Description

Part poetry, part journalism, part philosophy, master filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard's Notre Musique is a witty and lyrical reflection on war through the ages. The film is structured into three Dantean Kingdoms: Hell, Purgatory and Heaven.The journey begins in Hell, represented by modern war and then moves to Purgatory, set in Sarajevo.Finally, Paradise is conceived as a small beach guarded by Marines from the United States.At the same time, the film also follows the parallel stories of two Israeli Jewish women, one drawn to the light and one drawn towards darkness. ... Read more

Reviews (4)

A visual poem of hope beyond horror
Godard has offered us perhaps his best work since "Le-Week-End"
(not cialis folks)in 1967. The arche post-modernist film-maker has given has a subjective charcter, Olga, the French-Jewish journalist/martyr is his first totally compelling female character since his ex-wife Anna Karina, who lit up his work from 1961-65.

JLG, himself, seems to have mellowed a bit, and like many septaganarians, his musings may be turning to the "invisible world" beyond the veil.

Loosely based on Dante's "Divine Comedy," "Notre Musique" gives usvisions of Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven. This redemptive movement gives us hope in the face of the wars that have virtually detroyed 20th century Europre, and of the tremendous horror modern man has inflicted on minorities he considers a nuisance (American Indians, victims of war, Palestinians, Women, Muslims,Jews, Bosnians, Blacks...). This isn't new for Godard, but the outrage is replaced by sorrow in the face of the eternal repetition of atrocities. inequalities. and injustice.

Godard mourns the "masculinization" of women with his film bit about film shot/reverse shot. And Sarjevo has become the new Auchiwitz- or Hiroshima. We see how much war, masculine child-like war, has traumatized our civilization, and how we still are helpless in the face of this primal instinct.

Some may see "French anti-semitism"in his his treatment of the fascinating interview with the very western looking Palestinian, who says, in effect, the only reason the plight of his people are known is because of their relationship with "The Jews", both victims of European Nationalism.

In Olga's ascension, in the short final section, to Paradise after her martyrdom in Israel(perhaps indicative of Godard seeing signs of impending fascism in the "Neo-Con" contrived"roadmap" of today's Israel- not original but dramitcally poignant.) we see a retun to nature, as in "The-Week-End." and our return to our origin
in "the garden" A hopeful sign that we all may begin, not necessarily be born, again.

Welcome back JLG, perhaps, like Luis Bunuel in his 70's, your bestwork may be yet to come. Sadly, this isn't for everyone,
but wouldn't it be wondeful if it could be.

Godard's new film is way beyond belief
Jean-Luc Godard's overpowering but insanely confusing new film "Notre Musique" is an astonishing symphony of garish colors, violent images and a jarring musical score. Godard, an icon of the French New Wave, uses every technique at his disposal to create a solemn reflection on the questions of war, evil and human nature. But the film's grave, weighty maxims don't really add up to any clear profundities. The film is a bizarre and ambitious experiment -- a mixture of narrative fiction film with documentary -- but it ultimately leaves its audience behind.

The structure of "Notre Musique," modeled on Dante's "Divine Comedy," is divided into three parts: Hell, Purgatory and Paradise. The homage to Dante is one of the most obvious references in a film filled with them, which tends to amount to allusion for allusion's sake. Godard is well known for his practice of quoting, paraphrasing and referring to past works of art, though his tastes are so obscure that it's nearly impossible to follow along.

The first segment, Hell, is a disturbing ten-minute collage of images of war. The short clips were culled from all sorts of sources; Nazis from the Holocaust documentary "Night and Fog" play alongside stereotyped Native Americans from Hollywood Westerns.

Godard's tremendous skill as an editor is evident throughout "Musique," especially during this first sequence. He weds violence and brutality to the powerful music of numerous classical composers, including Sibelius and Tchaikovsky. The effect of the perpetually pounding pianos is overwhelming, though numbing rather than emotional. The same is true for the section in its entirety; showing scene after scene of gruesome death, Godard does not so much affect his audience as alienate them.

The second part of the movie, Purgatory, is its bulk. Its loose narrative is centered on a real-life conference, European Literary Encounters, held in Sarajevo. Godard follows a cast of tangentially related fictional and real-life characters as they travel in Sarajevo during the conference. Among the people playing themselves are Godard, the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwich, the Spanish author Juan Goytisolo and French authors Pierre Bergounioux and Jean-Paul Curnier. The internationality of this real-life artistic community is particularly interesting, especially in the way Godard uses it in order to universalize his messages.

The protagonist of the film is Judith Lerner (Sarah Adler), an Israeli journalist from Tel Aviv. She and Olga Brodsky (Nade Dieu), a French Jewish woman, wrestle with the Israeli-Palestinian crisis, which serves as Godard's microcosm for modern armed conflict. In one of the movie's most memorable scenes, Judith interviews Darwich about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The poet argues that even as they have suffered under the Israeli occupation, the Palestinians have benefited in publicity. "The world cares about you, not about us," Darwich says. "You've brought us defeat and renown." Judith's response rings all too true: "We are your propaganda ministry."

