I would like to express my appreciation and thanks to the following people, who in many different ways have helped me to bring this book forth: to Ernest Callenbach, editor of Film Quarterly, for his advice throughout the entire project and, above all, for his friendly and comradely support of my work; to Bernadette MacBean, for her insights and advice, for her warm generosity in the sharing of responsibilities, and for her emotional support; to Susan Fernandez, for working so hard and so well on the final editing that I simply can t envisage doing without her on my next book; to Hubert Dreyfus, for his critical observations and encouragement; to Bertrand Augst, for his stimulating enthusiasm; to the editors of Cinéthique, Gérard Leblanc and Jean-Paul Fargier, for their many friendly and comradely discussions in Paris; to Henri Langlois, of the Cinémathèque Française, for having provided me and so many others with such a marvelous cinematic education; to Tom Luddy, of the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, for his intelligent programming of films; to Herbert Marcuse, whose interest in the cinema may be small but whose interest in the struggles of men and women for liberation is grand; to Dusan Makavejev, whose intensity of personal feeling and of social commitment is an inspiration; to Valerie MacLean, whose own intensity of personal feeling is an inspiration; to Masoud Mostowfi, for his friendly support and solidarity; to Jules and Helen Seitz, for their warm logistical support; to Robert and Leslie Carabas and to William and Μarie-Joseph Horwich, for their warm encouragement and frequent hospitality; to Gino Lofredo and Carlos Broullón of Tricontinental Film Center in Berkeley, for their friendly and comradely support of my work; and to Jean-Luc Godard and Jean-Pierre Gorin, without whose films, as the saying goes, this book would not have been possible; and, finally, to The Mabelle McLeod Lewis Foundation, of Palo Alto, California, whose generous grant helped me in the writing of this book.
The following chapters, which first appeared in Film Quarterly, have been reprinted with the permission of the University of California Press and the Regents of the University of California.
“Politics and Poetry in Two or Three Things I Know About Her and La Chinoise” Summer 1968.
“Politics, Poetry, and the Language of Signs in Made in USA “ Spring 1969.
“Weekend, or The Self-Critical Cinema of Cruelty,” Winter 1968-69.
“‘See You at Mao’: Godard’s Revolutionary British Sounds’ י Winter 1970-71.
“Godard/Gorin/The Dziga Vertov Group: Film and Dialectics in Pravda, Struggle in Italy, and Vladimir and Rosa,” Fall 1972.
“La Ηora de los Hornos: ‘Let Them See Nothing but Flames!’ “ Fall 1970.
“The Ice- man Cometh No More: He Gave His Balls to the Revolution,” Summer 1971.
“Rossellini’s Materialistic Mise-en-Scène of La Prise de Pouvoir par Louis XIV “ Winter 1971-72.
“Sex and Politics: Wilhelm Reich, World Revolution, and Makavejev’s WR: The Mysteries of the Organism “ Spring 1972.
“The Working Class Goes Directly to Heaven, Without Passing Go: Or, The Name of the Game Is Still Monopoly,” Spring 1973.
“Godard and Rocha at the Crossroads of Wind from the East” originally appeared in Sight and Sound. Permission to reprint this material was given by the British Film Institute.
Illustrations have been obtained through the courtesy of the respective distributors of each film and through the generous assistance of Tom Luddy of the Pacific Film Archive, Ernest Callenbach, editor of Film Quarterly, and Mel Novikoff of San Francisco’s Surf Theatres.