In 1967, Jean-Luc Godard released his film “Week-end.” One of its scenes, in which the two protagonists stubbornly overtake an extensive traffi c jam in a Facel Vega Facellia cabriolet,qualifies as the longest tracking shots in the history of cinema. The camera slowly passes by the line of about forty motionless cars whose occupants employ the most varied techniques to kill time. In a sense the viewer is also waiting, for seven long minutes, wondering what the cause of thetraffic jam might be. In what for Godard is a metaphor for life—the camera’s journey ends in a pool of blood, the victims and the crippled cars have meanwhile been cleared from the street—Pascal Cavin sees, somewhat nostalgically, an impressive catalogue of cars. By isolating and labeling the individual vehicles in forty-five stills, he creates a thorough historical inventory of the automobile types populating the streets in the late 1960s.
