Description

Two restless young men (Sami Frey and Claude Brasseur) enlist the object of their desire (Anna Karina) to help them commit a robbery--in her own home.French New Wave pioneer Jean-Luc Godard takes to the streets of Paris to re-imagine the gangster genre, spinning an audacious yarn that's at once sentimental and insouciant, romantic and melancholy ... Read more

Reviews (17)

The Godardian aesthetic reaches its apex...
Jean-Luc Godard has long been the darling of the French New Wave, beginning with the 'stereotypical' nouvelle vague film, "Breathless." While "Breathless" is the film that everyone regards as 'the one,' the true beauty in Godard's filmmaking is expressed with "Band of Outsiders." Once again featuring Godard's beautiful wife Anna Karina, "Band of Outsiders" is the kind of crime film that you're not entirely sure if you like or not. You know it's good, and you understand the mocking nature of it, but you're not sure if you like it.

Godard puts the viewer in a state of euphoria by spinning a tale of intrigue involving two 'criminals' and their female counterpart. This part of the story is the crime drama that we know and love. But at the same time, Godard is letting his imagination run wild, filling our minds with life's little pleasantries and random absurdities.

While Truffault's films as a whole are more widely recognized around the world, Godard truly is the grandfather of the French New Wave. Truffault's films are easy for average film viewers to watch, as he spoon feeds us one situation after another. Truffault is the Zemeckis of the French New Wave. Not a bad director, in fact a very competent one, just not one who is on the cutting edge, as is Godard. To begin to appreciate Godard, one must watch the master at work. And the best place to start is right here, with the relatively unknown and certainly underappreciated "Band of Outsiders."

Dancing the Madison in glorious black and white!
If there are any films that offer a wonderful sense of love for the cinema, they are the films of Jean-Luc Godard. But, as he explains in a brief interview from 1964 that is included with this fine DVD, he was also against film; that is, against the conventions and rules that predominated French cinema. So he introduced unconventional methods of telling stories and making movies and decided to include elements that films typically left out. "Band of Outsiders" is a playful, unconventional, mesmerizing tale of small-time gangsters and young love set in 1960s Paris. Its source material runs the gamut from the pulp crime novel on which it is based to the American B-movies and film noir that inspired its look. It's Godard's best love letter to Paris since "Breathless," and also one of the last of his true New Wave films.

The story might be simple enough: Arthur and Franz enlist the help of the young, beautiful Odile to stage a robbery. But if the story is simple, everything else around it is not. Here we find allusions and homages to Arthur Rimbaud (the poet whom one of the characters is named after), Franz Kafka, film composer Michel Legrand, "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg," T.S. Eliot, Shakespeare, American cartoons, Jack London, Charlie Chaplin, Andre Breton, Andre Malraux, and numerous others. That's Godard doing his thing, and even if we miss those allusions, there's so much more to be cherished: the famous minute of silence, the running visit through the Louvre, the dance scene, the glorious closeups of Anna Karina, riding on the underground metro, the trio driving through the streets of Paris.

"Band of Outsiders" is playful, wondrous, hilarious, breezy, but at the same time melancholic, dark in its undertones. Raoul Coutard's photography gives it a stark look, but its playfulness is its most alluring aspect, along with Godard's wonderfully appealing, inventive visual language. It might not be the finest example of the French New Wave, nor is it as perfect as a work of art as "Breathless" and "My Life to Live," but in its flaunting of cinematic invention, its richness, and its embodiment of pure cinema, it's in a class by itself and certainly a film that should be seen, if not owned, by lovers of cinema. Its most memorable moments will remain in your mind forever.

Many Godard fans, myself included, have been waiting eagerly for this Criterion edition of "Band of Outsiders." It's a remarkable digital transfer; the images and contrasts are crisp; the mono soundtrack is as clear as possible. The additional features are worth the price of the DVD alone, including a visual glossary that explains many of the film's allusions and a brief interview in which Godard explains the philosophy behind the New Wave. Criterion has really outdone itself with this disc, and that's saying something.

I recommend that, even if you do not know French, you should watch this film at least once with the subtitles off since they sometimes obscure the closeups that make this film so memorable. When the camera is on Anna Karina's face, believe me when I say you don't want anything to stand in its way.

Line Dance
Saw this the other day. Didn't know it was Godard classic. The Dance Scene, I didn't want it to end. It was so flakey, kind of a line dance to French Pop sound of 1964, hard to describe. Anna Karina is sutle knock out, frumby in most scenes, but she Ann Margaret's in dance. The rest of the movie is a playful romp, a nonsensical take off on American heist movies of the 40's. Not totally successful, but worth it for sophisticated.

Classic Godard!
This is classic Godard here. This is a very fun and entertaining film.

There are a few scenes in the film that are quite famous and it's a delight to have seen it.

If you love true cinema, experience Band of Outsiders.

DVD Review
Band of Outsiders is easily Godard's most accessible and most enjoyable film. This is early 60's New Wave spirited, movie convention bashing Godard, not the abstract inpenatratably political Godard of the late 60's and on. Spontaneous and joyful the picture has that wondeful feel of Paris in the early 60's. Godard punctuates the film with brilliant witty asides that are among his finest. The Louvre tour and Madison dance are some of the coolest moments on film. In fact the entire movie conveys a great sense of cool, a quirky cool. For me the film is especially notable because it introduced me to Anna Karina. This is one of the seven films she made with Godard and with this film I became captivated by her prescence as icon of the New Wave.

Video: Thank you Criterion for providing a gorgeous transfer of the film. Extremely clean, perfectly sharp, nice contrast and this film is nearly 40 years old!

Extras: Way to good, this is cheap for a Criterion disc and has more extras then most. A fun bonus identfies several in jokes and literary references, although the narrator is annoying. A short documentary actually has footage of Godard directing on set and is great for historic purposes. A recent interview with Coutard is interesting, but the highlight for me was an recent interview with Anna Karina. My college term paper on Karina took a lot of material from this. Another great bonus is a short silent film starring Karina and Godard. This short is in the film Cleo 5-7 and is lots of fun is you know a thing or two about Karina and Godard's relationship. Godard's own trailer for the film is wonderful and as I write this I notice their is a lengthy booklet which I didn't get around to reading. Awesome job Criterion one of your best DVDs. ... Read more