But identifying with this scene, as with the entire film, requires genuine knowledge on the subject, making "Notre Musique" something of an elitist work of art. The other obvious shortcoming is the rapidness and arbitrariness with which Godard moves from character to character and idea to idea, leaving the audience no time to absorb them. As a result, the film's many self-consciously profound insights into the world come off as glib and even shallow. (For example, one character randomly remarks, with a straight face, that Russians have no concept of evil because of Russian syntax.)

The scenes in Purgatory have little thematic connection or character development to speak of. Instead, where Godard envisions Hell as absurd and inexplicable war, he seems to regard Purgatory as a world of perpetually fruitless wrestling with morality. Though this idea sounds wonderful in concept, the film's open-ended nature quickly becomes tiresome.

Perhaps the most interesting part of Purgatory is its setting, Sarajevo, the city where World War I originated. The film shows it to be a damaged and wounded city, though one undergoing a healing process; the run-down bridge in the city that Judith visits during its reconstruction is an elegant symbol of this transition.

The centerpiece of the film is an address Godard gives at the conference. He speaks on the subject of "text and image," using a cinematic technique he refers to as "shot and counter-shot" as a metaphor for the duality of human nature. He shows a scene from the 1940 "His Girl Friday," arguing that Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell are two halves of one whole. It is infinitely confusing, but a wonderful moment nevertheless.

The title of the film translates to "Our Music," a phrase that seems to refer more to film than anything else. By mixing real-life and fictional characters, Godard challenges the boundary between movies and real life, suggesting that the first can help us come to terms with the second. But this abstract message is the closest the film gets to a concrete moral: it is often much more content to observe rather than comment. Detrimentally, "Notre Musique" observes the world at a mile per minute.

During the climactic lecture, one of his students asks the filmmaker, "Can the little digital cameras save cinema?" Godard does not respond. He doesn't seem to know about saving cinema, nor does he begin to contemplate saving the world. It seems, at times, that he doesn't even want to make sense of it.

(Originally published in the Yale Daily News, February 11, 2005.)

I've Heard That Song Before
I've never been much of a Jean-Luc Godard fan. Film after film he has disappointed me. Sure, there have been a small handful of films I've found meaningful including his last film "In Praise of Love", "Contempt" and "My Life To Live", but I've said some pretty mean spirited things about Godard in reviews written on amazon and in conversations with friends. I've called him pretenious, immature, and about as intellectually stimulating as a three year old.

I've found Godard to be childish in a philosophical sense. We just don't see eye to eye I think. What he finds thought provoking I don't. I think Ingmar Bergman, Andrei Tarkovosky and Akiria Kurosawa are far more mature and thought provoking.

I've also thought Godard has problems resolving his stories. He doesn't know how to come to a satisfying conclusion. In most of his films the characters die in the end. Watch "Breathless", "A Woman Is A Woman", "My Life To Live", "Pierrot le Fou", "Weekend" and "Contempt". In the grand scheme of things, yes, death is the ultimate ending, but, I feel it's a cop out. It showed his inability in handling his characters.

But now I've seen "Notre Musique", and my opinion of Godard has changed.

"Notre Musique" is one of if not Godard's best film. It is the film I have been waiting for Godard to make since I first saw "Breathless" about seven years ago.

Now either I'm slipping and have lowered my standards or Godard really has something here.

My guess is the latter. Now at 73 Jean-Luc Godard is not the same man anymore. He is not the radical leftist of films such as "Weekend" or "Two or Three Things I Know About Her" but instead has become more reflective. With age, wisdom and maturity have followed.

"Notre Musique" does not feel like a typical Godard film. Godard shows more restraint, more focus. There really is a great maturity here. It is here that Godard blends an intellectual capability and an emotional complexity in a masterful way. A way few films are able to achieve.

The film is divided in three chapters; Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven. Each is set to beautiful music. I said the film doesn't feel like a Godard film, and that's true, but Godard does his usual experimenting nonetheless. Music is cut in mid-scene, the screen fades to black while actors are still talking, and some characters do speak in the same way they have in Godard's past films and I've called it pretenious, but the difference here is Godard has found a perfect marriage of ideas and images.

We see the horror of war and its aftermath, the struggle here on Earth, and the paradise that can be found, as two women; one a journalist, the other a rebel searching for the truth. In one example of how Godard has matured, in the 60s the rebel would be the star, the symbol of power and what needs to be done in society, here though she is an almost tragic figure. Godard is injecting himself not only in a physical sense (he does star in the film as himself) but in an emotional way.

Despite the new year being only a month old, "Notre Musique" is the year's first "important" (whatever that may mean) film. A masterpiece.

Bottom-line: One of Godard's best if not his best. Displays an emotional maturity in his work. A perfect marriage of ideas and images.

