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Jean-Luc Godard's |
First released here in 1965, Band of Outsiders has long been unavailable due to rights problems. American audiences have only been able to see it in miserable 16mm copies and pirated videos. Rialto's new 35mm prints are the first struck in 35 years and feature brand new subtitles by Lenny Borger.
Among Band of Outsider's biggest fans is Quentin Tarantino, who homaged several scenes in Pulp Fiction - including Anna Karina's legendary dance of 'The Madison,' re-enacted by Uma Thurman in the 50s-retro diner scene - and named his production company, A Band Apart, after the Godard film. The 'Madison' sequence was also referenced by Hal Hartley in Simple Men.
Pauline Kael described Band of Outsiders as 'a reverie of a gangster movie ...It's as if a French poet took a banal American crime novel and told it to us in terms of the romance and beauty he read between the lines; Godard recreates the gangsters and the moll with his world of associations -- seeing them as people in a Paris cafe, mixing them with Rimbaud, Kafka, Alice in Wonderland. This lyrical tragicomedy is perhaps Godard's most delicately charming film.'
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Odile Monod - Anna Karina
Arthur - Claude Brasseur
Franz - Sami Frey
English teacher - Daniële Girard
Madame Victoria - Louisa Colpeyn
Arthur's uncle - Ernest Menzer
Arthur's aunt (La maîtresse) - Chantal Darget
Légionnaire - Georges Staquet
English students - Claude Makovski,
Michële Seghers,
Jean-Claude Remoleux
School doorman - Michel Delahaye
Narrator - Jean-Luc Godard
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Filmed in Paris and vicinity, February 17- March 1964
First showing: Berlin Film Festival, July 5, 1964
Budget: $120,000
French release: August 5, 1964
U.S. release: March, 1966
Screened at the New York Film Festival, November 1964
Original distributors: Columbia Pictures (France),
Royal Films International (U.S.)
AN ANOUCHKA FILMS - ORSAY FILMS COPRODUCTION
A GAUMONT FILM
1964 - Black & White
Aspect ratio: 1:33:1
Running time: 97 minutes
A RIALTO PICTURES RELEASE
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JC: Band of Outsiders is based on a novel called Fool's Gold [sic] by Dolores Hitchens, which was published in France as Pigeon vole in the 'Sèrie noire' collection. I haven't read this book. Why did you use it as a point of departure?
JLG: What I liked in this novel was a certain tone in the narrative and in the dialogues, and I tried to maintain this tone in the film. Of course, the tone may have come from the translation, which is bad. But at least the translation created a certain style that interested me. I even kept it in the commentary that accompanies certain scenes in the film.
The book is like a novel that I've always wanted to make into a film - Banlieu sud-est, by Renè Fallet. It's the kind of story in which you have two guys, a girl, and a bicycle race. You find that in most of the pre-war French novels. In the film previews for Band of Outsiders, I call it 'A French Film With a Pre-War Atmosphere.'
JC: Like [Marcel Carnè's] Quai des brumes?
JLG: No, more like the novels that weren't filmed before the war but which were already films. Certain novels by Simenon or Raymond Queneau...
I tried to recreate the populist, poetic climate of the pre-war period, and I don't mean this in a derogatory way.
JC: In seeing your film, which is after all a pure Grade B story, it seemed to me that you were able to hide your allusions and quotations with much greater ease. You've often been reproached for your love of quotations. It seems to me that they won't even be noticed this time.
JLG: Yes, I wanted to make a simple film that would be perfectly understandable. For instance, when distributors see Muriel or Contempt, they can't manage to decipher them. Whereas Band of Outsiders is completely clear.
But that didn't stop me from putting everything I really like into the film. I took advantage of every situation and every instant in the film. For instance, if a scene takes place in a care, the two guys talk about the cars they like. And in the choice of names, in certain dialogues, and in various parts of the commentary, I also managed to slip in everything I like.
JC: In this way, doesn't your film have certain keys to it, just as you have romans à clef? For instance, Arthur gives Odile a Queneau novel whole title is Odile. Why? Can you give any other keys to the spectators?
JLG: I chose Odile for the heroine's name as a reminder of one of Queneau's first novels. It's part of the film's atmosphere, part of the climate I was mentioning earlier.
But the Queneau novel entitled Odile is itself a roman à clef. It's a novel in which the author relates, in a humorous vein, his experiences with the Surrealist movement. At first, I wanted Arthur to give Odile the Andre Breton novel called Nadja. But it bothered me to have him give her a book called Nadja when her name was Odile. So I chose Queneau's Odile, in which you can find all of the Surrealists scarcely camouflaged behind pseudonyms - Aragon, Soupault, Breton, and so forth. Breton's name in the book is Anglarës. And it's for that reason that I have Arthur open the Queneau book and read, 'Anglarës related"' At that moment, he has the right to tell of a passage from Nadja, since Anglarës is Breton.
