Sound as character
“When I recall Godard’s early work, I think about his use of sound as much as anything else, including all those car horns and cash registers that are not only the sounds of modern life but become, in Godard’s hands, extra characters in his movies from the mid-to-late Sixties on. Think of that extraordinary tracking shot in the supermarket in the underrated Tout va bien (1972). Oranges, coffee, oats, paper towels, meat, are checked out and purchased at a rapid rate while Jane Fonda, brilliantly cast as an American reporter named Suzanne, walks back and forth, observing commerce at work.”
Hilton Als, Godard’s Women (New York Review, Sept. 23, 2022)