Amazon.com essential video

Nana (Anna Karina) is a Parisian salesgirl who drifts into prostitution.The story is told in the form of a documentary, separated into 12 tableaux.Godard has said that the division into tableaux was to emphasize the theatrical nature of the film, and also because when you look at something for too long you end up knowing less about it.Breaking it up into bite-size chunks can be helpful.What we see is a romantic portrait of womanhood caught between her own role (she wants to be an actress) and that which she is allowed or compelled to do.This is brought home most poignantly when Nana goes to a showing of Carl Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc and her tear-streaked face is intercut with that of Maria Falconetti playing Joan, about to be led to the stake. Add to that the further layer that we have a Danish actress (Karina) in a French film, watching a French actress (Falconetti) in a Danish film, and the implications play out grimly.This is one of Godard's finest films, both austere and compellingly watchable. --Jim Gay ... Read more

Reviews (21)

"Il faut se preter aux autres et se donner a soi-meme."
(Lend yourself to others and give yourself to yourself---Montaigne): ominous advice for the heroine of one of Godard's most easily digestable and congenial films. A seamless and cohesive twelve chapter documentary, _My Life to Live_, starring Godard's then wife Anna Karina, succeeds at striking the perfect balance between the filmmaker's more esoteric artistic tendencies and the ability to relate to a more mainstream audience. Loosely, the plot involves Nana, a 22-year old woman who leaves her husband and takes up casual prostitution. No doubt it is also an allusion to Emile Zola's novel about a female courtesan of the same name. Brilliant camera work is especially evident in the opening scene where we are introduced to Nana and her husband not by their faces, but by an affronting view of the backs of their heads. This visual device is used throughout and is contrasted with some mesmerizing shots of Joan-of-Arc-coiffed Karina, staring directly at the camera. If you thought Godard too intellectual or abrupt, give this film a try.

beautiful moving movie, godards best along with weekend
this movie i think will surprise most fans of godard accustomed to his formalism or his quotations of culture and art that some people regard as childish. which it does not mean that the movie is not interesting formally but i rarely cared about form since it seems it might be the movie in which godard cared the most about its content and characters; which cannot of course be said about the more famous and more representative of godard's style "breathless" which not surprisingly influenced some rather shallow, self indulgent filmakers such as martin scorsese or quentin tarantino. the movie moved me so much it made cry. the story of a young woman who leaves her unhappy relationship with her husband to seek an opportunity in the movies but instead must become a prostitute to support herself, is presented in a almost documentary-like style which lets the events speak for themselves and which lets the viewer see inside the girl's soul. theres no cheap manipulative music or exagerated acting. the camera style resembles more the simplicity and stillness of a movie by bresson or dreyer. this style was also used to great effect in "Masculin/Femenin" but here it leaves from the attention of the viewer which will most likely be caught by the great touching performance of anna karina. i cannot do anything right now but recommend this movie which just shows the awesome potential of cinema as an artform.

One of the best films I have ever seen
I watched this film in a theater full of people who did not like this film. They were loud, obnoxious, and groaned at the ending. I am embarassed and appalled to say that this was during a screening session at the film school I currently attend. I personally found this to be one of the most amazing films I have ever seen, and because of this was devestated: it was the film that I have always wanted to make, and now will never be able to without seeming like a pale imitation.

As soon as the word "FIN" came up on the screen, complaints were flying at the screen. My fellow students lammented either about how the ending was "contrived" or "too rediculously sad." It is my very strongly held opinion that they missed the entire point of this film. This film was not about the ending. This film was not even about the "plot." This film is about the human connections that we make and the human connections that we fail to make. It is about conversation at its most banal and at its most liberating (sometimes seperated by mere words). It is about life, it is about morality, and it is about filmmaking.

Although the silouette shots that compose the flawless opening credits sequence are beautiful, they are immidiately outdone by the cinematography of the first conversation of the film. This is a conversation with opposing motivations. The two people "engaged" in it (I use this term in the loosest sense) are not connecting with each other, and, indeed, only seem passively interested in each other.

YOU DO NOT HAVE TO HEAR A SINGLE WORD OF THIS CONVERSATION TO UNDERSTAND IT.

Granted, the words shared are spectacular, and their performance is even better (amazing considering the lines were given to the performers only a few short moments before the camera began rolling) - especially the moment in which a phrase is uttered several times just to explore its different potential meanings. But the words are utterly superfluous - the visual language is all that one needs to take in. Every shot is of the back of the performers' heads. We do not see their faces. They are expressionless. They are ciphers. Their conversation is tossed off, it does not even connect on a surface level. We not only never see their faces, but also never even see them in the same frame. It is disconnection and discontentment completely and utterly represented on purely visual terms.

Needless to say, the amazing camerawork continues throughout the film to the point where it would be impossible to analyse it all (not to say that my previous comments were analyzation - you'd need to write at least a 10 page essay just to approximate what the first sequence illustrates effortlessly), so just watch the film yourself, take it in, and enjoy it.

May I suggest that if you do not enjoy the film the first time (as my fellow students certainly did not), try to focus on other aspects of it. There are a tremendous number of layers to this film, and any one element of it demands a viewing of its own. If you still can't wring any enjoyment out of it, well, then, I'm terribly sorry. You're missing a wonderful experience.

Essential
Although the basic DVD extras (a commentary track, for starters) are missing, the print quality is very good and the movie is absolutely great - first-quality Godard and Karina.

a great film for little money
I believe someone complained about this film being full screen, but I'm pretty sure that's the original aspect ratio. I have to give a hand to Fox Lorber. Although Criterion does the best with older films, at least they have made these great films available on DVD at LOW prices! Where I live there are no decent video stores, so if I want to see something like this I have to buy it.
Now about the film.......the cinematography is beautiful.........and it doesn't hurt that it's main subject is Anna Karina.....i love it when she does 'itsy bitsy spider' to find out her height, and the editing in the cafe when the gun shots are fired & just about everytime she smiles......this was the first time I laid eyes on her *heart beats* ..now i want to see A Woman is a Woman badly.......the word is Criterion will release it this year.....yippee!! ... Read more

Description

With A Woman Is a Woman (Une Femme est une femme), compulsively innovative director Jean-Luc Godard presents "a neorealist musical, that is, a contradiction in terms." Featuring French superstars Anna Karina, Jean-Paul Belmondo, and Jean-Claude Brialy at their peak of adorability, A Woman Is a Woman is a sly, playful tribute to - and interrogation of - the American musical comedy, showcasing Godard#s signature wit and intellectual acumen. The film tells the story of exotic dancer Angéla (Karina) as she attempts to have a child with her unwilling lover Émile (Brialy). In the process, she finds herself torn between him and his best friend Alfred (Belmondo). A dizzying compendium of color, humor, and the music of renowned composer Michel Legrand, A Woman Is a Woman finds the young Godard at his warmest and most accessible, reveling in and scrutinizing the mechanics of his great obsession - the cinema. ... Read more

Reviews (14)

