One of my all-time favorite actresses is the Danish-born French New Wave star Anna Karina, and I am constantly trying to copy her style. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, right? Well, who wouldn’t want to imitate her classic 1960’s look?

Lucky for me, I can find everything I need to replicate this style in a modern, affordable way!

For her simple look of a casual cardigan and patterned skirt, I chose this look, combining Wet Seal and ModCloth:

The look comes out to $52. I could easily pair it with the dark tights and black pumps I already own, and voila! I’ve got a modern-yet-Karina outfit, perfect for work or school!

For that ultrafrilly dress with a cute rope necklace, behold the following:

Look #1 combines a ModCloth dress with a necklace from Oasis and comes to a total of $216. Look #2’s dress is a Delia’s creation, with a necklace from Dorothy Perkins, and the cost is a total of $58. Look #3 is a dress from Lipsy and a necklace from Charlotte Russe for a total of about $123.

Finally, for that fantastic sweater-jacket-beret look, I went with the following:

Coat from Red Herring, sweater from American Eagle, and beret from Nordstrom for a total of $136. Not bad! Especially for that fantastic coat. Love it!

Quotes from Godard illustrated by his wife and early muse, my own style inspiration and personal patron saint, the lovely and talented* Anna Karina.

*Not sure if you’d noticed, but I only bill as “lovely and talented” those who take it off. Write that down.

All you need to make a movie is a girl and a gun. (Journal entry, 5/16/91)

“Light me up!” Still of Anna Karina as Natacha van Braun from Alphaville, une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution / Alphaville (1965)

I don’t think you should feel about a movie. You should feel about a woman. You can’t kiss a movie.

Still with Jean-Paul Belmondo from Une femme est une femme / A Woman is a Woman (1961), previously highlighted with “Look, Ma, no gag reflex!” still here back in September.

“In films, we are trained by the American way of moviemaking to think we must understand and ‘get’ everything right away. But this is not possible. When you eat a potato, you don’t understand each atom of the potato!” (Interview with David Sherritt, The Christian Science Monitor, 8/3/94)

Une femme est une femme / A Woman is a Woman (1961)

Art attracts us only by what it reveals of our most secret self. (Critique called “What Is Cinema?” for Les Amis du Cinéma , 10/1/52, a work which advanced the auteur theory but also kind of ripped off Bazin, which is weird cause Bazin would’ve read it and was a big influence on Godard but this was done contemporaneously of Bazin himself working on something titled this, about this, so maybe the quote is misattributed? … or maybe there is more to it than I know with my tiny ken of French movie guys, maybe it was a done thing to borrow titles from one another, or perhaps it was a continuation of a dialogue they were already having both in person and via publications, or, finally, it could even have been an “understood” question which anyone might use as the title of a book or article … I am probably over-reading it.)

Hands down my favorite picture of Anna Karina

Beauty is composed of an eternal, invariable element whose quantity is extremely difficult to determine, and a relative element which might be, either by turns or all at once, period, fashion, moral, passion. (“Defense and Illustration of Classical Construction,” Cahiers du Cinéma, 9/15/52)

Cover or liner art for her album, a collaboration with the dread Serge G

The truth is that there is no terror untempered by some great moral idea. (“Strangers on a Train,” Cahiers du Cinéma 3/10/52 — Godard wrote extensively and insightfully in his early career about the movies of Hitchcock, one of my favorite and I think misunderstood directors; I’ll try to share some good nuggets from time to time)

Anna cahorts about topless as Anne in 1968’s The Magus, also starring Anthony Quinn (Zorba the Greek), Michael Caine, and Candace Bergen (Murphy Brown) — no one seems to like this movie but me. That’s okay, because I like it a lot.

Photography is truth. The cinema is truth twenty-four times per second. (Le petit soldad / The Little Soldier, 1963.)

With Jean-Paul Belmondo again, this time as Ferdinand and Marianne in the sort of romantic-tragi-comedy-crime-caper Pierrot le fou / Crazy Pete / Pierre Goes Wild (1965).

