This might be the most important film ever made.
You can’t start like that.
This whole “internal monolog” gets boring…
Illiterate Joyce fanatic.
After fucking around for four years, Godard and Gorin (like Marx and Engels) finally got the funding needed to deal a deathblow to bourgeois capitalism. Bourgeois? Monopoly. Monopoly?
I feel film review coming on…itching like a well-known wool blanket.
Jane Fonda is devastatingly good in this.
Yves Montand nails it.
Godard and Gorin fling a manifesto at the world. Hollywood has failed miserably in mustering a riposte.
Over 40 years ago.
Who speaks for Hollywood?
And who speaks for not Hollywood?
A state of mind more than a place.
New forms for new content.
Not Hollywood.
You know Jacques Tati and Jerry Lewis.
We get a hilarious choking performance from Vittorio Caprioli.
It’s not a thing to hide…the fact that one is marked for death.
But hidden it is.
A loudmouthed agitator who learned to unlearn. Through books.
A conundrum. No, there is no stopping being an intellectual.
If you don’t know the Dziga-Vertov Group’s work, you won’t realize that Tout va bien is actually reflective.
It is a perfect gentle art bomb.
No box office data.
Not what we meant anyway.
Must be a pain in the ass to parse these “reviews” on behalf of the control freaks.
A good psychologist would tell you to buy a mirror. Buy some time. Reflect.
But there are no good psychs…seems.
No, surely there are.
A lot (two words) of professions seem glutted with criminals.
And the psychs are there to define criminality.
Judges by the benison of nepotism.
By which we mean judges. [new subject]
By this time they broke the fourth wall so efficiently and effortlessly. With Jane Fonda.
The wrong woman.
Diegesis or die a Jesus?
Opacity of performance?
I think what they mean is, by being weird it causes the audience to ask, “Why are they being weird?”
Who cares.
Too beautiful to end there.
The most important. Perhaps.
Can’t this motherfucker complete a goddamned sentence?
New forms for new content. (2)
Seriously, the boss has to piss!
And is that the cock from Persona?
Cock. I never would’ve said it that way.
Check. Check. Check. Check. Check. Check. Check. Check. Check. Check. Check. Check. Check. Check. Check. Check.
She told me.
Double-spacing was an antiquated technique. Something about a journalism degree. I tried.
Obviously, people are watching.
Route me out of the main stream. Rout.
I know my true brothers and sisters, but they remain invisible.
Little signals over the ether and we take the helm.
Rub your jade.
Yes. Look look look.
Doesn’t matter. They want you to know that clearly.
The movies where the hero is a shitbag who finally does the right thing at the end…and utters one last dying quotable.
Karate for life. For instance.
Capitalize the first noun, and then shut the fuck up. It’s just a title.
What’s in a goddamned name?
Shaky sphere at the globe. On the shore. Of a ditch.
The borr(o)wed. Borr()wed.
Barred.
If there’s a right way to write about film, this ain’t it.
Unremitting self-referential showmanship.
Serves to defuse…de fuse.
Someday. Someday. A couple of holy grails will roll down the hill.
Goddamn.
-PD
I don’t hope to undermine your symbolically self-referential self-doubt, but great review of a horribly underrated film.
When I hear/read Dziga Vertov Group was an unfortunate detour in Godard’s career I always think of this film. I had actually forgotten how much I liked it until I read this. I might watch it again soon.
Thanks so much!
” A state of mind more than a place.” I once overheard a Los Angeles postal clerk say to a woman inquiring about a zip code: “But Madam, Hollywood does not exist.”
Thanks, Pauly.
Ha! Awesome!!! Exactly.
This not really a comment but a request that you may not want to publish: I hope you eventually write something about Le Petit soldat. Thanks. Rick’s Flicks
Thank you! Yes, if you look back in my Godard archives you will indeed find a piece I did on Le Petit Soldat. You might have to hit the “Older” button here on WP several times to get back that far. Cheers! –Paul