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

Amazon.com

In 1965 six French New Wave directors took a Paris neighborhood and concocted a short sketch around it. The results sometimes favor character and story, and sometimes local flavor, but almost all are engaging in their own right. Jean Douchet and Jean-Luc Godard (repsectively) offer gloriously French slices of romantic comedy in the sexually open 1960s with "Saint Germain des Prés" and "Montparnasse et Levallois." Jean Rouch's"Gare du Nord" is slight of substance but beautifully explores the neighborhood in a gorgeous tracking shot. Jean-Daniel Pollet's "Rue Saint-Denis" offers two delicious characters in a witty comedy of a mousy dishwasher who brings a brassy streetwalker to his dumpy apartment. Eric Rohmer's "Place de l'Étoile," a sometimes silly but deftly managed little comedy of a manwho strikes a panhandler and is terrified he killed him, displays a giddy goofiness unseen in his later work. Claude Chabrol's shiver-inducing slice of urban life "La Muette" ventures outside the oppressive hallways and tiny rooms only once, at the end, as if to celebrate the escape of the rebellious boy from his bickering parents. The strongest of a solid collection, Chabrol's chilly view of dead-end relationships in a splintered upper class family concludes the otherwise lighthearted collection on a devastating, dark note. Released in France under the more evocative title Paris Vu Par... (Paris Seen By), this is one of the strongest and most entertaining anthology films to emerge from the 1960s. --Sean Axmaker ... Read more

Reviews (3)

Love At First Sight!
I fell in love instantly when I first saw the first story "Saint Germain de pres". The second one "Gare Du Nord" had an equally amazing impact. Each director had an amazing eyes for details in capturing moods, lighting and expressions. The stories of life were presented in a way you'll never have imagined before. Left me with dreamy dejau vu feeling that I can't quite shake myself off days later. I watched the VHS three times before returning it to the store, and got myself a brand new one that I'm sure I'll watch it another 1000000000 (infinite) more times. If I have more stars, I'll definitely give it a million stars.

Perfectly Paris
This film has got to be one of the most definitive expressions of what "Paris" means. Six shorts, in six neighborhoods of Paris. If you love Paris you will love this film. I especially liked the one about the arguing couple. The wife has an encounter with a gentleman on the street. I won't give it away, but it's fantastic. This grouping of Directors cannot be beat.

A sparkling , unusual snapshot of cool, sixties Paris.
What a wonderful gem of a film. It perfectly captured the mood and characters of Sixties Paris. A mood much different than ours in America at that time. For lovers of Cool European culture each individual film has something to offer. At times humorous and at times poignant, I felt as if I had discovered something hidden for a long time. The directors involved in these films are all now quite famous for their contributions to modern cinema, but in Six in Paris you get the feeling you've been invited to their coming out party. Many of the techniques used in the directing of these films are now embraced by many, but no one today uses them like they are used here. Most importantly we get a strangely beautiful portrait of an edgy, sometimes gray, hip Paris which may be long gone. Stylish clothes, bustling cafe's, and plenty of Citroens and scooters buzzing around the streets - I would recommend this film to anyone looking to slip back into another time for an evening. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Seven Deadly Sins - 1962
This is an awesome classic!!!

In the 'sloth' segment I saw the most beautiful body on earth. I was a twenty year old college student when I viewed this movie at the Times Fine Art theater in Milwaukee in 1962.

Her name, I believe, is Danielle Aubry. I have made love to women with gorgeous... but Danielle is still #1 even after all these (40) years.

There are also some socially redeeming qualities about this film but I forgot what they were.

GM ... Read more

Reviews (1)

A good start to enjoy contemporary cinema
It's an extreme pleasure to view the art of four contemporary masters in one film. Especially Pasolini's "La Ricota" could be one of the best films made by this controversial Italian director. If you like to see some very funny, charming, delicate, yet profound artistic movies but don't want to spand too much time, check this one out! ... Read more

Reviews (2)