Notre Musique
Jean-Luc Godard's `Notre Musique' is a somber act of eventual forgiveness, a cry for a world divided by its wars, our own Godard says. If Godard's previous film, `Eloge De L'Amour' was about things forgotten: memory, cinema, history, than `Notre Musique' is about division, a last cry for a world destroyed, Godard has made the film of our time, one scene in particular, is one of the most unsettling, tragic and symbolic scenes Godard has ever shot: An Indian of a forgotten tribe makes a moving speech in which he offers reconciliation to the white man in front of him, standing in a destroyed library in Sarajevo, the man pays no attention to him at first, and then when Godard turns the camera over to where the white man initially was, there is no one there. There is one undeniable connection between Godard's earliest work and his last films: the ghosts that haunt them. `Le Mepris', `Pierrot Le Fou', `Bande A Part', were films that were haunted by the ghosts of a certain kind of cinema that was ending: a poetic American cinema that included auteurs like Sam Fuller and Nicholas Ray and foreigners welcomed by the American cinema like Hitchcock or Fritz Lang. Then in 1966 Godard had Jean-Pierre Leaud talk about, in `Masculin-Feminin', the alienation he felt when he went to the cinema: `The screen flickered, but more often than not we were disappointed, Marilyn Monroe had aged terribly', an incredibly confessional scene in a film that spoke of a newer generation, no longer captivated by Bogart and Dean, the `children of Marx and coca-cola' as Godard called them. `Notre Musique' is set in Sarajevo and all of the characters are wounded, caught between different countries, destroyed by nationalism, notably a young Israeli journalist who serves as a (literal) bridge from purgatory to heaven (Godard divides his film into three separate parts: hell, purgatory and heaven). In what is certainly the most tragic scene in the film, she explains why for her suicide is the only answer to purity, she is later killed in a cinema when she threatens to have explosives in her bag (which actually contains books), an extremely symbolic statement on sacrifice and why it is impossible. There is a scene in the film that describes the entire message of the film and, perhaps better than any other single scene he has ever shot, the balance (that is so faint in his films) between stylization and complete, utter moments of beauty that can only be captured, not staged: Godard himself is seen giving a conference, and when, for the millionth time, someone asks him if video will save the cinema, the camera lingers hauntingly as a tear runs down his face: his answer is silence. ... Read more

Reviews (40)

An Entertaining and Clever Landmark
Breathless, or A Bout de Souffle, is arguably one of the ten most important films of the last fifty years because it demonstrates a new, and eye-popping editing style that has now become common-place among Indie and European cinema.

Francois Truffaut, who is responsible for the script, once said all that you needed to make a movie was 'a girl and a gun.' Breathless appears to be Truffaut putting his theory into action, but there's a little more going on than that suggests.

It is a film that transports classic era Hollywood to the Paris of the late 50's. Jean-Paul Belmondo's character is obsessed with Humphrey Bogart. He is also on the run from the police, and off to visit his girl, Jean Seberg in Paris.

So far, so blah. But what director Godard does with this simple 40's noir plotline is to treat it in a way that feels intuitively wrong. He promotes the relationship between Belmondo and Seberg to centre stage and leaves the man-on-the-run-from-the-police story as a virtual subplot. To this end there is a lengthy scene of the couple talking in a bedroom - it must last twelve minutes. You practically forget that there's a Hollywood B-movie plot somewhere in the background.

It is testament to the performances, and particularly to Truffaut's script that you really don't mind. You just sort of get carried along by the thing.

It's important not only because it's dead, dead good and genuinely entertaining rather than just clever for the sake of it, but also because it plays so loose with genre and structure, it gave subsequent directors the right to experiment as well. No Breathless, no Pulp Fiction - despite Tarantino's claim to prefer the (much inferior) American remake with Richard Gere.

Jean-Luc Godard subsequently disowned the movie, considering it to be far too conventional. Perhaps he also disliked Truffaut's humanism, which shines through as it does in everything he was involved in.

Godard went on to make more challengingly, more confrontational pictures but never really recaptured the youthful exuberance of Breathless.

Think of a movie like Citizen Kane. If you've seen Kane you'll recall that the viewer feels Welles's joyful iconaclysm, even sixty years or so on. Same deal with Breathless. Even though the jump cut and gleeful genre-bending have both become standard you can still feel the exhiliration from everyone concerned in doing something genuinely new.

A must own.

Yes, the film is important, but it's also a lot of fun.
"Breathless," Jean-Luc Godard's tribute to moviemaking itself and one of the seminal titles of the French New Wave, is, jump-cuts and all, a film that changed the way movies were made. It introduced audiences and critics alike to new voices in the cinema, to a newer and cheaper guerrilla-style film made on location and to the sort of movie aware of the fact that it was just a movie.

That said, though, this movie is a lot of just pure fun. In the leads, Jean-Paul Belmondo and the absolutely gorgeous Jean Seberg seem to inject their portrayals of young thief-and-killer Michel Poiccard and his indecisive American girlfriend Patricia with a sense of humor and joy. The couple they portray are given moments where they're not really pushing the action forward, where they're reveling in what it feels like to be young and in lust, if not love. The scenes where they're lying in bed just talking or riding together in a car and talking about Paris are perhaps the most delightful aspect of the film.

Even though the character of Michel is almost certainly doomed from the moment he steals a car and guns down a police officer, he has a lot of fun with his last days, wandering the streets, stealing from friends and trying to get Patricia to sleep with him. Patricia, likewise, is given moments of joy, despite worrying about her pregnancy and job, wondering if she should betray the man she loves to the police or run away with him to Rome.