In that way, I hid all of these quotes, and I was therefor able to use a lot more of them than in my other films. For instance, Arthur has the same first name as Rimbaud, and so I used a text by Rimbaud in one of my commentaries on Arthur.
JC: You managed to live up to the challenge you set for yourself by shooting this feature-length film in twenty-five days, which is a record. Why this rapidity?
JLG: I always like to have a balance between the shooting of a film and its financing, between the budget and the subject, or at least what I think of as the subject. When you go to a certain party, you dress on way and not another. Even if what you wear has no relationship to what you are going to see, say, or do. You prepare yourself " For instance, you pay the extra money for a taxi because you're going to a very 'chic' party, whereas normally you'd take the subway.
It's in that vein that I shot the film in twenty-five days. I always like to impose restraints upon myself. The freer I am, the more I feel I must force certain basic conditions and rules upon myself. I never agree with the conditions my producers set up, simply because these are never the right conditions with respect to the film's subject. Therefore I try to find the right conditions and then live up to them.
For instance, people have always told me that I rush through my films. They're very happy if I finish in four weeks instead of six. But let me finish in three weeks, and they're no longer happy - 'Ah, even so, you shouldn't do a rush job".'
But it's not a question of that. It's a challenge I set up for myself.
In Contempt, the challenge was to shoot in Italy using direct sound. That's never done, because the Italians shout at the top of their lungs and their motorbikes make a lot of noise. So all of their films are dubbed over. You might think that this challenge has nothing to do with the film. But that's not true. It's a discipline. It's like doing gymnastics every morning so that you can be in shape throughout the day.
JC: You also don't allow yourself to write dialogue. Why?
JLG: I write it at the last minute. That's so that the actor won't have any time to think about his dialogue and get himself prepared. That way, he has to give more of himself. He's more clumsy that way, but also more total. I leave my actors quite free. I correct theme very once in a while if they do something that doesn't work or doesn't have anything to do with the subject. Simply because they can't realize as well as I do what the film is all about. But there's little rehearsing. Only two or three takes are ver made. Usually it's the first or last that works. I explain how they're supposed to act the way Mack Sennett probably explained things to his actors' 'You come on, you do this and we start rolling".'
On the other hand, for the dance scene in the cafè, we rehearsed for two weeks, three times each week. Sami and Claude didn't know how to dance. We invented the steps. It's an original dance, and we had to perfect it. It's a dance with an open, line figure. It's a parade. They dance for the camera, for the audience.
JC: In this film, then, the subject is the three characters, a trio that forms a 'band of outsiders.' It's almost a psychological film. But the camera always keeps its distance with respect to these characters.
JLG: Yes. When the Americans saw it, they said to me, 'It's an impressionistic film"' The fact is that I began the movie with the idea of making it a pure piece of reportage. But as you watch people, you begin to get interested in them, you get closer to them. You can't help getting closer to them.
JC: "Until you reached the point of the commentary, which you wrote after the fact and which shows us the souls of these characters.
JLG: Yes, and it makes you feel at the same time that you are quite removed.
JC: When did you really discover these characters?
JLG: When I saw the finished film. Before that, they escape you. Everything you do is staggered and contradictory. For instance, Arthur, when he goes off to rob the house, looks quite disguised, artificial, and theatrical. With his black mask, he looks as if he's playing a gangster. That's why, immediately afterwards, the theft scene is treated with a great deal of violence and brutality. It had to be realistic, you had to see the scene as somewhat true to life.
JC: In this trio, you left the sensitive character, Franz, in the background; yet he seems to be the foil to the cynical Arthur.
JLG: That's what the film is all about. Odile is obviously attracted at first toward the more brilliant of the two. And then afterwards, she discovers Franz, who is more solid, but who doesn't have appearances in his favor:
JC: Arthur is quite harsh and scornful towards Odile.
JLG: It seems to me that he's the kind of guy who goes to wait in line on Sundays to see Johnny Hallyday: or you find him playing the coin machines at the Bastille. When this kid of guy meets a girl, he feels that insulting here is the only way to court her. He's like that"
JC: This kind of character, who resembles a beast of prey, seems to turn up in all of your films. One might say that the theme of your entire work is 'the instinct to capture.' Arthur thinks only of taking. And as fast as possible. Taking money, seducing Odile. We don't seem to be far here from Les Carabiniers or from the character played by Belmondo in Breathless.
JLG: It's true that I have always had a tendency to want everything all at once. You see it in my habit of shortening the action of my films. The novel that inspired Band of Outsiders takes place over four or five months. In the film, it's three days.
It seems to me that the rapidity and the rapaciousness you see in the character of Arthur ought to arouse sympathy. He represents a precise type. He doesn't know how to discuss, so he acts. People who speak have to find beautiful things to say - they recite Shakespeare for instance - or else it's not worth the trouble to speak. You're better off keeping quiet.
