Jean-Luc Godard - Bande à part (1964)

Two restless young men (Sami Frey and Claude Brasseur) enlist the object of their desire (Anna Karina) to help them commit a robbery––in her own home. French New Wave pioneer Jean-Luc Godard takes to the streets of Paris to re-imagine the gangster genre, spinning an audacious yarn that’s at once sentimental and insouciant, romantic and melancholy. (criterionco.com)




A triangle: Franz, Arthur, and Odile. Franz, a young man with Alain Delon good looks, has met Odile in an English class. She lives in Joinville with wealthy benefactors and has mentioned to Franz that Mr. Stolz keeps a pile of 10,000 franc notes unlocked in his room. Franz tells his friend Arthur, a swarthy guy whose shady uncle is pressing him for money. Arthur and Franz, who mimic American movie tough guys, case Odile's house, pressure her to assist them with a burglary, and make passes at her as well. She's alternately compliant and distressed. Will they pull off the heist? (http://imdb.com/title/tt0057869/plotsummary)




Described by its maker, Jean-Luc Godard, as "Alice in Wonderland meets Franz Kafka," this 1964 film noir stars Anna Karina as a naive woman who takes up with couple of would-be bad guys (Claude Brasseur, Sami Frey) in a disastrous effort to rob her aunt of a fortune. Along the way, the motley group joins the Godardian (and Hollywood gangster) tradition of characters who walk a line between reality and invention, in this case distracting themselves by running around the Louvre, taking a stab at learning English, stumbling through some dance steps, and reenacting the death of Billy the Kid. (–Tom Keogh, amazon.com)




A uniquely spontaneous work in Godard's canon, Band of Outsiders also continues the Brechtian strain in the director's merged relationship with Karina, his then-wife and artistic muse. Yet it is also more buoyantly unpredictable in its sense of romantic doom than any of the director's movies since his seminal debut, Breathless (also a gangster film, not coincidentally). (–Tom Keogh, amazon.com)




Narrated by Godard himself, Band of Outsiders is almost like a novel on film when Godard delves into the minds of the characters and reveals their thoughts. One of the most spectacular scenes in the film is when the trio dance to a sprightly dance number during which the music is stopped for a few moments for the narrator to reveal each character's thoughts. (–amazon.com)




"Band of Outsiders" is playful, wondrous, hilarious, breezy, but at the same time melancholic, dark in its undertones. Raoul Coutard's photography gives it a stark look, but its playfulness is its most alluring aspect, along with Godard's wonderfully appealing, inventive visual language. It might not be the finest example of the French New Wave, nor is it as perfect as a work of art as "Breathless" and "My Life to Live," but in its flaunting of cinematic invention, its richness, and its embodiment of pure cinema, it's in a class by itself and its most memorable moments will remain in your mind forever. (–amazon.com)









Links to previous movie posts:

From 1# to 200# please refer to page :
200 Donatella Baglivo-Andrei Tarkovsky in Nostalghia (1984)

201 Kenji Mizoguchi-Saikaku ichidai onna ('The Life of Oharu') (1952)
202 Tsai Ming-liang - Ni neibian jidian ('What Time Is It There?') (2001)
203 Jean-Luc Godard - Bande à part (1964)