A glorious celebration of life!
When you watch "A Woman is a Woman" you enter a cinematic fantasy world created by Godard, one of our most inventive filmmakers. It is a world filled with color, music, humor, heartbreak, fluid tracking shots, creative editing and groundbreaking audio tracks. When you watch films like Coppola's "One from the Heart" or the recent "Moulin Rouge" you can instantly see how much "A Woman is a Woman" influenced those films. The big difference is Godard's film was made in 1961! Years ahead of it's time. The acting from Brialy, Belmondo and Karina is nothing short of brilliant. They play off of each other so well and look like they're having a marvelous time thru-out the film. The music score by Michel Legrand is one of the highlights of the viewing experience. There are so many musical interludes that pay homage to Hollywood musicals and at moments grand opera. They're just breathtaking! But remember, this is Godard's version of "life as musical." The actors don't break into song at any given moment. The musical score accents their dialogue as if they were in a musical, operatic production. In reading the other reviews posted here I am shocked to see people write the film off as a piece of boring fluff. If you keep an open mind and allow yourself to enter the world created by Godard in "A Woman is a Woman" you will be greatly rewarded. You'll wish you could go back in time and be on the streets of Paris sharing Anna Karina's red umbrella!

"I'm Not Without Shame. I'm a Dame!"
With the minor exception of the new english subtitles messing up this great final line, the Criterion Collection edition of Godard's "A Woman Is A Woman" is yet another outstanding release, on par with their "Contempt" and "Band of Outsiders" DVDs. Great picture/sound quality and great extras. An early short film (from 1957), "All Boys Are Called Patrick" is alone worth the price of the DVD. It's nice to see even in 1957, Godard had his style down; it's quite a funny bit of cinema. Wong Kar-Wai clearly liked this short-film, because there's a scene from "Chungking Express" lifted straight from it. Also included on this DVD is a 1966 French television interview with Anna Karina and she's enchanting as always (interesting to, because this comes right after her break-up with Godard), plus you see a bit of Serge Gainsbourg talking about Anna! If you're a Godard and/or Anna Karina fan, this is a must-own DVD. The movie itself, "A Woman Is A Woman", is one of Godard's most expiermental yet more accessible films. It's without doubt, his funniest film with several verbal and sight gags that will cause you to laugh-out-loud. And Raoul Coutard's camera work is amazing as usual. This film was definitely a few years ahead of it's time, seeming more in line with post-LSD flicks like Magical Mystery Tour and The Thomas Crown Affair than anything else form the early 1960s. Also, there's Michel LeGrand's outstanding, hyper-active score, which foreshadowed his Thomas Crown work.

There She Goes...
The New Wave has been assessed in every intellectual capacity, and using every aesthetic criterion imaginable, but what makes the New Wave the most beguiling of cinematic phenomenon is that, in essence, it is a declaration of the love of cinema, through cinema itself.

AWOMAN IS A WOMAN ("Une Femme est une Femme"), Godard's third film, is as much a milestone as his own "Breathless" two years earlier. The basic premise is effectively that of a kitchen sink drama; an exotic dancer's (Anna Karina) whim to have a baby is met with consternation by her boyfriend (Jean-Claude Brialy), who is further dismayed when she asks a mutual friend (Jean-Paul Belmondo) to act as a surrogate father.

But the neo-realist background gives way to a film shot in bold, giddy colours and synchronised to Legrand's harebrained soundtrack - A WOMAN IS A WOMAN is best described as a musical with no singing. Actors frequently affect choreographed like stances and positions, their conversations punctuated with overtly dramatic interventions from Legrand's score. Our heroine expresses her desire to appear in an American musical, "with Gene Kelly and Cyd Charisse", before adopting the relevant deportment for the approval of the audience, who are constantly consulted, bowed to, winked at and cavorted with by actors revelling in front of Godard's lens.

It is Godard's preference for the actor, in favour of the character, that makes A WOMAN IS A WOMAN an unparalleled experience in spontaneity. Filmed without a script, the actors wear their own clothes and concoct their own dialogue. Belmondo in particular frolics in the new-found fame gifted to him by Godard, expressing his wish to be present when "they're showing Breathless on television", and grinning at the audience as he namedrops new acquaintance Burt Lancaster. Later, he meets Jeanne Moreau in a bar, and asks her "how JULES ET JIM is coming along".

And it is with Truffaut's masterpiece that A WOMAN IS A WOMAN shares its essential raison d'être - the embodiment of femininity through a dazzling and formidable singularity, in this instance Anna Karina, whose whims, mood-swings and impetuosity are her right and privilege as a woman, as all women. "Women have a right to dodge issues, men don't", she tells Brialy, shortly after decreeing the stupidity of modern women, "these women who imitate men". A smile turns to a frown or a tear in the blink of an eye, and back again just as quickly, in an infectiously joyful and touching performance that is among cinema's most engaging. Karina, the new wave bride, worked with husband Godard on seven of his greatest films, but it is this wonderful and dizzying cinematic cocktail that is Godard's most translucent love poem to an extraordinary actress touched by an impulsive genius and unique beauty.

Along with JULES ET JIM, Jacques Demy's LOLA and Godard's own BAND A PART, A WOMAN IS A WOMAN is the most energizing and uplifting of all New Wave films. Ironic, gleeful and baffling, it is essentially summed up by Brialy himself, who towards the film's delightful conclusion declares: "I don't know if this is a comedy or a tragedy, but it's a masterpiece"

To be re-released by Criterion
A Woman is a Woman should be re-released by the Criterion Collection in the 2nd half of 2004. Save your money from buying the expensive Fox-Lorber version.

Woman is a Ho, at least in this case.
I can forgive Godard for any number of sins but being cute is not one of them. This cloying, silly movie is embarassing, a total fluff from one of the most daring filmmakers ever. What led him to this? Love for Karina make his head go pop fizzle dizzy wizzy? This is Godard as an auteur of Hallmark I-Love-You cards. ... Read more

Amazon.com essential video

As the French New Wave was reaching its maturity and filmgoing had evolved as a favorite pastime of intellectuals and urban sophisticates, along came Jean-Luc Godard to shake up every convention and send highfalutin critics scrambling to their typewriters. 1965's Alphaville is a perfect example of Godard's willingness to disrupt expectation, combine genres, and comment on movies while making sociopolitical statements that inspired doctoral theses and left a majority of viewers mystified. Part science fiction and part hard-boiled detective yarn, Alphaville presents a futuristic scenario using the most modern and impersonal architecture that Godard could find in mid-'60s Paris. A haggard private eye (Eddie Constantine) is sent to an ultramodern city run by a master computer, where his mission is to locate and rescue a scientist who is trapped there. As the story unfolds on Godard's strictly low-budget terms, the movie tackles a variety of topics such as the dehumanizing effect of technology, willful suppression of personality, saturation of commercial products, and, of course, the constant recollection of previous films through Godard's carefully chosen images. For most people Alphaville, like many of the director's films, will prove utterly baffling. For those inclined to dig deeper into Godard's artistic intentions, the words of critic Andrew Sarris (quoted from an essay that accompanies the Criterion Collection DVD) will ring true: "To understand and appreciate Alphaville is to understand Godard, and vice versa." --Jeff Shannon ... Read more