That spirit, in addition to its technical wizardry and the passion of its makers, is what made the film different in 1960, and it's the spirit behind it that just makes "Breathless" fun Sunday-afternoon viewing now.

The first of the New Wave, but not the best...
All right - Breathless is an important film and I can see why. This is the film that gave birth to the French New Wave. Before this, films look like they were shot in a studio. This film made the gritty look of seventies filmmaking - and indeed, today's independent filmmaking - possible. This film has a guerrilla feel to it, which makes it seem very modern. Goddard films on actual locations with handheld cameras. The most obvious innovation is the deliberate use of "jump cuts", which goes against the traditional theory of "invisible edits." The story itself (by Francois Truffaut) is innovative - it foreshadows Quentin Tarantino with its non-moralistic account of a cold-blooded, Bogart-worshipping killer (wonderfully played by Jean-Paul Belmondo) and his crazy/beautiful American girlfriend.

That having been said, the style of this film is really what is important. Looked at today, when its innovations have been absorbed into mainstream film, TV, and commercials, some of the flaws are more apparent. Especially towards the end of the film, when the story gets wackier and the style gets over-the-top, it became hard to restrain my Mystery Science Theater comments. That is the problem with being the first in anything - you go too far and you date yourself. Although Goddard started the Nouvelle Vague, I think that Truffaut - as evidenced by his script here - is the more important artist. This is the film that paves the way for better films like The 400 Blows. However, Breathless is still a good film and a must for any serious student of cinema. Although there are few extras on this DVD, the film looks great. For all its flaws, Breathless still has an air of authenticity that few films today can dream of.

Slow moving crap
This movie is full of a bunch of slow moving character developments. There's a bunch of long dialogues between men and women that are very drab and superficial. People tell me to watch this film for the amazing jump cut edits...well I did and big deal. Let's face it this guy is no Scorcese when it comes to doing innovative stuff with the camera, writing compelling scripts, and getting a likable cast up on the screen. Personally I think this guy just writes films for film school types and completely ignore us the audience.

Of Historical Interest Only?
The reaction of someone who is not a film historian:

This is obviously not intended as a work of surrealism or Dada. Godard has a story to tell, and two characters to introduce to us. I suggest that the film techniques be measured by whether they contribute to these goals. The use of handheld camera, long shots, candid shots of Paris do. They give the film a sense of energy and reality, and have perhaps been adopted by others because of this. The "jump cuts" (which I take to mean the abrupt cuts in the middle of scenes, with no attempt to maintain continuity) do not. They are distracting and remind you, with a jolt, and indeed never permit you to forget, that you are watching a film. This is not like noticing that a great painting is made up of the artist's individual brushstrokes; more like brushstrokes that keep you from seeing the overall picture. It just comes off as amateurish, and interfers with plot and character development.

Seborg didn't seem to me to work in this role. I think Godard means to tell us that she is not vulnerable but in fact the same sort of animal as Belmondo, but the toughness was not persuasive (esp. the obvious self consciousness of the closing shot). If this is not what was meant, then she failed to communicate to this viewer what exactly it was that motivated her character. Does that mean she is "deep"? ... Read more

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

With his aptly titled Contempt, Jean-Luc Godard embraced the widescreen splendor of Hollywood while thumbing his nose at Hollywood itself. A rebel with a cause, Godard pursues an iconoclast's agenda, using the Franscope format (expertly controlled by cinematographer Raoul Coutard) to undermine the grandeur of widescreen melodramas. The story ostensibly concerns an innovative production of Homer's Odyssey and the struggle of a respected screenwriter (Michel Piccoli) to please a pugnacious producer (Jack Palance), a veteran director (Fritz Lang, essentially playing himself), and a petulant wife (Brigitte Bardot) who's grown tired of their turbulent relationship. It's all pretense, however, for Godard's mischievous (and yes, contemptuous) deconstruction of commercial Hollywood filmmaking, potently infused with film-buff in-jokes, astute observations about love, stardom, and artistry, and enough glossy style to suggest that Godard had mastered the craft he so willfully rejects. Contempt is one of his most accessibly fascinating films. --Jeff Shannon ... Read more

Reviews (24)

Godard and Lang, Bardot and Capri
Bardot is actually an excellent actress in this film. Her body gets a lot of attention and there are plenty of shots of her lying in the sun naked but she gives her character depth. Strangley enough when she walks around wearing a black wig she looks very plain, not at all like a movie star. Perhaps the most striking thing about this film is that though it was Godards first color film he manages to use color brilliantly. The film was shot in Italy and reminds me of a Michelangelo Antonioni film as it is a story of two lovers who fail to communicate and thus let their love slip away.