To be or not to be? That’s not really a question. (unsourced)

Screencap with subtitles from Une femme est une femme / A Woman is a Woman (1961).

Cleo From 5 To 7 (1962)

Dir. Agnes Varda

From the incomparable Agnes Varda’s arguably greatest achievement, Cleo From 5 To 7, a French New Wave groundbreaker that somehow seems to feel just as fresh today as it ever was.  This scene is Varda’s mini-love letter to silent cinema, with friends Jean-Luc Godard and Anna Karina hamming it up for her camera.  Enjoy.

I just watched an AMAZING movie. It’s called A Woman Is a Woman by Jean-Luc Godard and it’s a 1962 French New Wave film. It stars Jean Claude Brialy, Anna Karina, and Jean Paul Belmondo. The movie is supposed to be a tribute to the American musical comedy genre. It’s about an exotic dancer named Angela (Karina) who battles between the two love interests in her life.

It was a complete break from anyway other movie I had seen. It was like a 60’s Wes Anderson film. More appropriately Wes Anderson is more like a modern Godard. This movie is a smart, quirky, colourful and unconventional film, and could be one my favourite movies that I have seen in a while. I found the character of Angela, while extremely stubborn and sometimes melodramatic, to be quite charming. She enjoys reasons for drama, which is fitting as she dreams of being in an American musical movie. Angela seems to be happy when she is by herself, and then puts on an “unhappy” act whenever the two men are around her. I think she likes to have the attention, having two men to choose from, asking, “why are women always suffering”, and always contradicting herself (she would tell Émile that she hated him, and then off to the side she would say she loved him).

An important line in this movie is one that is asked a few times, “is this a tragedy or a comedy?” It’s interesting that one of the characters in the movie is asking this, as I was thinking the same thing as well. While the movie is a comedy, you can’t help but wonder about the severity of actual circumstances in the film. Angela asks her lover consistently and frequently to have a baby, and he calls her an idiot for asking. Both sides of the relationship cheat on one another, however they still end up with each other. One of the most poignant scenes took place near the end when Alfred put on a song by Charles Aznavour, and there was no dialogue for the whole song. All you could see was the sadness in Angela surface, which before this, she only talked about and never showed.

(It also helps that Anna Karina is insanely beautiful and the styling is B-A-N-A-N-A-S).

Sinopse:

Odile encontra com Arthur e Franz em uma aula de inglês e os conta que há uma grande quantia em dinheiro na casa de campo onde vive com sua tia. Arthur e Franz tentam convencê-la de roubar sua própria casa, enquanto tentam seduzi-la… No início Arthur tem mais sucesso, mas as coisas não são tão simples assim.

Ficha Técnica:

Direção: Jean-Luc Godard
Ano: 1964
País: França
Gênero: Drama, Policial
Duração: 97 min.
Título Original: Bande à Part
Título em inglês: Band of Outsiders

Elenco:

Anna Karina
Sami Frey
Claude Brasseur
Danièle Girard
Louisa Colpeyn

Trailer:

“Descontraído, estiloso e apaixonante. Bande à Part, junto com Os Incompreendidos de Truffaut e Acossado de Godard, é um dos expoentes máximos da Nouvelle Vague, um estilo peculiar do cinema francês. Cheio de inovações geniais, é um dos filmes mais interessantes que já tive a oportunidade de assistir.”

Download do arquivo torrent.
Download da legenda.

Link Alternativo: Filme em RMVB (Legendas Embutidas) – 315.3MB
Download.

