NECROPOLITANS

Filming something is already a rupture -- it is a ruin in potentia. But it can only become a real ruin through projection-destruction.

Precisely what is impossible in the digital shimmer.

SPEER: The building on the Zeppelin Field was begun at once in order to have at least the platform ready for the coming party rally. To clear ground for it, the Nuremberg street car depot had to be removed. I passed by its remains after it had been blown up. The iron reinforcements protruded from concrete debris and had already begin to rust. One could easily visualize their further decay. This sight led me to some thoughts which I later propounded to Hitler under the pretentious heading of "A Theory of Ruin Value". The idea was that buildings of modern construction were poorly suited to form that "bridge of tradition" to future generations which Hitler was calling for. It was hard to imagine that rusting heaps of rubble could communicate these heroic inspirations which Hitler had admired in the monuments of the past. My "theory" was intended to deal with this dilemma. By using special materials and by applying certain principles of statics, we should be able to build structures which even in a state of decay, and hundreds or (such were our reckonings) thousands of years, would more or less resemble Roman models.

To illustrate my ideas I had a romantic drawing prepared. It showed what the reviewing stand on the Zeppelin Field would look like after generations of neglect, overgrown with ivy, its columns fallen, the walls crumbling here and there, but the outlines still clearly recognizable. In Hitler's entourage this drawing was regarded as blasphemous. That I could even conceive of a period of decline for the newly founded Reich destined to last a thousand years seemed outrageous to many of Hitler's closest followers. But he himself accepted my ideas as logical and illuminating. He gave orders that in the future the important buildings of his Reich were to be erected in keeping with the principles of this "law of ruins."

Godard's own weepy Necropolis of the Cinema is built under the dictates of this pretentious Law of Art-Directed Ruins. And the poor guy doesn't even have one tenth of the amused irony that Speer does.

Orale! Showbiz kids makin'  movies of themselves...yet again.