Jack Palance is perfect as the headstrong producer who manipulates his director Fritz Lang (who plays himself), as well as his writer (Michel Piccoli). Palance is the ultimate megalomaniacal producer who enjoys dominating others and manipulating them into doing whatever he wants. The confident and poised Lang acts like the master that he is, he never loses his cool and he copes with Palance's outrageous tantrums as if they were nothing at all, and we can see that despite Palance's constant intereference Lang will make the film that he wants. But the young, sensitive writer is made to feel like a whore. And this explains why he begins to treat his wife like a whore. Piccoli does not seem to want to admit what he is doing but he seems to push his wife into the arms of Palance intentionally so she too will feel the way he does. The script is based on an Alberto Moravia novel and this is a classic Moravia scenario. Moravia was fascinated with prostitutes and so was Godard -- ie My Life to Live.

The husband and wife both feel like whores and so they feel contempt for themselves as well as each other. The husband wonders aloud why commerce must invade every aspect of our lives and by that he means both art and love but he seems powerless to win his wife back. Though the film began with the loving couple laying in bed and whispering to each other, it ends on quite a different note. Palance, Lang, and Piccoli all interpret Homers Odyssey in their own way. Each views the relationship between Odysseus and Penelope according to their own life situation. Palance and Piccoli cease to find the film all that interesting, they are only interested in the battle for Bardot. Lang alone remains focused on the actual film. For Lang the world of the Greeks is too far removed from our own experince of the world and so he reinvents the story so it will resonate with modern audiences and he does so by brilliantly quoting from select texts (Dante, Holderlein)and thus he tells the tale as if it were taking place in the world we know today--as Lang reimagines the tale each scene takes on new significance. And of course the way Lang thinks and works sounds a lot like the way Godard thinks and works.

An excellent film which can be appreciated by Godard fans and a good place to start for those not familiar with Godard.

GODARD DOES HOLLYWOOD
With his subversively titled Le Mepris or CONTEMPT from 1964, Jean-Luc Godard played Hollywood widescreen games while dissing Hollywood itself. Godard undermines the epic Franscope scale with an intimate look at an arrogant producer's attempt to make a modern version of Homer's Odyssey.

Jack Palance is terrific as the combative producer and the great Fritz Lang essentially plays himself as the vetaran director of the film within the film. In a serious but still sex-pot turn, Brigitte Bardot is the pouty director's wife who's fed up with their termagant relationship. And at the center of the conflict is the screenwriter who's trying to please everyone.

This extremely entertaining film with lots of in-jokes about movies is Godard's take on fame, art, and love itself.

The loaded two disc set features a pristine transfer with a wonderful commentary by Robert Stam. Bonus material includes a conversation between Godard and Lang; two 1963 documentaries -- Godard and Bardot on the set of Contempt and Paparazzi. A 1964 Godard interview and a new video interview with acclaimed cinematographer Raoul Coutard.

Bin it.
Regarded by some as Godard's most accessible movie, I beg to differ: Godard has survived because of the freshness and charm of his best films, not as most fawning critics would have you believe because of their intellectual content or ground-breaking film making. As far as intellect goes, the most you hope for with Godard is a ten-minute Maoist harangue interesting now only for showing the then-zeitgeist. As for brilliant, ground-breaking film-making, the same applies - plenty of student films have adopted the same techniques as Godard just to save money or out of pure innocence. If you want groundbreaking, you want Kurosawa or Tarkovsky or Von Trier. What is great about Godard are scenes like the improvised café dance in Bande a Part or the crazy "murder" sequences in Pierrot, scenes which are outrageously witty and cool and original but actually quite simple, like the Beatles singing "I am the Walrus, woooooh."
Back to the point: Unlike his Pierrot, Bande a Part or Une Femme est une Femme in particular, this film seriously lacks charm. The whole thing has a sour mood about it, the actors really look like they have no idea what they are up to and just want it to be over - Palance above all, forced to play a madly egotistical meglomaniac film producer with lines that would look second-rate in a primary school pantomime. Bardot and Piccoli get through it, but you can sense the tension. Lang looks like he's on Valium. No doubt realising that his film was getting a bit irritating as it labours away with tiresome lack of subtlety at a domestic rupture (see same in Femme est une Femme for how it can be done, but this time con brio), Godard goes for broke by repeatedly introducing the mawkish background music all over the place (you can almost see him with an adolescent smirk on his face as he lays it on) to the point of making you groan.
Another thing I frankly don't understand is this: virtually any crit you read will tell you how this was Godard's first and last flirtation with big-budget movie-making. Big budget? It's about the cheapest movie I've ever seen. For example: any producer worth his salt would be surrounded with an entourage and chauffeurs. This guy can barely run to one secretary and drives himself around in a medium-budget Alfa. Likewise Lang. At the Villa Malaparte, a spectacular site on Capri, we see some scenes with a reception being laid out in the back. Look carefully: the "caterers" consist of one old man fumbling around with some plates. The paint is peeling off the walls in the living room. The entire film crew working on the film-within-the-film seems to consist of about three people, and they're not even around most of the time. Best of all, look carefully at the car crash in the final reel. Apparently they couldn't even afford to total the Alfa, so it's a mock up.
Art films are tricky things: the best of them can change your life and lift you to inspiration and wonder. The worst are not worth the celluloid they're made on. But to read all the critics, you sometimes have a hell of a job deciding which is which. Take it from me, this one belongs in the poubelle.