The characters in Band of Outsiders don't know how to discuss. They're little animals. Instead of being the wild animals of Les Carabiniers, they're domesticated animals, you might say. They're also the little suburban cousins of the Belmondo of Breathless and of Une Femme est une femme. Furthermore, A Woman is a Woman almost had as a title On est comme on est [You Are What You Are].
JC: Why the title Band of Outsiders, which you finally kept after having tried several others?
JLG: I like it precisely because these three characters really do form a 'band of outsiders.' They're not like other people. They're more honest with themselves than with other people. They're people who lead their own lives. It's not really they who live outside of society. It's society that is far from them. They go everywhere - you see them in the Louvre, in the bistros; they're no more withdrawn from society than the characters of Rebel Without a Cause.
JC: You say that they're more honest than other people. But they're thieves"
JLG: I meant hey have natural reactions. These are characters right out of Jean-Jacque Rousseau. They're just the opposite of the here of Contempt, Paul Javal, who is a bad offspring of civilization.
But none of that was premeditated. I shot the film quite fast. When you shoot fast, you don't have the time to think about things. Things take place and become organized all by themselves. For instance, I found myself at a loss for the end of the film. I didn't know how I as going to end it. It had to end harmoniously. It's a quartet - one of the instruments has disappeared, so the rest no longer have much to do. Finally, after having tried several overly complicated solutions, I came up with the last shot of Sami and Anna leaving. It's one of the shots I like the best. Because they finally seem to be natural. It's a ëresolution.' They've found themselves. You don't know what's going to happen to them. They won't necessarily be happy. But they are ëresolved.' They are finally what they are. They have accepted themselves. They needed to have Arthur come into their lives to arrive at this point.
JC: The last shot of Band of Outsiders shows the world turning.
JLG: Yes, that could be the moral of a film by Bergman: after all the catastrophes, the world keeps on following its course.
JC: At the end of Contempt, you might say the same thing - the characters have touched off a catastrophe, but the world keeps following its course.
JLG: Yes, absolutely. But in Contempt, the catastrophe comes from the fact that the characters are too 'civilized.' They are carried away because they have invented their own ideas, their own techniques, and so forth, by themselves. On the other hand, the characters in Band of Outsiders are not dominated by any technique or by any preconceived idea. They know it's wrong to steal money. They have neither the mentality of thieves or of capitalists. They're like animals. They get up in the morning. They have to find a bird to kill so they can eat at noon, and another for the evening. Between that, they go to the river to drink. And that's it. They live by their instincts, for the instant.
The danger would be to make a system of it. Whereas these characters correct themselves. For the moment, they're happy because they're not asking themselves any questions.
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The first time they drove by the house Eddie was so
scared he ducked his head down. Skip laughed at him.
Above the rattling of the motor, Skip jeered, "What's
the matter with you? Afraid the old woman's got X-ray
eyes or something? She's a mind reader, maybe? She's
looking out now and spotting us? You nuts?" What
he really meant, as Eddie knew, was that Eddie was
chicken.
-- opening paragraph of Dolores Hitchens' Fools'
Gold
Born in Texas in 1907, Dolores Hitchens began to write mystery novels after careers in nursing and teaching. Under the pseudonym D. B. Olsen, she published her first book in 1938, The Clue in the Garden. In the 40s she wrote a series of a 12 whodunits featuring the amateur tandem, the Murdock Sisters; another of her amateur detectives was Professor Pennyweather, the hero of six other books. Writing as Dolores Hitchens after her remarriage to Bert Hitchens, a railroad detective, she collaborated with him on a series of suspense tales set in his professional milieu. Also writing as Noel Burke and Dolan Birkley, Hitchens wrote some 50 novels in all. She died in 1973.
Fools' Gold was the 472nd title in the legendary Sèrie Noire collection founded and directed by Marcel Duhamel for the prestigious French publisher Gallimard. It was translated as Pigeon vole in 1958, the year of its U.S. release. The Sèrie Noire subsequently published four other Hitchens titles: The Watcher, The Grudge, The Bank with the Bamboo Door and The Baxter Letters.
***
The 'cheap' American thriller, translated into French and published in the popular Sèrie Noire, has been a great source of material for [French] film directors. Usually, the novels are transplanted by the filmmakers into French locales, partly by preference, partly, one supposes, for economy. However, there is generally something left of the American atmosphere. For example, when Truffaut filmed the late David Goodis's novel Down There as Shoot the Piano Player, I think that even if one had not known the American origin of the book, one might have felt it from the film. Since Truffaut followed the novel so closely, and in fact succeeded so completely in rendering its atmosphere, one could not but feel that the original material was non-indigenous. On the other hand, I am sure that few people who saw Band of Outsiders ever realized that it was based on a novel set in Los Angeles and called Fools' Gold (New York: Doubleday & Company, 1958). For one thing, the film is strongly rooted in Paris as a place: the Louvre, the Mètro, the Place de la Nation [sic], the suburbs. Secondly, the two boys themselves were made to seem even more typically French precisely by their fascination with imitating American gangsters as they had presumably read about them in the Sèrie Noire or seen them in American films. In other words, nourished by the same material as Godard himself, they became all the more French...
