ManiakJiggy This is How Movies Should Be Made

NekoHomey Purely Joyful Movie!

Voxitype Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

Rio Hayward All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

museumofdave For anyone interested in the history of film, this is a must-see, in the same way Birth Of A Nation or GWTW are must-sees; One can see the brilliance D.W. Griffith brought to early cinema in his epic recreation of his own Southern version of the American Civil War without admiring the sketchy politics that lie at it's roots, without rooting for the Ku Klux Klan to rescue Lillian Gish from the freed slaves. In the same way, I give Godard's film a high historical rating although I personally find the characters a drag, and their aimless lives less than fascinating. Regardless of the brilliant avant-garde cinematic techniques that pepper the Band of Outsiders, one is also stuck with the characters, an aimless lot without a lot of talent, charm or magnetism, rootless folks who ignore others completely as long as they can run about and steal and make noise and act like unruly children. Late in life they have discovered they can be naughty--but without talent or insight or much else than self-indulgence, after a while watching them get's to be a drag. So you can run screaming through the Louvre and feel free and make noise and annoy the other patrons and guards? If you missed your adolescent years, it's a shame, but rootless behavior in and of itself doesn't create much of anything save a picture of self-indulgence. One can appreciate the new vision of cinematography that frees the narrative from ancient strictures--but one also gets tired of a supposedly "free spirit," Arthur, setting up Odile for failure, using her body for his own instant gratification without any eye for consequences; simply put, he's a loser, and why do I want to spend two hours with him? I recognize Godard's contribution to the New Wave, but also find his characters tiresome in their attitudinal posing and aimless vapidity.

Slime-3 Godard's wonderful, watch-able little movie is a real breath of fresh air. The simplicity of it's cinematic style and the youthful spirit, and foolishness, of it's protagonists give it a reality that rings true on many levels. The plot is absorbing , the locations are superb, the casting inspired and the jazzy score hits exactly the right note for the time and place.Anna Karina is stunningly attractive as Odile. The camera just loves her, even when dressed down, her face flawlessly lights up the screen. Her eyes are bright and inviting and her character is a delightful mix of childlike uncertainty and kittenish would-be-sophistication. Her two co-stars are a pair of comic 'likely lads' with-a-plan, and how that plan unfolds and their relationships with her, and with each other, develop in the process form the nub of the story. There's a good deal of adolescent knockabout fun; the two men delight in play-acting as gangsters and reliving scenes from their favourite American movies, all three characters get up and spontaneously dance 'The Madison' in a cafe and the poor Simca sports car in which they drive around is repeatedly and mercilessly thumped over kerbs and pieces of scrap-yard junk. Typical kids....The Paris of BANDE A PART seems mostly far removed from the familiar clichéd, sophisticated landmarks (except for that one famous short scene in the Louvre) and although it's 1964, the whole area looks pre-war in style with painted advertising on walls and streets bare of traffic and pedestrians in a way unimaginable today. The cafe-culture is more centred around Traditional Jazz than Rock-and-Roll and even the way the characters dress appears to be from a time as yet untouched by the very youth-quake that Godard and his fellow New-Wave film makers helped to promote. The Beatles may have been taking the world by storm but they hadn't quite reached this Parisian quarter.The cinematography is good, given the constraints, while the editing and general production values are equally impressive - something not entirely expected given the New-Wave's preference for a raw, pared-back style.All in all this film really works and having just bought the DVD (for lack of any recent TV airings) I can see myself watching it over and over in future. Recommended.