Brigitte Bardot at her voluptuous best: Godard's "8 1/2"
I prefer this film to Fellini's 8 1/2 and there are some similarities. They were made at the same time and they were the first two post-modern films. In this one B.B. is given some good nude scenes we male fans crave in the context of a top notch 1963 work of art. Fritz Lang plays himself and when he mentions B.B. he's talking about Bertolt Brecht, not Brigitte Bardot who doesn't play herself (one of many in jokes). What I love here is the 1960s feel of the film, the melancholy soundtrack which is supposed to express B.B.s emotions, and masterful cinematography. The scenes are set up perfectly and in one we see B.B. in one room talking to Michel Piccoli in another...in the same shot.

There is a modern feel to the film made in color set in Capri, and a feeling of freedom. The plot is that B.B. feels "contempt" for her husband because he lets Jack Palance come on to her, and it works with brilliant subtlety. The ending is kind of another in joke, as there's a bit of dialogue by Lang "death is not a resolution". In one scene the stars are all interacting against a background of current movie posters ("Psycho" among them). And Palance needs a translator from English to French, German, and Italian in the way of the beautiful Giorgia Moll. Lang speaks German, and everyone else Italian, a smorgasborg of languages.

Some later Godard films don't really work well as they are too disjointed (Weekend, 2 or 3 Things...), but here it all comes together.

Self-Contempt
Bring Me the Head of Fritz Lang? Contempt is about selling out to crass commercialism and money's pervasive influence on one's relationships. I don't know what led Godard to take on this project, but Contempt seems to express thru its main character what Godard's experience under Joseph Levine, the producer. The hero of the movie wants money and fame but also to maintain his integrity. The moral dynamic is similar to one in Wilder's Apartment. Hero's lack of control over his own art is paralled with his loss of control over his wife who goes to the highest bidder. To what extent this reflects the then relationship between Godard and Karina is anyone's guess, but watching Godard's Karina movies you sense that they were somehow not compatible, with Godard being too intellectual to keep up with the half-romantic schtick for much longer and Karina too womanly and sensual to have a meaningful role in future Godard projects. Ironically, if Godard indeed lost his touch with women, it would it had little to do with money and more with his increasingly intellectualized view of both humanity and art. ... 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

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Forty-three years since the release of À Bout de Souffle (Out of Breath), Jean-Luc Godard has still got it. And like his first film, the English title (in that case, Breathless) incorrectly represents the essence of this intricate work. "In Praise of Love" suggests a joyous celebration, but in actuality, Éloge de l'Amour (Eulogy for Love) is a meditation on life, love, and particularly loss.The 2001 film is highly reminiscent of Godard's films from the '60s in structure and attitude. On the surface we may be watching the making of a film (similar to Le Mépris), but in actuality, we are deep in the exploration of love's melancholic elements. In the typical Godard style, In Praise of Love's essence is told through its characters' conversational criticisms towards art, literature, philosophy, politics, capitalism, and cinema, all displayed through the unstructured use of digital video that has the director's distinct, rebellious look and feel. It is amazing that at 73 Godard still has the capability to successfully redefine how we look at film. In Praise of Love definitely requires repeat viewings and may not be for everyone, but for those interested it is well worth it. --Rob Bracco ... Read more

Reviews (7)

Europe uber Alles
It is important that "In Praise of Love" is watched by many ordinary intellectuals in US, for it is a beautifully stated manifesto. "We are all tricksters" states Godard, and here he tricks the cinema lovers into the formalist heresy of acknowledging his "masterful" technique, his "outstanding" cinematography.
However, the supposedy profound content of this film is actually nothing other than a set of actions, thoughts, and presumptions usually found in a teenager who is well read, lives in Europe, and never lived in US: extensive citations from unpopular books by the great (French) philosophers, paranoidal hate of the Americans, and the constant mention of death...
Has the great European film director Jean-Luc Godard become wiser and better with age, or the most horrible is true? That he has finally shown us the true face of his and of European intellectualism in general: an adolescent burdened by his own thoughts of love and death.
Aside from it all, this film has moments for which the author could get punched in the face. There is a mention of the "fact" that most Albanian "refugees" were in their home at the time of the Serbian army attack. Mr. Godard ommits the fact that they were not refugees at that precise moment yet.
It is neccessary to see and look deep into what Godard is saying and what he is showing us. The great repository of culture (Europe = France) has History on its side, and that makes all of US population - an inferior breed of humans. It is all very "profound" indeed!!!

A Poetic Essay
If you only know Godard from his 1960's films this late phase masterpiece will come as a surprise. In Praise of Love could just as well be titled In Praise of French Culture as this film is like a testament to all of the things Godard loves most about his countries cultural traditions. We know Godards taste in philosophy, music, literature, painting and most importantly film because his favorite sources decorate every frame of the film. References abound within the film to Robert Bresson -- who I think could well be called the patron saint of French Cinema. The New Wave film makers were always fond of Bresson but here Godard not only shows a young man standing in front of a movie poster for Pickpocket but he also quotes from Notes of a Cinematographer-- this book provides wonderful insights into Bressons mind set but also Godards who obviously reveres him . There is also a moving reference to Vigo's L'Atalante. The Godard of the 90's is a much matured artist less concerned with shaking things up than with learning how and teaching us how we must look backward and remember in order to move forward. The view of an aging artist yes but also the view of a mature artist.

