Star Review
By any estimation, the run of fifteen films and ten shorts that Godard put out between 1960 and 1967 is extraordinary, and stands as one of the most exciting investigations of cinema and its possibilities. Some of his wide range during that period can be seen on this set. There’s the ‘neo-realist musical’ Une Femme est une Femme, a bright, playful homage to the American musical comedy, awarded a special prize at Berlin for its ‘originality, youthfulness, daring and impertinence’. More sombre is Le Petit Soldat, made in 1960 but banned for three years by the French government for its subject matter of the Algerian war. As well as the source of that oft-quoted remark about cinema being truth 24 times a second, it also marked Godard's first collaboration with the lovely Danish actress Anna Karina (after he had got her mother’s consent that is). The camera is smitten with her presence; no wonder Belmondo flees with her to the Mediterranean in Pierrot le Fou. Finally, La Chinoise is Godard’s prophetic, wittty analysis of the naive spirit underlying the events of 1968.
Graeme Hobbs on 12th July 2007
View all 228 of Graeme Hobbs’s reviews
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Film Description
Five films from Jean-Luc Godard, including four from his fantastically creative period in the sixties. Features Une Femme est une Femme (1961), Le Petit Soldat (1963), Pierrot le Fou (1965), La Chinoise (1967) and Detective (1985).
Une Femme est une Femme, in which Karina plays a stripper who wants a child with her reluctant lover, is a delightfully jaunty, playful film strewn with cross-cultural and cinematic references. A tribute to the American musical, Godard actually called it 'a neorealist musical - that is, a contradiction in terms."
Set during the Algerian war, Le Petit Soldat is a love story of sorts between a right-wing terrorist boy and a left wing activist girl. Trouble comes when the boy is suspected of being a double agent. Although the film was completed in 1960, its controversial subject matter led to it being shelved for three years.
Pierrot le Fou, a sort of follow-uo to Breathless, is the story of a bored husband (Belmondo) who runs away from Paris to the South of France with an unpredictable but beguiling young babysitter (Anna Karina) after a corpse is found in her flat. After an idyllic time at the seaside they hit the road once more and get by on theft. Belmondo was nominated for a BAFTA for his perfomance in this tragic tale of a romantic couple who cannot escape fate no matter how far they flee.
In La Chinoise, five Parisian Maoist students discuss the implications of the cultural revolution in China and the possibilities of using terrorism in the West to a similar result. Brilliantly put together, Godard goes back to basics and has fun with this prophetic and acute analysis of the sincere and naive spirit underlying the events of 1968.
Finally, Detective sees a fine cast of 'actors' and 'stars' play out Godard's enjoyable film - an accretion and parody of film noir themes, and set in a Parisian hotel.
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Jean-Luc Godard Collection (Volume 1)
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Jean-Luc Godard Collection (Volume 2)