Lemmy Caution contra el mundo

De distopías va la cosa últimamente, o siempre. Me apetecía volver a retomar Alphaville, que para mí es una de las dos mejores películas de Godard, aunque de su primera etapa me encante prácticamente todo. Es una película bellísima por fuera y probablemente por dentro, con sus mensajes crípticos y su simbolismo deshumanizado en busca de los verdaderos sentimientos. Una ciudad futurista con claro aire parisino de la época es lo que hace a Godard dar rienda suelta a su desesperanzada visión del mundo y de la dirección que estaba tomando la sociedad, hasta llegar al control mental por parte de un ordenador, Alpha60, prohibiendo sentimientos bajo pena de muerte, creando seres programados antes que humanos y vetando palabras a cada momento. Y aún así, es Anna Karina en su papel de Natasha VonBraun quien lucha contra lo impuesto y no quiere dejar al espía Lemmy Caution; es la esperanza para todos, la inocente y hermosa hija de quien está al mando y necesita ser rescatado. En sí Alphaville es una película bastante curiosa, no sólo por la mezcla de géneros, sino por llevarlos a cabo con los parámetros de la Nouvelle Vague, que hacen de algunas escenas un festín demasiado bizarro (pero con encanto). Con una puesta en escena sencillamente magnífica, es una interesante visión al género de la ciencia-ficción al estilo Godard. Puede resultar compleja, de hecho, lo es o tiene la intención de serlo, como todo en manos de Godard, pero hay una increíble sensación de inmensidad. No entraré en el momento por el que pasaba el matrimonio Godard-Karina, pero parece un ‘regalo’ final muy bello para una mujer tan maravillosa. Y voy a obviar por completo la existencia de un remake.

Anna Karina, linda.

Anna Karina, en esta escena de “Vivir su vida”, bailando ante desconcertados e interesados asiduos a este “Billar Café”. Como de costumbre, una interpretación deslumbrante.

Virvre Sa Vie (My Life to Live) by Jean-Luc Godard 1962.

It’s everything in the French New Wave that makes me love classic european styles so much (like this), not only just fashion but also interior design, cars and good espresso. This image of Anna Karina (as Nana) in Virve Sa Vie wearing the simple round-neck cardigan was always in my mind when I was searching for one. (and I found one.)

-N.

]]> http://earlierwork.net/2009/11/12/anna-karina-sous-le-soleil-exactement/ Thu, 12 Nov 2009 18:18:40 +0000 Jesse Trussell http://earlierwork.net/2009/11/12/anna-karina-sous-le-soleil-exactement/

From Anna (1967).

]]> http://avidaeaobra.wordpress.com/2009/11/04/dicas-culturais-do-dia-296/ Wed, 04 Nov 2009 10:06:44 +0000 nestortipajr http://avidaeaobra.wordpress.com/2009/11/04/dicas-culturais-do-dia-296/

FILME: VIVER A VIDA

Título Original: Vivre Sa Vie
Gênero: Drama
Duração: 85 minutos
Ano de Lançamento: (França) 1962
Estúdio: Les Films de la Pléiade
Distribuidora: Magnus Opus
Direção: Jean-Luc Godard
Roteiro: Jean-Luc Godard
Produção: Pierre Braunberger
Elenco
Anna Karina (Nana Kleinfrankenheim)
Sady Rebbot (Raoul)
André S. Labarthe (Paul)
Guylaine Schlumberger (Yvette)
Gérard Hoffman (Chefe)
Monique Messine (Elisabeth)
Paul Pavel (Jornalista)
Dimitri Dineff (Dimitri)
Sinopse: Nana é uma jovem que abandona o seu marido e o seu filho para iniciar sua carreira como atriz. Para financiar sua nova vida começa a trabalhar numa loja de discos, mas não ganha muito dinheiro. Como não consegue pagar o aluguel, Nana é expulsa de casa e decide virar prostituta. No primeiro dia que começa a trabalhar na rua, reencontra Yvete, uma velha amiga que lhe confessa que também se prostitui por necessidade. Yvete lhe apresentará a Raoul, que se converterá em seu cafetão. A partir desse momento, Nana irá introduzindo-se pregressivamente no mundo da prostituição.

Comentário: interessante formato, principalmente pela divisão em capítulos que é feita. Vale a pena assistir.