The first half of In Praise of Love is shot in black and white and the most memorable shots are of Paris at night -- the cinematography is achingly romantic which is fitting for the first halfs main theme is the search for romantic love. It is misleading to say this is the only theme though as while that theme is explored Godard also speaks of the current state of France and through his actors offers his insights into the modern state of French public life and politics which obviously leave him cold -- ie the state has no love for its people, and, anyone who makes over 10,000 francs a month in France no longer has a political conscience. As he films his young actors you can tell Godard is reminiscing about his own youth and own first love Anna Karina. For Godard politics are never far from love -- the two seem to go hand in hand for him -- because the search for love is intimately connected with our search for an ideal. Love will always fail, Godard seems to say, because we can never achieve our ideal of it -- or, searching for the ideal we cease to see the object that we love. In support of this examination of the early stages of love by a young man he offers an older gentlemans memory of his first love and how the memory of it still stings him. The film has a decidedly documentary feeling and a decidedly somber tone which is reinforced by the elegiac piano music. Though the narrative is not strictly linear it is fairly easy to follow. In addition each time Godard quotes one of his cherished sources (Chateubriand, Balzaz, Bataille's Blue Noon) the book is usually in the frame. The Godardian methods will be familiar to someone who has only seen his sixties work but you will also notice that those methods have mellowed, deepened, and become more intimate, and furthermore the pace of his films has slowed considerably reflecting the directors age and this is actually a welcome nuance as it allows one to absorb the content of each sequence. I am tempted to say I prefer this late phase of Godards career to his early phase but of course one would not exist without the other.

In the second part the main theme shifts away from love, although that continues to be a minor theme, and towards history -- in truth the two themes are interrelated and comments made about one topic invariably have significance for the other. Memory becomes an obsesion for the aging artist and Henri Bergson is a major reference point in this section of the film. Godard argues that until nations are willing to confess their crimes and own up to them and allow for open discourse they will remain in a kind of infancy. National identity and growth is dependent on memory and thus America is ridiculed for failing to have any kind of memory. In fact in the funniest part of the film a representative for an American film company is in France trying to purchase the rights to a resistance fighters memoirs. Godard has a character comment that America has no memories of its own and thus must buy them from other countries. America is seen to be suffering from the worst case of arrested development but France is also seen to be guilty of it as well.

The film is a rich essay with many themes which complement each other in unusual ways. I found it moving and thoughtful and infinitely rich -- at any given moment you will find yourself contemplating a particularly evocative reference which connects the past to the present. This is the kind of film you like immediately and the kind of film that invites you back to it. There is much here and I've only hinted at some of the things I noticed on a single viewing but I plan on watching this many more times.

Melancholy
An incredibly melancholy movie by Godard. Interesting experimental use of digital video too.

what a junk! 1 star minus 100
this is one of the worst movies (if you could called this junk, a movie) that i've ever watched. the whole thing is such a pretentious and obscure junk that tried very hard to be DEEP and nostalgic, but only resulted in an aimless and purposeless dead-beat. the quality of this film, my god, the worst i've ever encountered. i've tried 5 times to restart and to rewatch this junk, from the very beginning to the end, or by selected chapters or scenes one by one, but never could get any meaningful thing out of it. the whole film was chopped into pieces, suddenly black n white, or terrible colored and fuzzy scenes, suddenly, two years back, suddenly two months later. And, did you ever see the sea turn red? or it's the 'red sea' geogrphically speaking? those characters in this so-called film, either sitting around or walking around, for what? NADA! most of them were talking deep, i mean, really deep, and everybody was a philosopher, aimlessly gazed through windows at outside, talked about time, life, all the necessary evils about life, but in the end, what goes around, comes around, the u.s. hard currency, man, to make a better living in france. what a pretentious and pathetic junk. if you could call this a movie, i'd prefer watching chaplin's black/white silent ones, at least they sometimes could still make me laugh. i rest my case.

The best film of 2001...another great Godard film
I really love this film. Like most of Godard's best work, it yields itself to repeated viewings (I have seen it now 4 times) because it is such a rich work, including so many ideas (on language, love, memory, Paris, America, poverty, and of course cinema). The film is very much like a novel in that each scene is imbued with more and more layers one on top of the other. Highly complex, original, and intelligent cinema is hard to come by nowadays, so thank you Jean-Luc for making movies for INTELLIGENT people. ... Read more

Description

Ten of the world's greatest directors produce one unforgettable film in this sumptuous visual and musical feast based on the most famous arias in the history of opera. Erotic, violent, thought-provoking, funny, and moving, this critically-hailed milestone features the electrifyingly erotic film debut of Briget Fonda, a revealing appearance by supermodel Elizabeth Hurley (Austin Powers), and unforgettable performances from John Hurt (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone), Tilda Swinton (The Deep End), Beverly D'Angelo (Vacation), Theresa Russell (Wild Things), and many more! Segments directed by Robert Altman (Gosford Park), Bruce Beresford (Double Jeopardy), Bill Bryden, Jean-Luc Godard (Contempt), Derek Jarman (Edward II), Franc Roddam (Quadrophenia), Nicolas Roeg (Performance), Ken Russell (Tommy), Charles Sturridge (Longitude), Julien Temple (The Filth and the Fury). ... Read more

