A Camera is a Camera

My recent warming up to Martin Scorsese is not without reservations. The post 60's gangster films/culture that has taken over so much of our media is too mind-numbing for words. I would love to wake up tomorrow and never hear another pair of assholes from tough town rolling off their tongues "fuhgedaboudit"s and "dumb cunt broad"s and "fucking ziti"s like their uses added inches to their penis. Of course, the world is not that kind, and so we each have to learn to live with stupid people and mafia caricatures for a while. Damn. Though in all fairness, the phony world of hip-hop gangsta-shizz has made the Scorsese's and the Coppolas look like James Joyces (and no, the Ulysses references in The Departed do not make that last statement ironic).

But like I said, I am warming up, and Mean Streets is a pretty terrific film. Did he half to keep remaking it? No.

It's hard not to notice Scorsese's camera work during Harvey Keitel's entrance into his club. And for someone like me, who really doesn't care about camera work, to be noting it, well, I think that in itself is worth noting.

Also note Scorsese's own voice-over acting for Keitel's monologue about the black dancer -- another reason to love the scene. (Hat tip to Liz for the video!)

So yadda yadda yadda I'm watching Jean-Luc Godard's A Woman is a Woman with a friend recently and I'm struck by a similar scene where the incomparable Anna Karina enters the Zodiac Club.

Is it me or is the camera work pretty similar? It is, so the question is whether or not this was thievery, a deliberate homage, or simply a coincidence (just like a former roommate once said "there are only so many ways to write a melody" after I played for him the theme to Star Wars followed by the theme to King's Row). Certainly anyone with my roommate's frame of mind shouldn't be an artist (luckily he wasn't) but it still makes me wonder whether or not Scorsese's resemblance to Godard in this particular scene was unintentional.