MÚSICA: CRAIG DAVID – HOT STUFF (CHASE & STATUS MIX)

Anna Karina, Godard’s muse – Another one of Godard’s iconic actresses, Karina was born Hanne Karen Blarke Bayer in Copenhagen and then emigrated to Paris at the age of 17. She began modeling, and then moved on to acting with many of cinema’s greatest talents – most notably in Jean-luc Godard’s films during the 60’s, but she’s also worked with Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Jacques Rivette, George Cukor, and Agnes Varda, among others. The video posted above is a great little piece on Karina, combining a few interviews with her and others, and even shot in a very nouvelle vague manner. If you’re suffering from those post-Halloween blues what better way to forget them than with Karina’s gorgeous mug?

- por Bernardo Brum

É esse o filme onde Samuel Fuller diz que o cinema é um campo de batalha. E se isso é verdade, Godard age todo o tempo feito o mais psicótico da frente de batalha francesa que pretendia varrer os artesãos da terra e fincar a bandeira dos autores em terra firme. Temos o drama intimista de Truffaut, a suavidade de Rohmer, a moral e o assassinato com Chabrol… e a política com o mais alucinado deles. Se há tempos Aristóteles já disse que nossa natureza animal é mesmo essa, cada obra produzida deveria ser retrato, construção e olhar das revoluções, anseios e contradições de sua época (ou não, como diria o Imperativo Caêniano).

Se a batalha, de fato, acontecia, e se de fato, cada disparo dado era então uma escolha, O Demônio das Onze Horas é um ponto de virada na carreira do diretor – a insatisfação com a vida burguesa que levam Ferdinand e Marianne Renoir são imediata associação com outro insatisfeito – o próprio Godard, que fez porque fez para desconstruir o cinema burguês que pegou o cinema de Eisenstein para construir suas grandes histórias morais daquele século, indo na contramão alguns anos depois do movimento de ruptura que ajudou a criar para novamente ser um vanguardista – desta vez político – no grupo Dziga Vertov. Mas mesmo nesse, já se percebiam claros sinais.

Aqui, através de uma série de inúmeras pirações, Godard dissolve todo o cinema erigido até então em uma narrativa muito particular, construído à base de sarcasmo, polêmica, provocação e confronto na própria forma do filme. Tudo o que Godard tinha experimentado até então – intertítulos, filmes em atos, quebras de de eixo e diegese, edição picotada, números musicais, descontinuidade narrativa, contexto marginal/nômade, está tudo aqui, mas de forma muito, muito mais radical. Se Acossado provocava o cinema careta de sua época, O Demônio das Onze Horas centra seus esforços em inflamar a discussão, não deixar pedra sobre pedra, e nada escapa do alvo – o cinema e o modo de se assistir cinema, a política e o modo de se pensar política e de como isso domina a sociedade contemporânea de forma irritantemente intrínseca.

Não que o diretor passe a mão na cabeça do espectador. Desde o início, a crítica segue progressivamente impiedosa. Quanto mais o cinema é desconstruído, mas o sentido das palavras “sociedade ocidental” escoa ralo abaixo – até terminar na famosa saída “tudo pelos ares” – após os ciúmes burgueses se apossarem do casal, resultando em fuga, assassinato e suicídio, tudo termina em uma explosão seca, em forma de cogumelo. Depois de duas horas de esculacho conscientizado, realmente não imaginaria final melhor.

5/5

Ficha técnica: O Demônio das Onze Horas (Pierrot Le Fou) – 1965, França/Itália. Dir.: Jean-Luc Godard. Elenco: Anna Karina, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Samuel Fuller

Pierrot Le Fou (Jean-Luc Godard, 1965)

I haven’t written about any Godard films yet, and it’s probably about time. Two or three years ago I had a big Godard phase during which I watched most of the films from his golden age, but he made so many in the 60s that there are still a few major ones I’ve yet to see. His stuff is so packed with content that it can dazzle and I needed to view this one twice before I got a grip on it.

Pierrot le Fou would be a good introduction to Godard as it bridges his early and later stuff; it’s simulatenously a farewell to the pulpy pop stories and an indication of where he was heading to. The film is bursting at the seams with ideas and it conveys a sense of tension. Its range of references are voraciously diverse; people are always recounting anecdotes, spouting cod philosophy. Narrative cinema about a murder, robbery or other maguffin is no longer big enough to contain his curiosity, his restless impatience.

