Word: godards
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
WEEKEND. Jean-Luc Godard gives the bourgeoisie a good drubbing in a satire that might have been sharper had its straight-faced Maoist political harangues not been so dull...
...Chinoise. If Godard's current films--reportedly staged cinema-verite, interview-oriented, documentary political essays--represent a completely new development in his work, then we can consider Made in USA, Deux ou Trois Choses que Je Sais D'Elle, La Chinoise, and Weekend transition pieces between the narrative power of Pierrot le Fou and the films to come. The first two are easily dismissable as films which fail to solve problems finally turned into assets in La Chinoise: audience alienation through revelations of the camera itself and of actors as actors; a growing feeling that truth must extend into...
Weekend, Jean-Luc Godard's version of the apocalypse, will undoubtedly be reviewed at greater length when some enterprising distributor brings it to Boston; it is at once a film so brilliant and so infuriating thta it not only provokes controversy in a given audience but within any single mind. Renata Adler's answer to reconciling its disparate elements was her suggestion to walk out and have a cup of Colombian coffee during the dull parts; I really haven't got the nerve to go that far, and suggest only that you accept the film's steady degeneration after...
...decisions complement the didacticism of the young Parisian Maoists by omitting all but the starkest and most basic cinematic devices, also by reminding us constantly that we're watching a movie. Perversely, the lean movements and bright colors give La Chinoise charm and humor (not, I suspect, two of Godard's favorite critical adjectives) and make its polemicism entertaining...
...political content is lightweight (contrary to American popular opinion, Godard is anything but the idol of the French student revolutionaries) but it contrasts well with the other-facets of the film. For example, having established a motif of red paint on white walls, the multi-shaded greens of the train and apartment-house assassination sequences make the real world a complex support of Francis Jeanson's assertion that the students are drasticalliy oversimplifying. But the ending replaces conclusive directorial statement with irony, and signifies that Godard didn't know what kind of statement he wanted to make...