Reviews (39)

the greatest sci-fi film ever: not a special effect in sight
'Alphaville' is Jean-Luc Cinema Godard's 'The Wizard of Oz', the story of an American stranded in a strange fantasy city, who must find its controlling wizard before he can return home, evading forces sent to destroy him. Eddie Constantine reprises the role of Lemmy Caution that made him famous in 1950s France, as the roughneck FBI agent who fisticuffed, dame-bothered and slang-winked his way through a series of simple-minded thrillers. here he has become Special Agent 003, sent by his superiors in the Outlands to assassinate Professor Von Braun, the brains behind Alphaville, a futuristic city controlled by a philosophical computer, and which bears more than a passing resemblance to Gaullist Paris.

Alphaville is a classic dystopia, its minions brainwashed, dehumanised and branded; photographs of its leader on every available wall; the surveilling computer present in every room. dissidents are tortured or murdered in elaborate rituals (e.g. diving-board firing-squads in swimming pools before a gallery of socialites). Double-talk couched in the complexities of dialectic numb the brain; dictionaries are censored daily.

Much of the fun in Godard films of this period lies in their playfulness with familiar cinematic genres; and the trappings of the gangster and spy genres, the detective story and sci-fi adventure (brawls, shoot-outs, car-chases, interrogations, (literal) femmes fatales etc.) are made ridiculous by their slapstick treatment, comic exagerration and over-emphatic music. 'Alphaville' may be a pulp adventure, but the world Lemmy must negotiate is not one of genre, but of ideas, about reality, history, politics, freedom, love, poetry, dreams, the mind, logic, conformity, escape, all reverberating in an environment based on One Big Idea.

'Alphaville', like Chris Marker's similar 'La Jetee', is less a futuristic satire than a reflection of contemporary France (its dark and dense mise-en-scene like a negative photograph of the familiar city; with its extraordinary modern architecture reconfigured as a giant prison), with memories of the recent Nazi Occupation. But, as its name suggests, Alphaville is also the first (cinematic) city of post-modernity, where meaning and authority is decentred, where language ceases to have any shared value, where time ceases to exist, the past and future are abolished, and the mindless live in an eternal present, unable to learn from mistakes or hope for improvement, unable to acknowledge the value of culture. Lemmy seems to be set up as a very 'human' interloper, a repository of 'our' feelings and values in a culture that would seek to suppress them. But Godard called him a Martian', and he is a stranger to Alphaville, which, after all, is our world: he is a figure from pulp fiction , a risible set of signifiers who can only offer Natasha a choice between who gives her orders.

Most dystopias, like '1984' and 'Blade Runner', ultimately fail, because they are as cold and inhuman as the worlds they portray. 'Alphaville', especially in its visionary climactic half hour, shares more with Nabokov's novel 'Bend Sinister' - positing whimsy, idiosyncrasy, gags, Surrealism (Eluard, Bellmer), pop art, the absurd, the unexpected, the daft, the poetic, the aesthetic, the cinematic (especially Melville's 'Deux Hommes Dans Manhattan'), Anna Karina's gorgeous coats against the Brave New World.

But we shouldn't get too comfortable in this ''us vs. them', anti-totalitarian model: Professor Von Braun, with dark, impenetrable shades permenantly welded, is the clean-cut image of the director; he too forces Anna Karina (his daughter, Godard's wife) to perform for strangers and suppress her personality; he, like Godard, is the creator of Alphaville.

The Beauty of Individuality Exemplified
It is a rare thing to see a film that not only shows one what life is, but espouses a concrete vision of what life should be. Even more rare is a film which does this by situating characters in a world where one would not want to live thereby isolating the very essence of what makes on human. Godard's Alfaville not only accomplishes this feet but it creates an artistic embodiment of all that true individuality stands for. More potent than 1984 and just as beautiful as novels such as Atlas Shrugged, Alfaville shows one who is willing to watch and listen the true value and purpose of freedom and the ominous results when that freedom is removed from their lives. The music, cinematography and overall directing could only be done by an individual who's sense of life is majestic and bordering on, if not completely genius. This is not only great science fiction but it is art at its highest ideal, a work that makes me proud to be human.

a weird film and quite interesting
This review is for the Criterion Collection DVD edition of the film.

This film which is one of several involving the character Lemmy Caution remains popular to this day as one of the few science fiction films with no special effects. It is a good view of a technocratic society an has elements which at the time seemed like fantasy but in our computer age seems more feasible.

The film also has a voice over that is really deep and raspy that sounds very interesting.

The DVD does not have any special features but still is a good one to buy.

The Eternal Theme of the Individual VS The State
It should not surprise anyone that a film from Jean-Luc Godard will invariably attract the usual assortment of Post-Modernist, ethically and politically retarded, anti-Western afficionados. Some of that can be seen in the reviews for this film, both on this page and throughout the Internet. The truth however, is that while Godard was a borderline socialist and critical of the supposed decadence of "America", he was more of a heroic individualist than anything else and his pre-1970 films all demonstrate this fact.

Alphavile is without a doubt, his greatest achievement and it is a work that speaks of an artistic sensibility all but lost in the France of today, which is overun with rampant anti-intellectualism and a worship of un-reason.

Godard takes the Bogart-like "Lemmy Caution" character out of his former slew of 40/50's French spy thrillers and puts the very same character into a future where a technocratic dictatorship exists. In doing so, the very best idealism of American pulp-fiction is given back its soul by a French director, Godard, who truly was interested in the world of ideas.

This film not only shows why a totalitarian state must be destroyed, it also demonstrates some key philosophical concepts in the process. Through Godard, we learn that it is language that first must be assaulted before one can enslave man, then mathematics, then history and finally, the human mind itself. We can see parallels to this line of thinking through the world today and yet, how ironic that it is today's France that probably best embodies Godard's nightmare come to life (for a Western democracy of course).

The cinematography of Alphaville is superb, as is the musical score by Paul Misraki which is one of the finest I have experienced, for it reaches its crescendo with the most important line in the film, almost as an answer to a question. The theme of Alphaville is simple enough - the Individual against the State, but the soul of Alphaville reaches higher to a level where Man is sanctified against all intrusions on his life, liberty and happiness.