The basic plot of the book is very close to that of Band of Outsiders ó the two boys, Skip more delinquent than Eddie, the girl, Karen, who lives with her adopted aunt in whose house someone has stashed away a pile of money. [...] A good half of the book is devoted to the story of Skip's uncle, now quietly retired from a life of crime, and his attempts to come back by making a killing on the information Skip has given him. The Syndicate also wants to move in, and many chapters are devoted to this as well as to the connections between the Syndicate and the man from Las Vegas whose money both the boys and the Syndicate are planning to steal. In the film, this whole subplot is reduced to no more than two or three tiny scenes: one in which the uncle discovers the plans for the robbery, and another in which he tries to steal the money, and he and his nephew are killed.
-- from Richard Roud, Godard (New York: Doubleday & Company, 1968)
See also: My Characters by Jean-Luc Godard
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Et pour la derniëre fois (?) à l'ècran... Michel Legrand ('And for the last time(?) on the screen: Music by Michel Legrand'): The jokey (?) credit suggests the end, not of Legrand's film career (which continues to this day) but of the Legrand-Godard collaboration, which had already produced A Woman is a Woman and My Life to Live, and the contributions to the sketch films Les Sept Pèchès Capitaux and Les Plus belles escroqueries du monde. They would only work together one more time for the 1967 sketch film, Le Plus vieux mètier du monde. In addition to Legrand's original music, Band of Outsiders also contains much self-quoting, notably in the cafè restroom scene where we hear an excerpt from Jacques Demy's The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, released just as Godard was beginning to shoot. At other moments, Sami Frey whistles bits of that film's music.
C'est solitaire et glacè par ici. ("It's cold and forlorn here"): Arthur's reaction on seeing the isolated villa is a reference to the opening line of Verlaine's famous poem, Colloque sentimental ("Dans le vieux parc solitaire et glacè/ Deux formes ont tout à l'heure passè")
Le Soleil d'Austerlitz se levait à la Bastille ("The sun of Austerlitz rose over the Bastille"): An ironic superimposition of two major events in French history: the Battle of Austerlitz in 1805, in which Napoleon definitively and gloriously routed the Austrian army, and the fall of the Bastille prison which symbolically marked the beginning of the French Revolution.
Arthur demandait à Franz s'il c'ètait bien vrai qu'il avait caressè le genou d'Odile. Franz dit que oui, et qu'elle avait la peau douce." ("Had Franz really stroked Odile's knee? Yes, Franz said, and that she had soft skin.") - A clin d'oeil to Truffaut's The Soft Skin, which premiered at the 1964 Cannes Film Festival as Godard was in post-production on Band of Outsiders.
...Une maison prës de la riviëre... ("...a house by the river....") - Godard's amusingly laconic plot summary for latecomers includes a reference to Fritz Lang's 1950 thriller The House By the River.
"Comme disait le grand poëte Eliot..." ('As the great poet Eliot said...") The quote ("Everything that is new is thereby automatically traditional") is apparently apocryphal, probably extrapolated by Godard from one of Eliot's essays on poetry.
"Une vraie minute de silence, ca dure une èternitè." ("A real minute of silence takes forever.") - Godard cheats. His minute of silence only takes 35 seconds.
"Bravo, Mr. Segalot, ca c'est du meuble!" ("Well said. You're the prince of ales.") Franz's non-sequitor response to the cafè drunk's outburst of historical philosophy ("Empires crumble, republics founder, but fools go on.") is to quote a popular ad slogan coined by a major furniture manufacturer named Segalot in the '60s. ("Bravo, Mr Segalot, that's real furniture!"). We have used a U.S. beer slogan for the subtitle.
Ca me rappelle une chanson. Comment c'etait...? ("It reminds me of a song. How does it go again?") The "song" Odile sings/recites in the Mètro is a famous poem by Louis Aragon, a founding member of the Surrealist movement and a distinguished Communist novelist and poet. It was set to music and recorded in 1961 as "J'entends, j'entends" by Jean Ferrat, a popular Communist songwriter and singer who put out several albums of Aragon's poems-cum-songs.
Odile Monod: Odile Monod was the maiden name of Godard's mother. In the original French, Arthur puns on "Monod" and "Monoprix," a still-popular discount store chain equivalent to Woolworth's (a Monoprix can be clearly viewed in Band of Outsiders).
The Madison.