The references to Céline might be a clue towards the form of the film. No doubt it seemed odd to namecheck a persona non grata fascist novelist in 1965, but the defining character of Céline’s books was always their avant-garde style. Chatty, digressive, cut-up, he embraced argot and paid less heed to plot -or basic sentence structure- as he went on. They said that he had “blown a hole in the ceiling” of stuffy classical literature. With his vaulting ambition to experiment and push out boundaries, Godard was trying to do something similar to cinema.

The film does still (just about) employ a criminal-couple-on-the-run storyline, but in the loosest sense possible. The interest is elsewhere and when the plotty action bits take place, poetic voiceovers and jarring soundtracks are placed over the top; it’s easy to miss what’s actually happening. Like Le Mépris it has lovely photography of the Mediterranean coast; sunshine, bright primary colours, lots of beach hotels and motorboats. It also resembles said film in that it’s preoccupied with the end of a love affair, the impossibility of a man and a woman getting on with each other long-term.

The film casts Godard’s most iconic actors, Jean-Paul Belmondo and Anna Karina, just as his marriage to the latter was ending. This is another cause of the restless feeling; in moments of tranquility the two leads agonise over the unknowability of one’s lover, their failure to truly understand one another.  Amidst all the culture and politics some personal stuff is being worked out here. 

One could say that it’s a clash between Old Godard and New; Marianne (Karina) throws herself into the Bonnie & Clyde routine and wants intrigue, action, dancing and music. She rows with Ferdinand (Belmondo) because he’s put aside childish things and wants peace and quiet in which to read, write and think. She suggests Monte Carlo, Vegas or Miami for possible destinations, he prefers Athens or Florence. 

Politics don’t quite dominate the film, but they are already barging into places we wouldn’t normally expect them and throwing their weight about. Although it has nothing to do with the characters or the story, there’s a tourettes-like compulsion to talk about the Vietnam war. Politics would soon take centre stage for my two favourite Godard films, La Chinoise and Weekend, before the tension between his Maoist callings and the set-up of commercial cinema got too much and he had to pack it in. It’s when the tension was at its greatest, though, that he produced his most thrilling work.

We begin with playful credits, an alpahbet soup of neon letters as mournful, noirish music with a touch of Bernard Hermann plays; this theme will recur throughout. Belmondo reads a poetic voiceover about Velazquez as we see girls play tennis, JPB in a bookshop, a sunset over a harbour.

Ferdinand is disclosed sitting in a bath, reading about Velazquez to his little daughter. The painter lived in a blighted time- at the King’s court he was “surrounded by idiots, dwarves and invalids”. One senses that Godard is inviting us to draw comparisons. The flat is luxurious. Ferdinand’s nagging wife tells him he must come to her parents’ tonight to meet a man from Standard Oil who might give him a job. Her friends bring Marianne, the babysitter- a schoolgirlish Karina with her hair done up. Ferdinand starts ranting to the bemused couple about Balzac and Beethoven; with a quick blast of the Fifth, they head out.

At the party, suave guests (almost Marienbad dummies) recite bland advertising blurbs about different products in lieu of conversation. Everything is put through filters of blue, red, green. In a famous cameo, Samuel Fuller tells Ferdinand that cinema is “love, hate, action, violence, death- emotions”. A couple of women with cocktails and fancy necklaces are topless. All look languid and bored, but none more than Ferdinand. “You speak too much, listening to you is tiresome”, one of the ladies tells him.

Ferdinand goes home early and offers the doe-eyed Marianne a lift home. We see them sit in a fake car on a stage set and we learn that years ago, the pair were lovers. Ferdinand tells her he’s been “too lazy” to divorce his wife. Marianne doesn’t want to recount her life story and turns on the radio- atrocities in Vietnam. She confesses her love, Ferdinand plays it cool; fag in mouth, eyes on the road.

