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passive emotionalism' (Sterritt, 1999: 12). Godard's intention to subvert traditional cinema is
generally believed to be the stylistic mode through which he articulated his political intention
to criticize modern society and its mass media 7 (Sterritt, 1999: 20-21). For Douglas Morrey,
the most important vehicle of Godard's criticism of society is represented by dialogue, the
recurrent use of the interview format, and voiceover commentaries which often become meta-
commentaries performed by Godard himself. (2) This verbal component can be read as the
most prominent element of the Brechtian lesson that Godard transposes into cinema. Morrey
argues that Brecht's distanciation techniques are deployed in Vivre sa vie (1962) in the format
of twelve tableaux, an approach confirmed by Godard himself (Morrey, 2005: 39), and
further examples of such techniques are found in 2 on 3 choses que je sais d'elle, (1967) for
example, when characters directly address the camera, and when unusual frame compositions
accompanied by commentaries draw attention to the artifice of the film-making process.
The educational function that Godard wanted for his cinema reached its peak in the
collective films in which he participated, films which also exemplified an orthodox Marxist-
Leninist approach. Critical responses to Godard's voiceover commentaries were mixed,
Morrey referencing and implicitly endorsing Sterritt's view regarding the scene in Week-end
(1967) where 'the extraordinarily long and didactic political speeches delivered by two
garbage men' arguably marks the point 'where the spectator's patience runs out' (Sterritt in
Morrey, 2005: 76). As regards Godard's involvement in collective film-making with the
Dziga Vertov Group, and the project's aims and implied audiences, Morrey asserts that while
it is understandable that films like Pravda (1970) with their 'relentless onslaught of Marxist-
Leninist analysis' were aimed 'at specific groups of committed militant activists', it is also
true that they 'missed a crucial political opportunity' to address a wider audience in the
vibrant political ambience of post-1968 France (Morrey, 2005: 94-95). The notion of
producing films for an extremely narrow implied audience - for an elite political vanguard in
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