Jean-Luc Godard's film essays of the 1960s: the virtues and limitations of realism theories

Godard's films of the 1960s actively engage with and challenge the tenets of realism theories put forward by Siegfried Kracauer and André Bazin. Montage, camera movements, staginess, playfully subversive soundtracks and disjointed narratives are used to problematize Kracauer and Bazin's concept of realism in film. Godard's films show that the long take can be as abstract as a montage sequence, that realistic locations do not enhance realism, that the idea that film is the result of a purely mechanical process is questionable at best, and that a spatial continuum is not essential to the filmic representation of events.