The next morning, Marianne is walking around her bare flat and cooking breakfast for Ferdinand, who’s smoking in bed. There are prints of Modigliani and Renoir on the wall, plus magazine photos of African soldiers, rifles everywhere and a bloodied corpse in the other room. In a dressing gown Marianne sings a love song whilst Ferdinand struggles to look tough and indifferent.

Most of these more conventional scenes are linked by voiceover segments; a piece of dramatic music, Belmondo and Karina sharing fragments of conversation or some abstract poetic images, and action shots interspersed with a mélange of classic paintings, cartoon strips and other random images flashing before us. One such segment appears here; we see a man discover the body, Marianne concuss him with a bottle, and the lovers flee Paris. We’re able to discern from the voiceover that Marianne is somehow mixed up in arms trafficking to Angola, and needs to find her brother Fred (like Holly Golightly). On the road the pair embrace their newfound outlaw status by punching out three petrol station attendants.  

Now Marianne is driving and Ferdinand looks redundant. “Have you ever killed a man? You won’t like it,” she warns him. In a voiceover segment we see them stop in a small town and learn that the police are in pursuit. They need money and decide to tell the townspeople stories about some esoteric historical subjects, such as William of Orange’s nephew. The villagers introduce themselves to the camera; a Hungarian refugee, a redhead shopgirl, an old man who’s working as an extra in a film.

To throw off the police, they want to get rid of their car by faking an accident. Fortuitously they come across a capsized car with two corpses and decide to set fire to their own. “It must look authentic, this isn’t a film”, scolds Marianne. The soundtrack is filled with birdsong as we see a long shot of smoke from the car filling the sky, Ferdinand and Marianne disappearing into a field of crops.

Next is the surreal image of the two, in a suit and a dress, wading down the middle of a river. They’re carrying a comic book and a toy monkey (because we’re all big kids?). They steal a sleek convertible from a garage and soon they’re at the south coast. The radio plays sprightly baroque music, Karina’s hair looks blondish in the sun. She accuses Ferdinand of missing his wife; he smells death ”in the landscape, women’s faces, cars…”. They sleep on the beach. Marianne points to the Man in the Moon, whom Ferdinand tells her is off; the space race has got him pestered with Lenin and Coca-Cola and he’s going to leave both ”to shoot it out”.  

At this point, Godard decides to turn the film into Robinson Crusoe. They have a cabin, Ferdinand keeps a journal of their “hunting and fishing” and they indulge in light agricultural work. He has a parrot who sits on his shoulder, Marianne has a baby fox whom she lets lick her plate. The camera trained on her, Marianne looks away guiltily as she promises never to leave, then gives us a shy smile. Ferdinand reads Céline to Marianne then addresses the camera with a rasping old-man’s croak, talking about the novel he’s got planned. He tells her off for bringing home a record; “You’re only allowed to buy one record for every fifty books. Literature is above music”.

Ferdinand is thriving. On a forest walk, he asks to borrow Marianne’s lipstick and uses it to jot down his ideas. Marianne feels estranged and moans about her boredom whilst stamping along the beach (“You talk to me with words and I look at you with feelings”. “Feelings are no good, you need to have ideas”). As well she might, Marianne soon gets fed up with all of this and tries to change the film back to Old Godard. She’s bored of living in “a Jules Verne” story and longs to go back to being in “un roman policier”. To do this, they’ll need to raise money from the tourists (“ésclaves modernes”).

To entertain the American tourists in Nice, they put on a little play about (what else?) Vietnam. With a bottle of bourbon and a general’s hat, Belmondo points a gun and shouts “Oh yeah! New York! Oh yeah! COMMUNISTE!”. Her face painted bright yellow, Karina snaps and whines in mock-Chinese speak. The watching American sailors declare this to be “damn good”. Afterwards each confides to the camera. Marianne wants to go dancing; Ferdinand doesn’t understand her and she just wants to live a bit. “Who cares if we get killed?” Standing amidst tall crops, Ferdinand muses on this “age of double men” and how he’s never quite sure what his girlfriend is thinking. Welcome to our world, pal.

