ABSTRACT
Contrary to what’s often been said, Godard’s alienating images-aggressive quick cuts, rapid editing, discontinuities, fractured images-do not so much undermine the words as frame them. Even the dissonance of the squawking sea gulls empowers Shakespeare’s language all the more. Burgess Meredith’s voice becomes sacerdotal with “She’s gone forever! / I know when one is dead…She’s dead as earth. Lend me a looking glass…” (5.3.260ff). At the end of the play the “looking glass” replaces the map as expressive object, only by now the imperial “give me” has softened into the chastened king’s “lend me.” The transition from map to mirror represents the shift from anticipation to participation, from a bright future to a dark present, in which Lear will see better but too late. Of course, as with the map, the looking-glass never appears in Godard’s film.