Anna Karina plays the part of the Ideal Woman still capable of feeling and understanding the value of love and that immortal word that may still one day save humanity - "I". It is a rare thing to find a work of art that speaks so eloquently to the sublime beauty of Man, Humanity and Individualism. Godard does this and more in Alphaville and for that, he should go down in history as one of Europe's finest artists.

Note - One would need to watch this film about 3 times to completely grasp every important nuance. Also, Anthem and 1984 are good reads along the same vain.

An Analysis of Genre
As usual with Godard moments stand out. In this film the most absurd sequence involves a diving platform in what looks to be an eastern bloc recreational center and a number of black sweatered and bereted revolutionaries with sub-machine guns standing on the pool deck spraying the divers as they dive. Whats it all mean? Well I suppose you could say its Godards way of commenting on the wests ability to turn even political oppression into mass entertainment.

I like a number of Godard films: Breathless, My Life To Live, Contempt, Pierrot Le Fou, First Name: Carmen, Hail Mary, In Praise of Love --still Alphaville remains kind of a hard one for me to get into. Perhaps because I am not too keen on science fiction. It seems the people who like this film are the ones who like science fiction in general. To me science fiction is full of cliches and so is film noir and so to me it seems Godard is using these genres to address cultural cliches -- and yet he is also making pointed comments on modern culture as he does so. You can always count on a Godard film to be smart and even though its not one of my favorites Alphaville is no exception to that rule.

Anna Karina looks great as always. Unfortunately for Lemmy Caution she is the daughter of Alphaville's overlord. No one really believes the future will look like a parking garage nor that a super-computer will run our lives and that people will become vacant automatons. Only a handful of early twentieth-century authors thought the future was leading us toward Alphaville. In the context of the swinging sixties sci fi just looks campy and noir even campier. Whats going on in Godards head? Hard to say in this film. To me its funny, but a surprising amount of people seem to take this sci fi stuff seriously.

I think the new wave band of outsiders enjoyed genre hopping because it gave them a chance to flex their movie knowledge. Plus genres come loaded with rules which the new wavers can then subvert -- so that is the fun of Alphaville, subversion of genre and in this case its a double dose of subversion because Godards subverting two genres, sci fi and noir. I think its interesting to note that in both of these genres men and women relate in steretypical and fatalistic ways -- and the new wave was about being hyper-conscious of these film conventions. Perhaps what Godard is really saying is that in order to invent life anew we must break free of these conventions. This is of course something his characters often fail to do although in some films they try. ... Read more

Description

Visionary of the French New Wave, Agnès Varda captures the atmosphere of Paris in the '60s with this portrait of a singer searching for answers as she awaits test results from a biopsy. A chronicle of two crucial hours in one woman's life, Cléo from 5 to 7 is a spirited mix of vivid vérité and melodrama. The film features a score by Michel Legrand (Umbrellas of Cherbourg) and cameos by Legrand, Jean-Luc Godard, and Anna Karina. Criterion is proud to present Cléo from 5 to 7 in a beautiful digital transfer supervised by the director, with the color opening sequence restored. ... Read more

Reviews (8)

Lousy Copy
While the movie is delightful, this DVD should have been condemned. The titles are unreadable 30 to 40% of the time. What slappdash work on a good movie. The producers should be ashamed.

Great movie - AWFUL DVD!
This film is as significant as it is delightful because it is even more relevant today than in the 1970s. Today, most of Europe is populated by immigrant workers from all parts of the continent and Africa. And there is still the same kind of pecking order (those of you who've seen the film forgive that pun!): The Swiss look down on Italians, North Italians look down on Southern Italians, they in turn look down on Turks etc. The film bravely laughs at all our cultural flaws and salutes them.

And Nino Manfredi... what a gem! Part Charlie Chaplin and part Marcello Mastroianni, he's a wonderful blend of pathos and sweetness with just the right drop of vulgarity.
BUT...! Be forewarned, the DVD is the worst I've ever seen! The print they transferred is FULL of scratches, pops, and splices that chop off whole sentences. The light scenes are often washed out and the dark scenes are far too dark. And there are a number of occasions where the subtitles were lost in the white background. I can't imagine that they couldn't find a decent print of this film anywhere. Still, if you can't find a rental copy anywhere, it's still better to have even this awful version than no version at all.

A Great Film
This is one of my favorite films because it is multi-layered and rich. It makes me laugh, it fills me with sadness and it makes me think. An exquisite comedy, full of historical, social and philosophical implications, it is characterized by creative directing, wonderful acting, engaging cinematography and a great script. Buy it!

Impossibility overwhelms the dream
Although all performances are beautifully done, Nino Manfredi demonstrates an awesome level of acting skill that draws the audience into the midst of his trials and laughable tribulations.

The best comment I ever read by a reviewer of this film (many years ago)was: "You'll laugh 'til your heart breaks."

And so it goes. Don't miss it!!!

too much chocolate, not enough bread!
BREAD: funny at points, the main actor was a sensitive and sympathetic character...at first at least... also the portrayal of a a man out of his country, out of his element struck a symbolic chord in me (= a person not at home in him/herself, not on a connected path, a lost soul out of joint)

CHOCOLATE: the character went too far at being comedic and became a buffoon, so that it was hard to empathize with him...and at that point the story lost its symbolic strength. also, by the plot going over the top, becoming too wild and absurd, it lost its simple power and just became dull, frankly.

i couldn't finish watching it. ... Read more

Amazon.com

An elegantly baroque exercise from the middle of his brief and brilliant career, Chinese Roulette finds Rainer Werner Fassbinder exploring the sinister side of a weekend in the country. At an isolated mansion, a husband and wife bump into each other--with their lovers in tow. Their lame daughter shows up with her mute nanny, adding to the tension, and the festivities culminate in a spiteful truth-telling game. Fassbinder choreographs the claustrophobic action as though it were Last Year at Marienbad filmed as soap opera parody, with glittering contributions from cinematographer Michael Ballhaus and RWF's longtime composer, Peer Raben. It's fun to watch, although the decadent sense of a snake chasing its tail ultimately makes this one feel like minor-league Fassbinder. Along with stock-company regulars Margit Carstensen and Brigitte Mira, the cast includes a pair of former Godard heroines (still looking stunning), Anna Karina and Macha Meril. --Robert Horton ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Hypnotically stylish, witty, but problematic Gothic thriller
Chinese Roulette (1976) is a hypnotically stylish, witty and puzzling Gothic thriller. Its several intertwined mysteries - some of plot, all of character - make it diabolically involving. Yet while its ambiguities are a strength, some nag more than they resonate. The DVD transfer is vivid.