After this interlude, the nominal story rears its head in the form of a dwarf who has something on Marianne. In blazer and tie, carrying a walkie-talkie and a bottle of Coke, he trains a gun on the camera and threatens her with a napalm bath “comme a Vietnam”. Ferdinand visits a café where a familiar-looking chap tells him, “Last year I loaned you 10,000 Francs and you slept with my wife,” before walking off grinning. I’m guessing it’s a reference to a Belmondo film I have forgotten or never seen. When he walks into their flat, the dwarf is dead; Marianne has stabbed him with scissors. Two gangsters show up and torture him in the bath-tub; we see details of a painting as we hear him being overpowered and beaten.

Ferdinand sits down on train-tracks, but jumps away at the last moment. A Karina voiceover informs us that he couldn’t find Marianne anywhere. We see him in a cinema, with J-P Léaud and a sailor. There’s a newsreel of Vietnam and Ferdinand dozes off, then starts reading. He only gains interest in the cinema screen when Jean Seberg shows up; now that’s definitely a reference to an old film.

In Nice harbour, Ferdinand chats to the exiled Queen of Lebanon (don’t ask me). When she leaves, Marianne turns up and professes delight to have found both him and her “brother” Fred. He reminds her they are wanted for murder, then reluctantly agrees to rejoin the “tale of sound and fury”. They board a speedboat; the adoring camera is fixated on Karina, sunlit sea and a flapping French flag behind her, as she answers Ferdinand’s practical/banal questions about the truth of her background and all this gun-running stuff.

On a beach, Marianne tells Fred that “he’ll do anything I want”, then the film drags itself through the rushed motions of plot/action in an extended voiceover sequence. Belmondo and Karina comment on the images and compare them to stock clichés from novels as the two gangsters drive around, a suitcase is exchanged, and Belmondo has another skirmish with them. “There’s no reason why soft thighs and breasts should stop you from killing everyone”, Marianne tells us as she shoots the gangsters with a long-distance sniper gun. We see her grin in satisfaction.

They meet in a bowling alley; Ferdinand has two plane tickets for Tahiti. Marianne agrees but we don’t quite believe her. Soon she’s back on the speedboat kissing Fred; they pull out from the harbour just as Ferdinand arrives, and he’s left to hear some crazed random tell a very funny story about the record that has haunted him all through his life. It’s playing in the background; Ferdinand insists to the man that he can’t hear a thing, but he hums it to himself as he hitches a boat ride to the offshore island.

He shoots Fred and Marianne (Le Mépris again), then carries the girl to bed and tells her “It’s too late, you brought it on yourself.” Her face is covered in blood. Crazy with grief, a bawling Ferdinand paints his face blue then ties two bundles of dynamite around his head. After the fuse is lit he has a moment of clarity (“Shit, what an idiot I’m being!”) but cannot see to stamp it out. The camera pulls back and we see an explosion on the coastal rocks. The camera calmly moves right to take in the sea, the horizon and finally the sun. There is silence, before our stars share one last whispered voiceover; “It’s ours again. Eternity.”

The film is slightly overlong and Godard can be like Herzog in that you have to sit through an amount tedium to get the inspired bits of brilliance that one just doesn’t see most films; and it is a quite brilliant ending, with images that will stay with me. However it’s belligerent, it points a great big arrow towards my favourite period of Godard and it’s a film with one hell of a lot on its plate- and more still to say, if you listen. I watch stuff like this and come away thinking what a travesty it is that A bout de souffle is his best-known film.

One aside- I remember that one of Kenneth Williams’ more angst-ridden diary entries describes a visit to the cinema for Pierrot Le Fou. He was deeply wounded that when asked “Who are you?”, Belmondo jokingly replied “un homosexuel” and got a big laugh from the crowd. At one point in the film, Karina does indeed ask Belmondo who he is. I’m fairly certain he answers, “un homme sexuel”.

