism, Wall Street, and
especially a woman rather than a man because that's in accordance with the American myth,where the woman has a rather important power, and then to show the people who are trying
to struggle against it. Then after that musicians or beatniks who try to escape, who at least
have a defense reaction, and then to show the blacks who have the most advanced position,
and at the end to show a child, a black child, because he is the most oppressed. And each time
to have it redone by an actor in order each time to show the relations between the supposed
reality and the supposed art. One sees an interview for ten minut es and then one sees the
text red one by an actor like he thinks it ought to be said. With Cleaver, for example, there is a
white girl who redoes his text, a white actress walking down Fifth Avenue saying it to the
passers-by."
"We went to that school Ocean-Hill, Brownsville, the one that caused everything to blow up.
They were very nice, but everything was a flop, because the actor was so afraid. It was a white
actor who redid the Wall Street woman. We had dressed him up in a Confederate uniform. It
was his first political act, and he was so shaken up that it flopped. Except that all of a sudden
he came up with something really funny. He had a sabre and he took an apple out of his pocket
and stuck it up on the end of the sabre and said, 'That's capitalism.' The film is half color, half
black and white. Very bad color. In America it's really the worst sort of capitalism. If you are
broke they give. you bad film, so I use cheap stock on purpose, explaining that this is the filmthat is reserved for revolutionary artists and blacks."
What about his problems of financing? "If Truffaut gcts money from, say, MGM, it's because he
does what MGM wants of him. That is to say, he doesn't know that MGM has gotten to him,
but in fact that's the situation. He thinks he's doing his thing, but in fact MGM accepts it. As for
me, I don't want to do things that MGM will accept. Hollywood can do a film on Che Guevara
because he isn't in America , but the idea that they have of doing a film on Malcolm X with a
script by Baldwinthat I don't think they can do. Because, even if they can do it, it won't be
released. The only people who can do it are the Black Panthers or someone like them.
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And the blacks here in France? "I think there's more of a problem of mtolerance than people
admit."
What experience did he have of it or them? "None at all."
(Winter 1968 )