One of the popular 'non-partner'
dances in the wake of the Twist craze of the early
60s, 'Le Madison' was introduced to the
French by Harold Nicholas (of the famed Nicholas Brothers).
Homages to the Madison sequence in Band of Outsiders
appear in Hal Hartley's Simple Men, John Waters'
Hairspray and most notably in Quentin Tarantino's
Pulp Fiction. (see Madison diagram)
"Va te faire empaffer à Chaillot, la folle!" ("Get smashed at Chaillot, you madwoman!") - Arthur insults his aunt with a literary reference to Jean Giraudoux's final play, "The Madwoman of Chaillot."
"I am Loopy deLoop, the good wolf." Franz's charm offensive to win Odile back includes a good impression of Loopy deLoop, the Hanna-Barbera cartoon character created in 1959 (it was the first theatrical series produced out of their new HB Studios). Loopy gets into trouble because no one can understand his thick French accent, and everyone thinks he is the big bad wolf.
Le pays de Jack London. ("To Jack London country"). The London story Franz refers to is Nam-Bok the Unveracious.
"Elle dit que c'ètait une bonne idèe de l'avoir peint en blanc. On devait dècorer le type qui a fait ca" ("She said it was smart to paint it [the Louvre] white, that the guy who did it should be decorated.") - The "guy who did it" is Andrè Malraux, then Minister of Culture, who had recently launched a program to restore major monuments and neighborhoods of Paris. Ironically, four years later Godard was to become one of Malraux's most virulent detractors in the "Langlois Affair," in which the French government incurred the wrath of the international film community by removing Henri Langlois as head of the legendary Cinèmathëque Francaise.
"Anglarës... raconta une emouvante, stupide et sombre histoire." ("Anglarës began to tell a moving, stupid and somber tale.) - Franz reads an excerpt from Odile, a 1937 novel about Andrè Breton and the Surrealists by a former member of the movement, Raymond Queneau, best known for his Zazie dans le Mètro.
...Arthur, Odile et Franz avait battu le record ètabli par Jimmy Johnson de San Francisco. ("...Arthur, Odile and Franz broke the record set by Jimmy Johnson of San Francisco.'): This famous gag in fact had two cinematic precedents, both in the silent era: in Paris en 5 jours, a 1925 French comedy vehicle for White Russian emigrè star Nicolas Rimsky, and in Jacques Feyder's 1929 The Kiss, with Greta Garbo, we see a breathless group of tourists racing through the Louvre on the heels of a rushed Louvre guide.
C'est sous des ciels de cristal que Arthur, Odile et Franz traversërent des ponts suspendus sur des fleuves impassible... ("Under a crystal sky, Arthur, Odile and Franz crossed bridges over impassive rivers...") - This entire commentary is a montage of images from Rimbaud.
"Trois jours aprës... Odile et Franz apercurent la mer." ("Three days later Odile and Franz saw the sea.") - The final scene on the boat is an obvious homage to Chaplin's The Immigrant. Earlier, in the cafè scene, Odile briefly evokes the dance of the bread loaves from The Gold Rush.
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Born December 3, 1930 in Paris, the son of a doctor and a banker's daughter, he had his elementary and high school education in Nyon, Switzerland, and in Paris, then enrolled at the Sorbonne, ostensibly to study ethnology. During his university days he developed a passionate devotion to the cinema, spending endless hours at Left Bank cinema clubs and at the Cinèmathëque, where in 1950 he met Andrè Bazin, Francois Truffaut, Jacques Rivette, Eric Rohmer, and Claude Chabrol, with whom he would later form the nucleus of the French New Wave. Godard began contributing articles and film criticism for La Gazette du Cinema, then Cahiers du Cinèma, initially using the pseudonym Hans Lucas. Also in 1950 Godard helped finance, and appeared in, an experimental film by Rivette, Quadrille.
In 1951, Godard toured North and South America. Supporting himself with a variety of odd jobs, he continued watching films at a fanatical rate, and his articles for Cahiers began reflecting an enthusiastic admiration of the work of little-known American directors of action films and at the same time a deep contempt for the traditional cinema, especially the commercial French film.
In 1954, Godard went back to Switzerland to attend services for his mother, who had been killed there in a car accident. He remained in that country to work as a laborer on a dam project. With his earnings he bought himself a 35mm camera and made his first film, Opèration Beton, a 20-minute short about the construction of the dam. In 1955, following a spurt of renewed activity in Paris as a contributor to Cahiers, he was back in Switzerland shooting a second short, Une Femme coquette, an adaptation of a de Maupassant story. Working as a one-man band, he produced, directed, and acted in the film as Jean-Luc Godard and wrote the screenplay and photographed and edited the film under the pseudonym Hans Lucas. Returning to Paris in 1956, Godard collaborated on films by Rohmer and Rivette.