Ça va pas, ça va pas, restez immobile
Seule façon ici de se mouvoir
Ou alors je me casse la gueule et je me tue
Non mais t’as vu ce que t’as fait de moi
T’as vu ce qu’il en reste, nothing, lord nothing
Mais qu’est-ce qu’elle fait bon Dieu, elle est là elle est pas là
C’est pas possible, pas possible, pas possible, et pourtant
Il me suffit de fermer les yeux et tu es là

Ne dis rien, surtout pas, ne dis rien suis-moi
Ne dis rien, n’ai pas peur, ne crains rien de moi
Suis moi jusqu’au bout de la nuit
Jusqu’au bout de ma folie
Laisse le temps, oublie demain
Oublie tout ne pense plus à rien
Ne dis rien, surtout pas, ne dis rien suis-moi
Ne dis rien, n’ai pas peur, ne crains rien de moi

Suis-moi jusqu’au bout de la nuit
Jusqu’au bout de ma folie
Laisse le temps, oublie demain
Oublie tout ne pense plus à rien

© Tous droits réservés – 1967
écrit par Serge Gainsbourg pour le film : “Anna” feat. Jean-Claude Brialy & Anna Karina

Ah, then, I must have it all backward; do I, Anna Karina?

This is how antisocial I am, and this is the price I pay: just a bit ago, I called Thai House on Tully (best. I am sorry, best. — no, stop talking. best.) to see if they were open, and when someone picked up the phone, I simply hung up, because I felt my question had been adequately answered by the mere fact of a voice on the other end. Are there people at Thai House working? Yes, I deduced. And did not bother to speak, just hit “end.” That’s right, I wordlessly disconnected a call with the business I was planning to patronize purely for the purpose of limiting my level of interaction with other people. I enjoy this restaurant and bear its employees nothing but good will, but did my actions remotely reflect this? No. I admit they did not.

So then. THEN. I go to Thai House, my mind teeming with satay and moo yang daydreams, and, as I likely deserved, it wound up they are closed until 4:30. Whoever answered the phone would probably happily have told me that, had I not hung up to avoid talking to a fellow human being.

I deserve the wait. To make up for what I’d done, when Gorgeous George hopped on to the yahoo chat and asked me to look over a recent draft of his toast for Paolo and Miss D’s wedding, I suggested that he join me at Thai House later. It is good to have a reason to comb your hair and act human. It’s important to do these things and not hole up in my cave. I’m sure of it. Otherwise I will fall out of practice at being talked to and I will lose whatever magic I might still have, and then how will I ever interact again, as I am striving to do because I have good reasons?

Samuel Fuller and Ferdinand Griffon (Jean-Paul Belmondo)

Godard makes movies as if he’s got a love-hate relationship with cinema, and in this case, he’s madly in love with it. Intoxicated with the possibilities of film language, Godard executes a full-on assault on movie conventions, and he performs it with gleeful precision.

Early on in the story, Sam Fuller makes a cameo appearance and lays out his definition of film. He covers every aspect – (“love, hate, action, violence, death. In one word EMOTION.”) – and Godard runs through all of them without caring for something as trivial as, oh, plot.

Marianne Renoir (Anna Karina)

When we’re introduced to Ferdinand Griffon (Jean-Paul Belmondo), he’s dragged to a party where every guest regurgitates ad copy. When he runs into an old flame, he jumps ship – not just from his life but from the movie itself. One thing leads to a murder and the next thing you know, they’re on the run, role-playing their way through gangster shoot-outs and musical interludes. (At one point, they even act out cultural caricatures for a group of American tourists.)

Pop culture may have been a deadening influence on the materialistic bores ditched by Ferdinand at the beginning of the film. But for the rest of the picture, pop culture becomes invigorating in its artificiality, flipped in reverse as an expression of Pierrot and Marianne’s id.

A delirious, anarchic masterpiece, this is a gorgeous landmark of the ’60s and possibly Godard’s most enjoyable work.

Jean-Paul Belmondo and Anna Karina step into some new roles