Post by Capo on Jul 28, 2007 16:09:48 GMT
Tout va bien
Everything's All Right
Jean-Luc Godard / Jean-Pierre Gorin 1972 France / Italy
A husband and wife - he a nouvelle vague filmmaker now directing commercials, she a US correspondent -are caught up in the proletariat's revolutions when workers at a French sausage factory lock them along with the owner in his office.
Framed as a synopsis in progress - so that everything in the film is a "what if?" - Godard deals simultenously with Cinema as a medium, love as a natural human emotion, and political revolution as a necessity for equality among men. It's a revision and evaluation of the Marxist and Maoist methods of revolution explored in La Chinoise, and for all its political jargon (the talking heads are a tad annoying after a while), it sees the return not only of Godard to more commercial cinema, but also the return of Godard the image-maker. Its two standout sequences: early on - in which the two storeys and several rooms of the sausage factory are filmed in extreme long-shot (so as to look like a comic strip), with the camera crabbing from left to right, striving to keep up with the chaotic action; and late on, with Godard's cubist camera crabbing, in one take, from left to right and back again along aisle after aisle of supermarket checkouts, firstly to follow Jane Fonda taking notes, then to follow student revolutionaries who declare everything is free, and finally to show the police raiding the place to control them - nine minutes of absurd virtuosity.
Everything's All Right
Jean-Luc Godard / Jean-Pierre Gorin 1972 France / Italy
A husband and wife - he a nouvelle vague filmmaker now directing commercials, she a US correspondent -are caught up in the proletariat's revolutions when workers at a French sausage factory lock them along with the owner in his office.
Framed as a synopsis in progress - so that everything in the film is a "what if?" - Godard deals simultenously with Cinema as a medium, love as a natural human emotion, and political revolution as a necessity for equality among men. It's a revision and evaluation of the Marxist and Maoist methods of revolution explored in La Chinoise, and for all its political jargon (the talking heads are a tad annoying after a while), it sees the return not only of Godard to more commercial cinema, but also the return of Godard the image-maker. Its two standout sequences: early on - in which the two storeys and several rooms of the sausage factory are filmed in extreme long-shot (so as to look like a comic strip), with the camera crabbing from left to right, striving to keep up with the chaotic action; and late on, with Godard's cubist camera crabbing, in one take, from left to right and back again along aisle after aisle of supermarket checkouts, firstly to follow Jane Fonda taking notes, then to follow student revolutionaries who declare everything is free, and finally to show the police raiding the place to control them - nine minutes of absurd virtuosity.