Following three more shorts, Godard stunned the world with his first feature film, Breathless, made in 1959 on a shoestring budget and released early in 1960. The film marked a significant break from orthodox cinema techniques, reshaping the traditional film syntax with its astonishing jump cuts and unsteady hand-held moving shots. It was a spontaneous, impulsive, vibrant, and totally original film that reflected the director's enchantment with the immediacy of the American gangster movie and his impatience with the laboriousness of the traditional techniques of "quality" cinema. It immediately established Godard as a leading spokesman of the Nouvelle Vague movement.
Godard's next film, Le Petit Soldat, was a savage exposition of the Algerian conflict. The feminine lead in Le Petit Soldat and in several of Godard's subsequent films was played by Anna Karina, who became the director's wife in 1961. They divorced in 1967.
Karina is a stripper who wants to have a baby and settle down, in one of Godard's most buoyant and charming films, A Woman Is a Woman (1961), and a lonely, pathetic Paris prostitute in My Life to Live (1962). Les Carabiniers (1963) was an antiwar allegory that provoked violently hostile reaction from audiences. The wide-screen polished color cinematography of Contempt (1963) stood in sharp contrast to the grainy dreariness of Les Carabiniers.
With Band of Outsiders (1964), Godard returned to the world of the gangster for the first time since Breathless. As in most of his films, the protagonists here are uprooted people, outsiders who defy the boundary between the real and the imagined. A Married Woman (1964) was a conventionally structured sociological study of the alienation of a modern Parisian woman who can relate only on the physical level to both her husband and her lover. Alphaville (1965), Godard's excursion into science fiction fantasy was followed by in the same year by Pierrot le Fou (1965).
Gradually, Godard's films were becoming stripped of structure and conventional dramatic form, with an increasing emphasis on film as an essay, and cinema as a political and social instrument. Masculine-Feminine (1966) was a free-form study of mores of Parisian youth. Made in USA (1966) had a crime story for an apparent plot. Two or Three Things I Know About Her (1967) told the story of a Paris housewife who indulges in prostitution for extra income. La Chinoise (1967) featured in the leading role actress Anne Wiazemsky, who became Godard's second wife in June of 1967 and later appeared regularly in the director's films. This marriage, too, ended in divorce.
Godard's impact on the cinema of the 60s was cataclysmal and sweeping and his contribution to the art, thought, and language of the cinema significant. He used the camera not only creatively and inventively, rewriting the syntax of film grammar along the way, but also as a means of personal expression to tell "the truth 24 times a second."
After Weekend (1968), a new Godard surfaced, a revolutionary, didactic filmmaker who became obsessed with the spoken word and increasingly apathetic to cinema as a visual medium. He turned his back not only on the American films that had inspired the dreams of his youth but also on his own films. He dedicated himself to making "revolutionary films for revolutionary audiences," to expounding radical political ideas "as a secondary task in the struggle to liberate the oppressed from Capitalism.' He began making films as a collective effort, working in groups named after such Soviet film figures as Dziga Vertov and Alexander Medvedkin. In the late 60s and early 70s he collaborated regularly with Jean-Pierre Gorin, a young Parisian rebel who became the revolutionary guru of the politically naive Godard.
In the late 70s and early 80s Godard underwent yet another metamorphosis. Abandoning his political wars and video experimentations, as well as his revolutionary base of operations in Grenoble, he moved to the Swiss town of Rolle in 1978, rediscovering himself and his love of film in the process. More restrained and philosophical in middle age, he refocused his sights on themes of universal humanistic concern in Every Man for Himself (1980), Passion (1982), and First Name: Carmen (1983). He even paid a renewed homage to American cinema in Detective (1985) but caused massive controversy with his updated story of Christ's birth Hail Mary! (1985), inciting the condemnation of the Catholic Church.
Although he seemed to be inching back to the fringes of the mainstream, Godard remained inaccessible to general audiences and even seasoned cinema sophisticates seemed puzzled by and less than wholly comfortable with his films of the late 80s and 90s. King Lear (1987) was more famous for the conditions in which it was contracted ó roughed out on a napkin and signed during a lunch with Godard and producer Menachem Golan at the 1985 Cannes Film Festival ó than for the resulting film briefly seen two years later on the Croisette. Soigne ta droite (1987) featured top French pop tandem Les Rita Mitsouko, Nouvelle Vague (1990) boasted Alain Delon, and Hèlas pour moi (1994) Gèrard Depardieu, but Godard seemed to remain a highly rarefied taste. His For Ever Mozart (1997), with its typically Godardian disquisition on art and war, was better received. In 1998, Godard completed his long-gestating Histoire(s) du Cinèma, a highly personal video-based meditation of 100 years of cinema, which was released on video and in book form. Other works of the 90s include Germany Year 90 Nine Zero, and his self-portrait JLG by JLG (1995).