Reviews (10)

Liz Hurley's first important role in a movie
This movie provided Liz Hurley with her big break. Soon after this, Dennis Potter snapped her up for the lead role in the BBC adaptation of Christabel Bielenberg's 'The Past is Myself'. She became Hugh Grant's girlfriend and the rest is history. She transformed herself physically during her twenties, which is why some viewers have had problems identifying the occasionally nude actress that appears here as the very slim Liz Hurley they now know.

For me, 'Aria' was the classical music community's response to the rise of MTV and the pop video. Directors like Ken Russell and Nick Roeg wanted to show us that opera could be equally colourful and sexy, even if you couldn't dance to it. And they proved their case, to my mind.

But like a pop video, you wouldn't want to watch this too often. There's no substantive connection between each of the videos, so you end up feeling much the same as you would after a 90-minute immersion in MTV.

A Visual and audial smorgasbord
I have loved this movie for years. Granted, it may be for deep film buffs, but it is powerful.

Each vignette offers a top director's interpretation of a provocative aria. Opera lovers know how emotionally provocative the music can be; and that raw emotion is shown by each director.

The love story is one of the most romantic and tragic stories I have ever seen--the images are still in my mind 10 years after first seeing it. I had enjoyed a light introduction to opera before this movie, but after feeling the raw emotions this film created in me, I bought a few opera CDs based simply on first hearing the arias in this movie. There is even some VERY funny stuff is one scene.

So, in summary, the music, images, and emotions from this movies were all so intense, they've stayed with me for years. If you can take the intensity, do not miss out on this powerful movie that can be both sublime and intense at the same time.

The movie that started me on opera
I first saw Aria in the theater back in high school (about 3 million years ago) and only because I wanted to impress a girl way more artistic than myself.

It worked, but not in a way I'd expected. The movie, a series of vignettes, runs the whole emotional spectrum. In my younger days, we were blown away by the Wagner/Roddam piece starring a young Fonda, so loving and jarring at the same time. These days I find all the music beautiful, but one or two of the vignettes boring. The entire movie is beautifully shot and all deserves to be watched at least once.

After having done that you'll find continual enjoyment watching Sturridge, Beresford, Roddam, Jarman, and Bryden's interpretations.

Who knows, you might fall in love with opera too.

Great the first time, tends average, not for everyone
This movie was great the first time, on the big screen. The music and the images shock you, and make you squirm and react to this movie. It's an artistic roller coaster ride.

I've found since, however, that this shocking quality doesn't preserve especially well. My favorite way of watching this movie these days, is to turn the music on, while I'm doing stuff around the house, occassionally looking at the images.

It's artistry, it doesn't hold up under critical thinking.

Who will like this movie? Despite (or perhaps because of) the billing of mature content, I think that this is a good film for teenage viewers with a liking for art films. One must be able to appreciate both the variety and intensity of the images, and be able to forgive the story. Not a problem in an action movie, but for an "art film", it shows it's high concept roots.

Maybe a gift for an opera lover, or an "art film" buff.

A Most Incredible Experience
Aria is 90 minutes of pure wonderment -- I'm not certain what demographic this project was aimed at, but I definitely fall into it. You have to love opera style music yet not be so attached to the operas themselves that the re-presentation of the music offends. You have to enjoy video that your average couch potato won't get, no matter how many mind altering drugs he takes.

To really enjoy Aria, you have to check your expectations at the door and accept it for what it is -- a set of brilliant visual explorations fueled by some of the most incredible music ever written. With any other attitude, you're far more likely to find this a miserable experience. Too vulgar, too highbrow, too bizarre, too surreal, too whatever.

Some pieces tell a solid story, ranging from humorous to tragic. Others lack story line and speak to a different level of consciousness. Pathos. Humor. Death. Life. Celebration. Brilliance. Aria cleanses windows of perception, like a good wine between courses of a meal. On the other hand, it's a main course, in and of itself.

This is not fodder for young children, and most teens won't have the patience for it either. If you thought "Dude, Where's My Car?" was a brilliant movie, perhaps you'd better pass on this one as well. I only wish that more Wagner had been included ... perhaps an Aria II consisting solely of Wagner arias?

(If you'd like to discuss this movie or review in more depth, click on the "about me" link above and drop me an email. Thanks!) ... Read more

Description

In 1972, newly radicalized Hollywood star Jane Fonda joined forces with cinematic innovator Jean-Luc Godard and collaborator Jean-Pierre Gorin in an unholy revolutionary artistic alliance. Tout va bien tells the story of a wildcat strike at a sausage factory, as witnessed by an American reporter (Fonda) and her has-been New Wave film director husband (Yves Montand), culminating in a fre