After focusing on films about individual characters in the previous three years (Effi Briest, Fox and His Friends, Mother Kusters Goes to Heaven), Fassbinder here creates a striking ensemble piece. Although each actor gives a finely-etched performance (including Fassbinder regulars Margit Carstensen, Ulli Lommel, and Brigitte Mira; plus two actresses associated with his idol Jean-Luc Godard: Macha Meril and Anna Karina), the screenplay is another matter. Several of the characters' names seem heavily symbolic, with some kind of tension between names with a biblical resonance (Christ, Angela, Gabriel), and others with a Greco-Roman bent (Ariane/Ariadne gave Theseus the thread to find his way out of the minotaur's labyrinth), Irene in Greek means peace. The implications behind each of those names can be forced into a reading of the film as a whole: Gabriel "announcing" a new world order (in his loopy "philosophy"); Ariane, in the final moments, helping lead Gerhard out of a sexual "labyrinth," etc. But after three viewings, the film feels top-heavy with symbols, yet they never come together as clues to reading the film, either straightforwardly or ironically. And the film's final image of a ghostly throng (their banner looks vaguely Nazi) marching outside the Christs' chateau does not meaningfully help clarify, or complexify, anything. The screenplay feels half-baked, although in other films Fassbinder is usually dead-on in his writing - including his use of subtle layers of meaning.

However there are several details to admire, including the sly way he plays with our expectations. Instead of some hand-wringing melodrama about infidelity, his four "adulterers" are remarkably sensitive to each other's foibles. And they are in committed, long-term infidelities (not a paradox in Fasbinder's world): Ariane and Kolbe have been together for seven years, Gerhard and Irene for eleven. And it was a stroke of twisted genius for Fassbinder to make sweet-faced, disabled little Angela, who loves to hug her dollies, the antagonist. Although we understand the possible motivation for her revenge on her parents, she is still a chilling creation. She also embodies one of Fassbinder's key themes in her manipulation of other people - either directly (her sadistic bossing of the sinister housekeeper), indirectly (her constant but unspoken provocation of her mother), or both (masterminding the climactic Chinese Roulette game).

Although Angela's scheming helps keep the narrative moving, like the other characters she never gels either as metaphor (too murky) or as a person (too vaguely drawn). Of course in many other films, Fassbinder did create characters who are simultaneously symbolic and real, like Effi Briest, "Fox" Biberkopf, Mother Kusters, and dozens of others. Despite many fine, small moments, the problems of character in this film also affect the overall dramatic scheme.

The dramatic problems reveal themselves clearly in the brief final act - the Chinese Roulette scene (reputedly one of Fassbinder's favorite pastimes). Although he masterfully builds up to the game, when it arrives the characters were not developed enough to give this climax its necessary force. I expected it to reveal something momentous not only about them but about the picture's themes. But it does not. And although there is plenty of psychosexual ambiguity, it feels more atmospheric than integral.

Throughout, Fassbinder seemed to use his eight characters to create a microcosm - but of what? A critique of the upper crust and/or upwardly mobile; of materialism? A satire on the foibles of desire, romantic habit, matrimony (at the end Fassbinder prints the marriage vows over that final eerie long shot of the possibly-Nazi ghosts)? Or, more darkly, does this group represent the profound failures of self-understanding which lead to fascism (the recurrent Nazi motif)? This film needed more of the psychological and thematic fullness of, say, Renoir's Rules of the Game (1939) or Bergman's Smiles of a Summer Night (1955), which may have inspired it. (Fassbinder is a great filmmaker, who worked under tremendous strain: In 1976 he wrote and directed three feature films, plus staged a major production of Clare Boothe Luce's play The Women, even as he prepared to film it.)

The film is much more successful in the mysteries it suggests through image, which resonate long after memories of the story fade. Some are hauntingly poetic: Angela's diabolical dolls, a shot of a forest reflected onto a window and all of that reflected yet again in a mirror, the decaying head of a stag in the forest, and several more. Those images feel like a gloss on the macabre nature of Gothicism itself (with its love of death, decay, and doppelgangers), as much as on the particulars of this film. Those fleeting images seem to have bubbled up from some dark recess of Fassbinder's fantastically rich imagination, and that instinctively he put them in where they felt right. They do not have a pat meaning, which you can easily put into words; they are genuinely, richly ambiguous.

[3-1/2 stars rounded up to 4, because this film is worth seeing. Also, many Fassbinder fans consider this one of his greatest works.] ... Read more

Reviews (4)

uninspiring
I kept waiting for this film to take off but, being that it's only 84 minutes long, I eventually realized that it wasn't going to happen. There are scenes in the movie that do delve into some cerebral concepts that are, at times, interesting. Unfortunately, they are offset by other scenes and situations that seem to demean what they appear to profile. For example, there is a scene involving torture. I was not looking to see any disturbing shots of excessive brutality. However, after a series of supposedly serious tortures, our "hero" escapes and goes on, physically and mentally, as if nothing had happened. There is also an overnight relationship that supposedly turns into love. If that relationship is "love" then something must have gotten lost in the translation. What we're left with is a lot of existential soul-searching with a minor dose of politics mixed in. In fact, given the apparent plot of the film, the amount of politics we encounter is absurdly minor. The director may have erred in thinking the whole world knew the intricacies of the Algerian revolt.

To those who are devotees of the Existential Philosophy, this movie is probably a minor masterpiece. I must confess that a negative characterization of Albert Camus in the movie left me thinking it was either an inside joke or an inside squabble. After all of the endless driving, the constant smoking and the often pointless dialogue, I am less apt to watch another movie by Goodard

Godard's "Lesser" Masterpiece
It's somewhat of a pity that "Le Petit Soldat" is typically not seen as one of Godard's best films, just as it is a pity that both critical and popular reception have largely been lukewarm ever since its release. The French government in 1960 certainly didn't like it. They censured Godard because of the film's political ambivalence about the Algerian war for independence, as well as its depiction of torture, a technique that was accepted and used by both the Algerians and the French. As a result, "Le Petit Soldat" was not released until 1963. By that time, the war had been over and the political furor over the film had died down.

Viewers have been far more kind to the film, but not always by much. Perhaps it is the way in which Godard combines film genres only to exploit and discard them. Is it a war film, a pulp crime saga, an incomplete drama, or all three? (Or none of the above?) Perhaps it is the fact that the film's protagonist, Bruno Forestier (played by Michel Subor) is completely confused and uncomitted in his political views. That, of course, was Godard's whole point about his character and the issues of the day, but many viewers wanted a protagonist who actually had a specific world view. Or, perhaps it is the film's overall lack of narrative coherence and the way in which the film's ending is oddly abrupt. Reactions such as these are valid, to be sure, mainly because they are the very type reactions most of Godard's films inspire. He took the familiar, time-worn conventions of the cinema and turned them upside down.