If Every Man for Himself was described by Godard as his "second first film," and proved to be the most accessible film of his middle period, then Godard's first film of the new millennium, Eloge de l'amour, may well be considered his "third first film" and perhaps the beginning of his last and most mature creative period. Rhapsodically received at the Cannes Film Festival this year by the international press (including many confirmed "non-Godardians"), this surprisingly moving study of art, history, memory and exploitation was immediately bought for many overseas territories, including the U.S. and Great Britain, something not seen for a Godard film in decades.
Godard won the best director award at the Berlin Festival for Breathless and the Golden Lion (best film) at Venice for First Name: Carmen. In 1986, he was honored with a Special French Cèsar Award for lifetime achievement.
adapted from The Film Encyclopedia by Ephraim Katz; updated by Lenny Borger.
For more information about Godard
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Born Hanne Karina Blarke Bayer in Copenhagen, Anna Karina left Denmark at age 18 to pursue a modeling career (for Chanel among others) in Paris. Turning down a supporting role in Breathless, she appeared in Michel Deville's Ce soir ou jamais (1960) before accepting the lead in Godard's second feature, Le Petit soldat (1960). They married the following year and their cinematic collaboration continued with A Woman is a Woman, My Life to Live, Band of Outsiders, Alphaville, Pierrot le Fou, Made in U.S.A. and Anticipation (in the sketch film Le Plus vieux metier du monde). When not working with Godard, Karina appeared in a wide variety of films, including Agnës Varda's Clèo from 5 to 7 (1962), Roger Vadim's La Ronde (1964), Luchino Visconti's The Stranger (1964), as well as Jacques Rivette's controversial La Religieuse (1965).
Karina's post-Godard career included many cross-Channel, European and international productions with such directors as George Cukor (Justine, 1969), Tony Richardson (Laughter in the Dark, 1969), Guy Green (The Magus, 1968), J. Lee Thompson (Before Winter Comes, 1968), Volker Schlondorff (Michael Kohlkaas, 1969), Andre Delvaux (Rendezvous a Bray, 1971), R. W. Fassbiner (Chinese Roulette, 1976), Franco Brusati (Bread and Chocolate, 1973), Raul Ruiz (Treasure Island, 1986), among others.
Karina has written three novels, starred in a TV musical written for her by Serge Gainsbourg, appeared on stage in a production of Ingmar Bergman's After the Rehearsal and scripted, directed and acted in a feature film, Vivre ensemble (1972). Recently she has had success with a CD, Une histoire d'amour, and a concert tour and will be seen in Jonathan Demme's remake of Charade, currently being filmed in Paris.
Michael Atkinson's profile of Anna Karina in the Village Voice
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Claude Brasseur was born in Paris in 1936, the son of actors Pierre Brasseur (Les enfants du paradis) and Odette Joyeux (La ronde). He made his stage debut in Marcel Pagnol's Judas in 1955 and his screen bow a few months later in Marcel Carnè's film Le pays d'ou je viens. In 1959 he appeared opposite his father in Georges Franju's horror classic, Eyes without a Face (aka The Horror Chamber of Dr. Faustus). Moving easily from the mainstream to the arthouse film, he has appeared notably in such films as Marcel Ophuls' Banana Peel (1963), Truffaut's Such a Gorgeous Kid Like Me (1972), Yves Robert's Pardon mon affaire (1976), Andrè Techinè's Barocco (1976), Claude Sautet's Une Histoire simple (1978), Michel Drach's Guy de Maupassant (1982), Claude Pinoteau's La Boum (1980), Godard's Dètective (1985), Catherine Breillat's Sale comme un ange (1991), Dominique Cabrera's L'Autre cÙtè de la mer (1997), and Bertrand Blier's Les Acteurs (2000). His many television credits include the title role in the French cult series, Les Nouvelles aventures de Vidocq (1971). Last year he returned to the stage to co-star with Michel Bouquet in the Paris premiere of Ronald Harwood's 1995 play Taking Sides.
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Born in Paris in 1937, Sami Frey studied with legendary acting teacher Renè Simon before making his professional screen bow in the late 50s. He landed his first major role opposite Brigitte Bardot in Clouzot's La Vèritè (1960). With his striking good looks and marvelous voice, Frey has always demonstrated discriminating taste in his choice of roles and directors. His subsequent screen credits include Agnës Varda's Clèo from 5 to 7 (1962), Georges Franju's Thèrëse Desqueyroux (1962), Claude Sautet's Cèsar et Rosalie (172), Dusan Makaveyev's Sweet Movie (1974), Ariane Mnouchkine's Moliëre (1978), Coline Serreau's Pourquoi pas? (1978), Claude Miller's Mortelle randonnèe (1983), Jacques Doillon's La vie de famille (1985), Helma Sander-Brahm's Laputa (1986), Bob Rafelson's Black Widow (1986), Bertrand Tavernier's La Fille de d'Artagnan (1994), Gerard Mordillat's En Compagnie d'Antonin Artaud (1994) and Bertrand Blier's Les Acteurs (2000). He is currently co-starring with Isabelle Adjani in Laetitia Masson's new film, La Repentie.