A masterpiece. One of the best films of 1997
Godard's career is a difficult one to summarize or even to get a grasp on. After creating the seminal New Wave films of the Sixties we all know and love him for, Godard took a drastic turn in the late Sixties-early Seventies when he began making film within his "Dziga-Vertov" group, which were a group of didactic films that marked Godard's complete break from narrative film. After that dead-end, Godard made many beautiful and interesting documentary-theoretical films throughout the Seventies (the best being Numero Deux, Ici Et Ailleurs & Tout Va Bien). He returned to more narrative cinema in the 80's beginning with the little-seen "SAUVE QUI PEUT (LA VIE)". I find most of his 80's films to be pretty weak, besides some good ones up until 1985 or so. My whole point with this rant is that Godard seems to have had an artistic re-awakening in the 90's. Starting with "Nouvelle Vague" in 1990, Godard's Nineties films rank up with some of his best work in the early days. Although I prefer his more recent "In Praise of Love" to this, but I love them both and say that they should be essential viewing for any world cinema buffs. GODARD=CINEMA!

Beautiful, difficult, exciting film.
In the theater, it was such a fascinating thing to watch. Particular images and sounds still stick with me three years later! Godard enthusiasts will love it, those who like to think on their own (or so they think) will love it. And I love it, too. ... 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

From Jean-Luc Godard, possibly the most influential European film director of all time comes IN PRAISE OF LOVE, a mesmerizing and lyrical meditation on love, and the role history and memory play in shaping human consciousness, past and present.

Structured in two parts, the film opens in Paris, where the young artist Edgar is developing a project on the four stages of a love affair- meeting, sexual passion, separation. and rediscovery. During the casting process, Edgar discovers a beautiful young woman who he is convinced he has met before. In the second part, set two years earlier, Edgar interviews an elderly couple- former Resistance fighters during the war- only to find that their memories are being bought up for a Steven Spielberg blockbuster. Linking the two parts is Edgar's relationship with the enigmatic woman he met and re-encounters. IN PRAISE OF LOVEis a combative but tender work that stubbornly asserts the importance of love, art and memory.A film of great intellectual freedom, elusive meanings and overwhelming visual beauty, Godard has never seemed more young, fresh and original. ... 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

Reviews (1)

Wilfully obscure Late Godard.
After his experimental phase in the 70's, Godard supposedly returned to mainstream cinema, but this movie isn't many peoples' idea of a mainstream movie. It's title is deceptive as there isn't much of a noir plot and most of the movie consists of scenes and conversations that don't really go anywhere. Some of these are quite amusing, like a scene where people wonder why porno movies are refered to as x-rated. But the film is mostly frustrating, chiefly to be viewed by film scholars and JLG buffs. ... Read more

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One of the landmark early films of the French New Wave, director Jean-Luc Godard (Breathless) weaves a tale of desperation and deceit. Anna Karina (Vivre Sa Vie) plays a stripper determined to have a child in the hopes that it will better her life. She tries in vain to convince her rough, selfish boyfriend (Jean-Paul Belmondo) to father the child, but he refuses. In desperation and sparked by anger she turns to his best friend to father the child, setting off a new round of recrimination and betrayal. Une Femme Est une Femme is one of Godard's first films and essential viewing for fans of the Nouvelle Vague, to chart the beginnings of the detached mood and style that influenced a coming generation of films. --Robert Lane ... 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

The movie that heralded the French New Wave movement, this lean and exciting 1959 film directed by Jean-Luc Godard (A Woman Is a Woman, Weekend) broke new ground not only in its unorthodox use of editing and hand-held photography, but in its unflinching and nonjudgmental portrayal of amoral youth. Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg play two young lovers on the run from the law after Belmondo kills a cop and steals a car. Soon they are on an odyssey through the streets of Paris searching for some money he is owed so that he and his American girlfriend can escape to Italy. As a chase picture it features some startling photography on the streets of Paris, but as a romance it defies expectations, existing as part tragedy and part Bonnie and Clyde crime movie. The result is a wholly original film experience. Inspiring not only a remake starring Richard Gere but numerous films and television series, Breathless is an essential part of motion picture history. --Robert Lane ... 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