Stylistically, "Le Petit Soldat" picks up where "Breathless," Godard's first film, left off. The photography is stunningly beautiful (kudos to Godard's cinematographer, Raoul Coutard). The jump cuts are present, although they aren't as extreme as they are in "Breathless." There are also wonderful Godard trademarks: location shooting, as opposed to set pieces (Geneva is the background this time), a cinematic love affair with the automobile (all everyone seems to do in this film is drive), and numerous literary and cultural references.

In terms of its cinematic style, "Le Petit Soldat" is a triumph. It is also notable, on this account, because it is Anna Karina's first appearance in a Godard film. He hired her for her looks and then married her. Like his later films with her, though not to the same extent, "Soldat" is a study of Karina. She is beautifully lit, and the camera lingers on her in several key scenes. Fortunately for Godard, Karina also turned out to be a wonderful actress.

"Le Petit Soldat" simply follows Bruno as he is forced to assassinate a political enemy while, in the process, he meets and falls in love with Veronica (Karin's character). Aside from that, there isn't much plot; it is at the service of dialogue and images. Bruno's capture and torture are not easy to watch, even though there is no blood or grim violence; but that should not deter one from viewing or admiring this film. Godard, better than anyone, knew how to elevate the B-movie to art, and he does it with "Le Petit Soldat." Sure, the story doesn't cohere, but that's the entire point. And whether it does or not is, in a sense, beside the point; this film is worth seeing simply for its photography, for seeing Geneva in the early 60s, and for a fine example of Godard's early New Wave style. Cinephiles should own it.

Finally, a few words about the DVD: in wholly uncharacteristic fashion, Fox Lorber's print of this film is actually quite good. That's because the BBC remastered an acrhival print for the DVD release. Generally, the transfer is commendable. Some night scenes are unclear, but that could be due to Godard's own intent or to the small budget he was working with. The audio track is decent as well.

One can't expect many DVD extras for Fox Lorber, but there is a fairly informative 15 minute commentary from scholar David Skerritt, who provides some background information and a general analysis of the film.

Barely Effective Noir
Jean-Luc Godard should be applauded for trying to pull off films such as 'Le Petit Soldat', for in such films he really goes his own way in using film as an artistic medium. His storytelling here is very French 'Noir', with some 'chilling' night street shots and tenuous close-ups of complex visages. Also Michel Subor does a fine job in speaking very specifically about his impressionistic/esoteric thoughts on life, death, and love. All of these aspects are to be appreciated in a French film, for very few filmmakers outside of France have a good handle on the existentialist/'stark' artistic aspects of filmmaking.

What bogs this particular classic down is the first half hour or so with shot after shot of people getting into and out of cars and pulling up/whizzing off down the road. No amount of imagination can give this protracted pattern artistic value. It's just plain boring- and I have a pretty tolerant attention span. But what does all this do to move the story forward? Rien. The other problems with this film are the plot and realism. Firstly the plot- what could have been a gripping story weaved around this striking subject matter of allegiances and covert activity (torture, double agenting, etc.) during the French-Algerian War, is very watered down here and too simplistic. It rarely gets out of Marseillaise (or wherever 'Le Petit Soldat' purports to take place), and we see very little, if nothing of the Arabs, Algeria, or places or characters outside of a small, insular spy-vs-spy world. That would be OK if the story was carried along realistically, but it is not, which brings me to point number 2. The torture scenes are just not realistic in the sense of being convincing. If this is torture, then the torturers must have taken their lessons from a day care center, because they do very little to the main character to convince us he is actually in a great deal of pain. He comes out of his torture "with a little burn" on his wrist, and does not seem to be psychologically effected at all. For comparison, read Frederick Forysth's "The Day of the Jackal" for what was really going on with these interrogations. I am not saying we need to see brutal torture to make this film work, just better acting in the aftermath perhaps.

Overall, the film is watchabale, but barely. What halfway redeems it is some of Subor's expostulations on love, death, beauty, and the oblique.

This film is shot in black and white and is spoken in French with English subtiltes. The DVD is of good pictorial quality and comes with a few nice extras- which help.

A rewarding, yet challenging piece from Godard
When watching any film by Godard, you'll immediately understand why he was called the enfant terrible of the French New Wave, his sharp attacks and recriminations on the film world and political world are by now world famous. Yet to see the films now, close to forty years on, is a treat to the discriminating film viewer, who is immensely tired of the banal color-by-numbers storytelling that Hollywood has been churning out with more and more frequency, should no douobt be enthralled by what Godard has to show and tell.

In looking at Le Petite Soldat, one can immediately notice how Godard's once-revolutionary irreverent style was usurped piecemeal by the filmmakers who followed, but the unique voice that is Godard has yet to be duplicated and his commentary on loyalty and obligation to a potentially unethical cause/affliation is just as applicable today as it was when this film was new.

Le Petit Soldat represents Godard in the heart of his genius creative spurt that included such films as A Band Apart, Les Carabiniers, Alphaville, Vivre Sa Vie.

It's hard, if not impossible to say which Godard film is most accessible, because that label usually applies to standard filmmaking, something that Godard never quite did - even with his hugely popular Breathless. Le Petit Soldat is a good introduction to Godard, with a good dose of violence and suspence to carry one through the philosophical parts. ... Read more

Amazon.com essential video

Jean-Luc Godard has been called the most self-conscious, themost realistic, and the most modern of filmmakers.To his appreciators this means he owns up to the fact that a movie is a movie, that at any moment in one of his films you know you're watching a film by Jean-Luc Godard.His films are self-aware in a way that films never were before him.Pierrot le Fou achieves a rare spontaneity and naturalness, largely due to the presence of Jean-Paul Belmondo and Anna Karina, but also because of Godard's willingness to let go of any pretense to an illusionary or mimetic style, so-called "realism."What story there is has Pierrot (Belmondo) escaping from his boring life along with Marianne Renoir (Karina), who is chased by gangsters.But this is just an excuse to film a kind of essay to lost love, a poem to Karina that is delightful.If "Pierrot goes wild," then so does Godard, with Belmondo standing in for him in his pursuit of and journey with Karina.Godard is not for everyone, admittedly, but for those with the wherewithal to enjoy his films, they are receiving new life on DVD.Whatever coterie taste survives today has been distributed in multiple across the Internet and via the agency of video rental bins, perhaps all the more potent for that reach.Let's hope so. --Jim Gay ... Read more

Description

Regina is the story of a family in turmoil, and drama at its compelling best. As Papa, an aging and ailing husband, Anthony Quinn gives an emotional and heart-wrenching performance as a man confused and disillusioned. Ava Gardner is equally brilliant as his wife, a woman haunted by memories of past indiscretions. This is a chilling drama of obsession and torment. ... Read more

Amazon.com

The six films in the Criterion Crime Wave 6-Pack were shown together on on the International Film Channel in January 2004.