Frey has also conducted an admirable stage career in which he has played many of the great texts of the European dramatic repertory, from Lessing and Brecht to Antonin Artaud and Marguerite Duras. He notably took part in the revelation of contemporary British drama in France and has appeared in a number of Harold Pinter plays.
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"My friend Raoul Coutard, France's most brilliant cinematographer," says the hero of Godard's Le petit soldat. Between 1959 and 1967, Godard's friend shot all but one of his first 15 features (Masculin feminin) and returned to shoot Passion and Prènom Carmen in the early 80s. The definitive New Wave cinematographer, Coutard began his career in photojournalism, first as part of his military service, then for such magazines as Paris-Match and Life. This experience and his early work in documentaries fed directly into his innovative use of hand-held camera and natural lighting techniques. He shot most of Truffaut's 60s classics, beginning with Shoot the Piano Player and Jules and Jim, along with Jacques Demy's debut feature, Lola (1960). With Pierre Schoendoerffer, he made the Indochinese War fiction feature, La 317e Section (1964) and Le Crabe-tambour, for which he won a Cèsar in 1977. Other major credits include Jean Rouch's cinema veritè-style Chronique d'un Ete (1961) and Costa-Gavras's Z (1969). Coutard personally directed two films: Hoa Binh (1970), an evocation of the Indochina War, and La Legion saute sur Kolwezi, a recreation of a true paramilitary operation in Africa.
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Michel Legrand was born in Paris in 1931, the son of popular orchestra conductor and composer Raymond Legrand. Michel had already built a career as a popular bandleader, singer and songwriter and jazz pianist -- famous in the U.S. for his recordings with Miles Davis and others ó when he turned to film music in the late 50s. He worked regularly with Francois Reichenbach and Jean-Luc Godard before earning international success with his melodic score for Jacques Demy's The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1963), a collaboration which would continue 1982. Legrand's first score for an American film, The Thomas Crown Affair, earned him an Oscar for his song, "The Windmills of Your Mind," and he went on to win two more Oscars for the scores of Summer of '42 (1971) and Yentl (1983). In all he has been Oscar-nominated 13 times and has won 5 Grammies. In 1998 he received ASCAP's Henry Mancini Award. In 1989, he wrote and directed the autobiographical fiction feature, 5 Days in June.
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Rialto Pictures, a company specializing in the re-release of classic films, was founded in 1997 by Bruce Goldstein. The company's first two releases, co-distributed by Strand Releasing, were Mike Nichols' The Graduate and Jean-Luc Godard's Contempt. In 1998, Goldstein was joined by Adrienne Halpern (co-marketing and acquisitions director) and Mike Thomas (national sales manager). Rialto has distinguished itself with a large slate of film classics in excellent prints, including acclaimed restorations of Renoir's Grand Illusion, Carol Reed's The Third Man and Fellini's Nights of Cabiria.
Last summer, Rialto had an enormous success with the re-release of Jules Dassin's classic of French film noir, Rififi. Also in 2000, Rialto celebrated the centennial of Luis BuÒuel with re-releases of The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie and Diary of a Chambermaid, along with an acclaimed reissue of John Schlesinger's Billy Liar, starring Tom Courtenay and Julie Christie.
In addition to Band of Outsiders, this summer Rialto Pictures will re-release BuÒuel's That Obscure Object of Desire (opening in New York on July 13); and Jean-Pierre Melville's film noir classic Bob Le Flambeur (opening in New York on July 27).
In 1999, Rialto received a special 'Heritage Award' from the National Society of Film Critics. In 2000, Rialto received a special award from the New York Film Critics for its re-release of Rififi.
Pressbook contents and lay-out © 2001, Rialto Pictures LLC
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Selections From Amazon.com:
 Speaking About Godard by Kaja Silverman, Harun Farocki |
![Une Historie d'Amour [IMPORT] CD by Anna Karina](http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B00004TWG7.01.MZZZZZZZ.jpg) Une Historie d'Amour CD [IMPORT] Anna Karina |
(Not Shown) Jean-Luc Godard: Interviews by Jean-Luc Godard, David Sterritt (Editor) Godard on Godard: Critical Writings by Jean-Luc Godard by Jean Luc, Godard, Jean Luce Godard, Annette Michelson, Jean Narboni (Editor) |  The Films of Jean-Luc Godard: Seeing the Invisible by David Sterritt |  Cahiers Du Cinema: The 1950's Neo-Realism, Hollywood, New Wave (Harvard Film Studies) by Jim Hillier (Editor) |
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