Listen to Richard Brody on the Lopate show on May 14.

“Still amazing 40 years later… La Chinoise remains more inventive than any new movie.
IT MAY BE THE MOST IMPORTANT MOVIE EVENT OF THE FALL.”
– Armond White, New York Press. Click here to read review

“AS BRASHLY COLORED AND BOLDLY PATTERNED AS A POLITICAL POSTER!”
– J. Hoberman, The Village Voice

“WORKERS OF THE WORLD UNITE! AND SEE GODARD'S REVOLUTIONARY DIG AT 60'S RADICAL CHIC.”
– Time Out New York

“The cinematic techniques Godard used to evoke radical youth culture seem years ahead of their time.”
– Stephen Holden, The New York Times. Click here to read review

“Eerily prophetic and spectacularly stylized.”
– Andrew Sarris, The New York Observer. Click here to read review

"One of the most baffling, maddening and hilarious films in the entire baffling, maddening, etc.,
career of Jean-Luc Godard. Will it provoke a new college-campus wave of Maoist terrorism?"
– Andrew O'Hehir, Salon

“AN INTEGRAL PART OF THE ’68 JUGGERNAUT. Not just a period film, La Chinoise, blazing in all its glory for nine days this month on the Film Forum screen, is a chunk of the period… Also a spectacular accomplishment within a sustained performance unique in movie history. From Breathless through Weekend, Godard reinvented cinema.”
– J. Hoberman, The Village Voice. Click here to read review

[4 STARS] A MOLOTOV MIXTURE OF COMEDY AND COMMENTARY!”
– David Fear, Time Out New York

“May be Godard’s funniest work! His aestheticized humor is still vibrant.” – Armond White, New York Press

“Léaud looks young, Wiazemsky beautiful, and La Chinoise, thank God, not a day past essential.”
– Nathan Kosub, Reverse Shot. Click here to read review

"GODARD'S BEST FILM BY FAR SINCE BREATHLESS... And the perfect companion piece to The Battle of Algiers. Some of the most sensitive and intelligent work on the New Left that has been done in any medium."
– Renata Adler, The New York Times

(1967) Philosophy student Anne Wiazemsky (star of Bresson’s Au Hasard Balthazar and later Mme. Godard), actor Jean-Pierre Léaud, engineer Michel Semeniako, country girl Juliet Berto, and painter Lex de Bruijn (as “Sergei Kirillov”), crashing at an apartment lent to them for the summer, form a Maoist cell; and then... Dostoyevsky as Pop Art; the making of a terrorist; Old vs. New Left; Russian vs. Chinese Communism; the casting out of a “Revisionist;” prescient overtones of the upheavals of May ’68; even political assassination that combines (offscreen) mayhem with absurdity. Godard’s tour de force of idealism, naiveté, and flat affect includes red accents in nearly every shot — chairs, lamp shades, books, doors, pens, walls, drapes, bike handle bars; self-referential, Brechtian alienation effects — shots of the great Raoul Coutard on camera, a stogie-puffing sound man, even a synch-up frame complete with slate; slogans, quotes, aphorisms on walls, posters, book jackets, and title cards filling the screen; occasionally illustrated with visual aids — Léaud’s world politics breakdown punctuated by his changes of national flaglensed shades, and Berto’s turn as Vietnamese peasant girl menaced by toy U.S. fighters; and bizarre digressions — learn why ancient Egyptian teenagers spoke in sheep-like bleats. With riveting centerpiece: the train journey with real life Old Leftist Francis Jeanson continually riposting to Wiazemsky’s matter of fact plans to blow up the Sorbonne with “What next?” “One of Godard’s most underrated and misunderstood films... Godard is equally preoccupied by such things as French rock, the color red, the history of cinema, the ‘revisionism’ of the French communist party, and the rebels’ youthful romantic longings... Helped inspire student revolt at Columbia University soon afterward, but that’s a tribute to its style and energy, not its political intelligence.” – Jonathan Rosenbaum. “Distinctly disquieting as well as gratingly funny... a remarkably acute analysis of the impulse behind the events of May 1968 in all their desperate sincerity and impossible naïveté.” – Tom Milne, Time Out (London). “A fast, clever political comedy... Godard’s hard-edge visual style is stripped down for speed and wit.” – Pauline Kael. “The most perceptive film about modern youth since Masculine Feminine... More than Godard’s valentine to youth; it is also his valedictory.” – Andrew Sarris. Approx. 95 mins.
A KOCH LORBER RELEASE.
NEW SHOWTIMES: 2:45, 6:25, 10:10
*Listen to our podcast: Introduction by author RICHARD BRODY (MP3 file - Recorded May 14, 2008)

EVERYTHING IS CINEMA: THE WORKING LIFE OF JEAN-LUC GODARD, a new book by New Yorker writer Richard Brody, Listen to the author Richard Brody on The Lenny Lopate Show (WNYC Radio) Listen to our podcast: Introduction of LA CHINOISE by author RICHARD BRODY (MP3 file - Recorded May 14, 2008)

Available at Amazon:

Godard on Godard: Critical Writings by Jean-Luc Godard