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Jean-Luc Godard and Luis Buñuel enjoyed an ardent misanthropicduel in the '60s and '70s, but who won is anyone's call. Godard's Weekend lays down the trump in a harrowing and darkly funny allegory in which social mores fray along political lines. Played out in a metafilm in which characters question their own reality, a morally bankrupt Parisian couple tries to leave the city on a much-loathed country holiday with the wife's parents. Along the way, endless traffic jams, sudden violence, and vistas of gory car crashes underscore their corrupted values. Their lethal encounter with the in-laws and kidnap by an anarchic band of radical cannibals finds the couple--and presumably "decent" society with them--reverting to a nasty primitivism. The idea is of course that the bored, apathetic heart of the bourgeoisie is never far from acting out its most homicidal fantasies. --Alan E. Rapp ... Read more

Reviews (16)

Spectacular film, embarrassing subtitles
I'm not sure who's idea it was to insert "arsehole," "collect my father from the clinic," and "he licked my arse" into the subtitles, and who it was that repeatedly forgot to translate "gens" into "people," but I really wish the French would get over their disdain for Americans and let someone who actually speaks English do the subtitles. In a way, the poor quality of the subtitles actually added to my enjoyment of the film, because it made it all the more ridiculous.

Speaking of ridiculous, let's talk about this film. Perhaps the ultimate expression of the New Wave in France, this film by Jean-Luc Godard is like a primitive cross between PULP FICTION and THE BIG LEBOWSKI. Essentially, a couple that hates each other goes on a journey to kill the husband's parents and take his estate. On the way, they encounter traffic jams, car crashes, cannibals, historical figures, Black militants, murderers, and hippies armed with automatic weapons.

I'm tempted to give away some of the funniest moments of the film... Basically, every situation the couple encounters is completely absurd, and sexual, social, and political commentary runs through every scene. I'll never forget the scene when the couple lights Emily Bronte on fire, or the lines, "If you'd like, you can screw her before you eat her!" and "Who would you rather screw, Johnson or Mao?" This movie is just ridiculous. Utterly ridiculous. Godard's courage and brilliant sense of humor is evident throughout the film, and his ability to weave well-conceived philosophical dialogue with slapstick comedy is a skill directors have been trying to emulate for years.

For people who don't need Hollywood to enjoy a movie, the French New Wave is fertile ground for experimentation and wild enjoyment. This isn't one of those films with a "good plot" or "profound dialogue." This is one of those films that's filled with scenes that you can't believe you just witnessed. "Did they really just slaughter a pig on film?" "Did they really just gun down a picnic for no reason?"

This film is filled with absurd scenes involving sex, violence, and class conflict that will delight you and make you hoot with laughter. The film's French perspective adds a subtly foreign character to the humor, which makes the film all the more dazzling - it's like eating a strange and exquisite delicacy - it's not just another funny American movie.

Skip MR. BEAN and order WEEKEND. This is one of the best weird movies in the history of film, and certainly one of the most important. And enjoy those awful subtitles :)

Godard's best
An utterly brilliant pastiche from Godard. JLG gives us a nightmarish vision of contemporary bourgeois society in which the apocalypse takes on the form of a series of bloody car wrecks and cannibalistic revolutionaries running wild. Even the scenes that don't work, like the bizarre encounter with Emily Bronte and Louis Carroll and the 18th-century French revolutionary reading a political tract, are forgiveable simply because they only add to the anarchic nature of the film. How many other movies have you seen that feature a woman screaming before a horrific car accident because she left her handbag inside, or a speech on Hitlerism and African slavery intercut with clips of traffic jams?

One of the most fascinating of Godard's new wave efforts
Jean-Luc Godard's film Week End is loaded with his obsessions with outrageous characters, political and philosophical ideas, and so on, and many viewers have claimed this to be a full on political film. From what I could gather after seeing a poor yet manageable copy of this film, I saw that this is possibly his best effort in terms of abrasive, surreal though bravura directing. He leaves the camera on his characters, with their flaws almost shining off them (which serves as an asset in some scenes), and yet most of the time it feels like he's directing a comedy of these events- comedy of errors.

Consider the scene where the woman has the monologue in her panties and bra, how she leads up such telling, informatory details to a payoff that gives as a reminder of the Walken scene in Pulp Fiction (though he is the better actor). Or in other times the comedy is in the sense of a Godard satire of his past work - the traffic set piece(s) gets the viewer to feel in the mood of the car he so pacingly follows, even as it becomes relentlessly obnoxious and tense, and acts like every other driver on the streets of the cities of America.

