The Films of Jean-Luc Godard (Suny Series, Cultural Studies in Cinema/Video)
Wheeler Winston Dixon's new book presents a macroscopic view of Godard's career to date, covering every film or video he has ever made. It is divided into five chapters, which correspond more or less to the five film-making periods of MacCabe's biographical schema, except that he divides the New Wave into two at Le Mepris, an elegy for a decayed studio system (incarnated in Fritz Lang) which he sees as marking an irreversible disenchantment with the industry, portraying Prokosch, the producer (played by Jack Palance) as 'simultaneously ruthless, vain, childish, arrogant, stupid, greedy, self-deluding'.   --London Review of Books, September 17, 1998