Although best known for his samurai classics, Japanese master filmmaker Akira Kurosawa proved himself equally adept at contemporary dramas and thrillers, and 1962's High and Low offers a powerful showcase for Kurosawa's versatile skill. The great Toshiro Mifune stars as a wealthy industrialist who receives a phone call informing him that his son has been kidnapped, and by unfortunate coincidence the ransom demand is nearly equivalent to the amount Mifune has raised for a corporate coup. What follows is both a tense detective thriller, as the police attempt to track down the kidnapper, and a compelling illustration of class division in Japan--the "high and low" of the title. Far be it from Kurosawa to make a mere thriller, however; this loose adaptation of the Ed McBain novel King's Ransom provides the director with ample opportunity to develop a visual strategy that perfectly enhances the story's sociological themes. --Jeff Shannon

In Toyko Drifter, Seijun Suzuki transforms the yakuza genre into a pop-art James Bond cartoon as directed by Jean-Luc Godard. The twisting narrative takes hitman "Phoenix" Tetsu (Tetsuya Watari) from deliriously gaudy nightclubs, where killers hide behind every pillar, to the beautiful snowy plains of Northern Japan and back again, leaving a trail of corpses in his wake. Suzuki's extreme stylization, jarring narrative leaps, and wild plot devices combine to create a pulp fiction on acid, equal parts gangster parody and post-modern deconstruction. --Sean Axmaker

There's Bonnie and Clyde--then there's Martha and Ray. One-shot writer-director Leonard Kastle set out to make a film about lover-murderers that was everything Arthur Penn's movie was not. He succeeded. Consequently, The Honeymoon Killers, based on the Lonely Hearts Killers case of 1949, may be too lurid for some. But there's a heart beating inside its (tawdry) chest and Kastle clearly cared about these two crazy, mixed-up kids who should never have met. But met Martha (Shirley Stoler) and Ray (Tony LoBianco) did and proceeded to fleece several widows before doing them in. The film isn't graphic in its violence, but each murder is increasingly disturbing. Dramatic lighting and dark passages from Mahler keep the mood close and clammy throughout. --Kathleen C. Fennessy

Seijun Suzuki's absolutely mad yakuza movie Branded to Kill bends the hit-man genre so out of shape it more resembles a Luis Bunuel take on Martin Scorsese. Number three killer Goro Hanada (Jo Shishido) is a hired killer who loves his work, but when he misses a target, he becomes the next target of the mob. Goro is no pushover and easily dispatches the first comers, but the rat-a-tat violence gives way to a surreal, sadistic game of cat and mouse. The legendary Number One mercilessly taunts his target before moving in with him in a macho, testosterone-laden Odd Couple truce that ends up with them handcuffed together. Kinky? Not compared to earlier scenes. The smell of boiling rice sets Goro's libido for his mistress so aflame that Suzuki censors the gymnastic sex with animated black bars that come to life in an animated cha-cha. --Sean Axmaker

1965's Alphaville is a perfect example of Jean-Luc Godard's willingness to disrupt expectation, combine genres, and comment on movies while making sociopolitical statements that inspired doctoral theses and left a majority of viewers mystified. Part science fiction and part hard-boiled detective yarn, Alphaville presents a futuristic scenario using the most modern and impersonal architecture that Godard could find in mid-'60s Paris. A haggard private eye (Eddie Constantine) is sent to an ultramodern city run by a master computer, where his mission is to locate and rescue a scientist who is trapped there. As the story unfolds, the movie tackles a variety of topics such as the dehumanizing effect of technology, willful suppression of personality, saturation of commercial products, and, of course, the constant recollection of previous films through Godard's carefully chosen images. --Jeff Shannon

The Belgian satire Man Bites Dog is dark, dark, dark--but also right on the money in its sly sendup of the media's fascination with violence and its complicity therein. This mock documentary has a trio of filmmakers shooting a cinéma vérité feature about a garrulous serial killer who lets the film crew follow him around as he selects victims and then dispatches them. But at what point does filmmaking become participation? These hapless documentarians soon find out as their subject eventually pulls them into his world, including a gun battle with a rival film crew and their own criminal star. Gruesomely hilarious, with a deadpan wit that's hard to resist. --Marshall Fine ... Read more

Reviews (3)

Criterion Crime Wave / IFC crossover promotion
From the other persons reviewing this 6 DVD bundle there seems to come confusion as to why Amazon would group said discs. The reason is for cross promotion with The Independent Film Channel (IFC) who will show all six movies on January 30th and 31st of 2004. Of course, all are Criterion titles as well, and the budding collector may feel compulsion to buy all of these at once to achieve a discount (an extra 5% PER title above individual prices here at Amazon) and saving on S&H. Aside from the tie-in to IFC, Amazon is supporting a contest with prizes to be given away and you can register here at this site.

All that being said, there is no other reason these titles would form a cohesive box set, but then again, it is not being sold as such. Unlike other Criterion box sets (which to this point have always showcased a single director), this is working off of a theme and not someone's body of work. There is no mention of a "box" to house all these DVDs, but instead are just bundled together in a group. Each of these films though are solid titles, with Man Bites Dog being far and away my favorite and the two Suzuki films probably being the least appealing (though, still good films).

If your first introduction to the Criterion Collection is from watching these films on IFC at the end of the month, you will come to find the company to be the Rolls Royce of DVDs. From film restoration to bonuses to retrieval of obscure cellulite, Criterion is unparalleled in the retail field and is a must for any serious film students or lovers of great cinema.

Great movies, strange price
This is a great collection of classic films. I have all
but one on DVD or Laserdisc.

I am confused on the pricing. ..

Great movies, silly collection
Each and every one of these films are fantastic...from the police procedural of Kurosawa's High & Low to the cinema verite nastiness of Man Bites Dog to the goofiness of Suzuki's Tokyo Drifter and Branded to Kill. That being said, they are all different one from the other and have little in common (with the exception of Tokyo Drifter and Branded to Kill...both by Suzuki), and other than an at times tangential relationship to the crime genre (Godard's Alphaville is "crime" film only to the extent that a private investigator is used as a plot device), it's strange why in the world these films are grouped together. Well, all of them are issued by the Criterion Collection...but even Criterion Collection boxed sets have a stronger kinship, as in the Hitchcock and Kurosawa boxes.

Truly a mystery why these are being marketed this way. ... Read more