However that, and a moment of argument over a corpse in the passenger seat (he cuts to the faces of the onlookers who happen to find such dialogue rather amusing), show by the time Godard reached this stage in his career he wasn't taking himself and his work 100 % seriously, though that's not to say that the element of the woman's path to guerilla-hood isn't a serious topic. For his art film die-hards he also uses a peculiar, non-linear style in story-telling- an added advantage for a week-end timepiece.

I'm reminded of Fellini (as I was while watching another Godard film of recent, Contempt) in one aspect of the picture, in terms of how he portrays his women- he can love them, ignore them, belittle them, or even glorify them in the most drastic of measures, but he can't control them. One also wonders if this is how he just makes it for his films, or if in real life the women of his life were really this (how do I put it) out-there.

The script occasionally veers off on it's tale of a couple going on a disastrous week-end out for stretches of poetry, discussion, things that don't have much to do with the story, and yet there's a catching, eccentric, melodic aura to these scenes and passages. These kinds of scenes make it perfectly clear that Godard has created an original work here, one that may put off audience members who "don't get it" or expect total sense in the outcomes. Certainly a movie made for it's time, country of origin, and target group.

To sum up my review let me put it this way - this is the kind of picture that would've heavily influenced The Doors.

Foolishness on film
This film is easy to describe:
Sophomoric speechifying and utterly foolish.

The dangers of French Bank Holidays!
With influences ranging from Freud to Marx, De Sade and Eisenstein having walk-on roles and the Parisian weekend transformed into an allegorical bourgeois hell,
Week-End is one of the defining films of the 20th Century. Born out of the nouvelle vague cinema (French New Wave), this is the terrible birth that is brought to light from J.L.Godard's obsession with prophesising the destruction and decline of the West. Even after taking into account his overt political messages, Weekend still exist as one of the most technically revolutionary pieces of cinema to emerge from his studios into a blinding glare of publicity and hostility.

Not content with depicting the destruction of western commercial values, Godard disrupts the visual narrative by interspersing film titles, book titles and music onto a background of patriotic red, white and blue colours. From a personal perspective, one of the most impressive sequences is an eight minute long tracking-shot of the Parisian highway which progresses from straightforward traffic jams to car-wrecks and the inevitable symbol of multinational Capitalism, a Shell oil truck. Essentially Week-End marks the 'Maoist period' of Godard's film-making career, during which he declared that 'the only way to be a revolutionary intellectual is to give up being an intellectual.'

Starring Mireille Darc and Jean Yanne, Week-End's fabular narrative is a weekend journey from Paris to Normandy which slowly becomes an apocalyptic struggle against the French peasant revolutionaries who continually intervene to prevent the couple meeting Darc's mother in order to find out whether they have successfully poisoned her father. This emblematic quest for the Capitalist Grail is hindered by a philosophising character from Dumas, two rebels (African and Algerian) masquerading as refuse collectors and Saint-Juste, before the couple are captured on their return to Paris by the Seine-et-Loise Liberation Front, a group of cannibalistic freedom fighters.

Godard's continued affinity with politics can be witnessed in his other Maoist films, Les Chinoise (1967), Le Gai Savoir and Tout Va Bien (1972). Despite accusations of pretension, he still remains one of the most provocative and influential film makers of his and future generations, whilst his immense cinematic output can be regarded as a Marxist biography of the previous century.

What was an initially ground-breaking piece of cinema has evolved into an essential European film. Heralded by Pauline Kael in the New Yorker as 'Godard's Vision of Hell, and it ranks with the visions of the greatest' and 'somewhere between Swift and Samuel Beckett, alternatively violent and tender, humorous and cruel' (Jan Dawson, Sight and Sound) Week-end is a film that must be seen to be believed and to miss this is to miss out on one of the spectacles of 20th Century cinema. ... 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

Amazon.com essential video

Juxtaposing images of pristine, romantic innocence with ones of mute, meaningless violence, Godard's Masculin-Féminin first lulls with a hypnotic, disjointed story line and then stuns with scenes of tremendous depth and meaning. This outrageous film follows the somewhat ineffectual courtship of Madeline, an aspiring pop singer, by Paul, an erstwhile journalist and interviewer but mostly groundless searcher. As in most Godard films, plot mechanics are secondary to elements such as dialog (generally marvelous, but sometimes a bit too pointed), lighting (bizarre and oversaturated, but never less than fascinating), shot framing (extraordinarily thoughtful), and performance. Godard allows his camera to linger on single faces, without cutting, for what seems by modern standards to be extremely long segments--perhaps even excruciatingly long--but the remarkably subtle cast members never disappoint, particularly the fantastically adept and frequently hilarious lead actors, Jean-Pierre Léaud and Chantal Goya. The filmmaker has little to add to our collective understanding of the relationship between masculine et feminine writ large; in fact, most of the female characters are uncomfortably stereotypical, framed as either willfully oblivious to the world or subtly (or overtly) deadly. But as an examination of a young generation faced with the prospect of war in Vietnam and the vagaries of French socialism, Masculin-Féminin proves remorselessly and chillingly trenchant.A towering influence, it would seem, on Whit Stillman's similarly themedBarcelona--but while Stillman lacks the conviction to follow his instincts to their logical, violent conclusions, Godard faces his uncompromising story with elegance and courage.In French, with subtitles that are occasionally difficult to read. --Miles Bethany ... Read more

Reviews (3)

Lost Generation of 1960's
My favorite Godard film is Pierrot Le Fou and Masculine/Feminine is usually considered alongside Pierrot because the two films do make for an interesting contrast. Pierrot Le Fou is the romantics Godard film and Masculine/Feminine is the realists Godard film. Both films deal with disaffected people at two different times in life. Pierrot stars Belmondo and Karina as disaffected adults -- when the two meet Belmondo is already married but Karina gives him an excuse to abandon his boring bourgeoisie existence and head off on a road trip where he learns through the helpful example of Karina what true freedom is. Maculine/Feminine -- starring Leaud and Goya -- is about younger people disaffected by their mundane lives but neither really knows what to do about it. They each have vague dreams but neither has much direction or any real hope and their time together leads neither toward any increased self-awareness. Pierrot Le Fou is filmed outside in the sun by the sea and the atmosphere inspires the characters who attempt to communicate but who for the most part remain trapped within themselves and their own private relationship with the world -- even though the two characters remain at an unclosable distance from one another there is a sense of shared adventure that gives the film its romantic feel. Ultimately in Pierrot le Fou increased freedom also means increased self-awareness and increased awareness of each persons singular nature so the film moves inexorably toward a tragic end. Masculine/Feminine takes place primarily indoors and there is no sense of adventure but rather one of the world closing in as they try to come to grips with what that unavoidable world they are confronted with is all about. Even though Masc/Fem is about younger people these are people who live in the real world whether they want to or not. These two films as another reviewer mentioned make excellent companion pieces -- interesting to see Godards treatment of disaffected people from two perspectives, the poetic and the realist. At this phase in Godards career he was not overtly political but politics plays an increasing role in the way his characters relate to each other and feel about the world, especially in Masc/Fem where the masculine half of that equation shows a flicker or two of a growing political consciousness . In later films Godard will develop his own political ideas but this phase in his career remains my favorite. If the New Wave is all about the disaffected lost generation of the sixties then Godard is that generations Hemingway.

the children of marx and coca cola on the big screen
A great movie. An interesting stop in Godard's career. A pseudo-revolutionary and a pop singer have an odd relationship. It is worth it to watch this one alongside "Pierrot Le Fou," because the two movies are different yet at the same time quite fluid. In fact, if this one does not hook you, I would give "Pierrot" a try and then come back to "Masculin/Feminin." Jean-Pierre Leaud (from The 400 Blows) is particularly excellent in this film.

The French "New Wave" at its height
Amazon's review is right on the money concerning this film.

What I would add is that this film best shows the change that female sexual liberation had on society. The boy, totally in love, has nothing of value to give to a girl who considers sex an everyday occurance -- a big change from the going-steady days of the late fifties and early sixties when sex was the culmination of a protracted courtship. The masculine and feminine roles changed forever and continue so to this day. Goddard was there first. In 1966, this film was cutting edge. In 1999 it remains an important work with a lot to say to the present generation concerning the battle of the sexes that has, apparently, been won for good by the ladies.

I saw it in 1966 on a first date with a very conservative girl who was convinced after we left the theatre that I was a sex pervert. Unfortunately for me she was as yet unwashed by the New Wave. ... Read more