Lechuguilla Apart from perhaps being a satire of gangster movies, the point of this film eludes me. Two guys and a young woman plan a robbery at the Paris house where the young woman lives with her aunt. The young woman is naive and constantly scared. The two young men are seemingly rather ordinary. I didn't find any of these people interesting. We never learn much about them or what motivates them. Yet, given that this is a "New Wave" film I doubt that characterization was all that important to the film's director.The plot starts out okay, but then meanders, and then becomes increasingly silly and unbelievable. Maybe that was intentional. Midway through, the three main characters suddenly, and for no reason, burst into a dance called the "Madison", the steps to which are nothing if not annoyingly repetitive. This bouncy little interlude goes on for some time, yet it has absolutely nothing to do with the story. Again, maybe that's the point.Other gimmicks are inserted gratuitously, evidently to shock 1964 viewers into the realization, consistent with New Wave doctrine, that the film is not a product of the dreaded classical Hollywood narrative style of film-making.But the worst element of this film is the sound. Background, ambient noise is amplified; why, I don't know, except, again, as some counterpoint to standard Hollywood films. Yet, the noise in "Band Of Outsiders" is so distracting, even grating, it takes away from what little value the visuals and narrative may have.B&W cinematography is unremarkable. Lighting is low-contrast. Visuals trend toward grayish, pallid tones. Production design, in keeping with low-budget film-making, is plain, even cheap looking.As a daring and iconoclastic attempt in 1964 to provide an alternative to stodgy, old-style Hollywood film-making, Godard's "Band Of Outsiders" probably does have some historical value. But what was visionary then seems campy and trite now.

Chris_Docker Momentarily stuck for conversation, three characters in a cafe suggest a moment's silence. "A minute's silence can be very long," says one. And, in almost Dali-esquire fashion, "A real minute can last an eternity." The actual minute, like Dali's clock, melts into a mere 35 seconds. But Godard plays a joke on us by blotting out all the ambient background noise, to great comic effect. What threatens to become profound simply becomes fun.Amateur criminals, Franz, Arthur and Odile, plan to rob the house where she works as a maid. Godard, providing voice-over, gets us up to speed on the plot. But he takes a sideswipe at the, "people who've come in late." Bande à Part has been described as 'Godard-lite' – it contains all of his quirky, Brechtian inventiveness, cinematic cleverness, obsession with 'things that matter' (such as sexual tension, intertextuality, youth, and Paris) over mere details like narrative continuity. There are none of his political rants or philosophical digressions - just a rollicking good movie. In modern terms, it falls halfway between Woody Allen capers and Tarantino satire. And Tarantino famously named his Pulp Fiction production company after the film, as well using the dance sequence to inspire Travolta and Thurman.Franz and Arthur are besotted with pulp culture. They act out gun battles where Billy the Kid is shot by Pat Garrett. It is part of their machismo bonding rather than any childish play. But visually foreshadows the death of one of them. Posturing over plans for the robbery merges seamlessly with mutual desire for Odile. As if both were one and the same ritual rite of passage. Odile, while going along with their conspiracy, often acts dumb and shy, pretending it's not happening. Just like a shy young girl being seduced.Many of the film's references will be lost on the modern audience – these range from Rimbaud, Jack London, Edgar Allen Poe, and the Umbrellas of Cherbourg, to Greek Theatre, Charlie Chaplin and Loopy the Wolf. But they are for fans and not necessary to our enjoyment. Witty dialogue (which seems remarkably intelligent for such urban cowboys) will still delight almost any viewer. But especially the intelligent and 'cultured' classes' from whence Godard came and yet whom he constantly decries. Our hoodlums – reminiscent of the protagonist from À Bout de Soufflé – are depicted in as completely amoral. We might excuse this more easily, given the distanciation and fairytale existence, were we not aware also that Godard himself did time in jail for petty theft.Insipid greyscales of riverbanks in the Paris outskirts are dramatised by colourful imagery, partly purloined from the original novel: "Under crystal skies, Arthur, Odile and Franz crossed bridges suspended over glassy rivers. The moats frozen. A taste of blood was in the air." Arthur seduces Odile with sexy love notes, passed during an English class where the teacher expounds dramatically from Romeo and Juliet. All is larger than life. They drive an old banger: but dream of racing at Indianapolis.Techniques to block an audience from identification with protagonists are often used to get us to think more deeply about what is happening. But Godard both uses the techniques and (rather patronisingly, if equally amusingly) also does the thinking for us. The three characters perform a dance routine – a badly executed but engaging Madison. This time, Godard cuts out the music (but not the ambient noise) periodically. Both to question, and then to tell us, what each of them is thinks and feels. As the narrator is not one of the characters, and so seems to have no vested interest, it adds a documentary feel to the otherwise unreal proceedings (as John Hurt would do, many years later, in Dogville.) Is he poking fun at Hollywood musicals / crime thrillers? Or is it homage? More importantly though, it works. Bande à Part is continuously light and frothy, relishing its own resourcefulness, and serving up a streams of delights.But its strength is also its weakness. The story is too slight to be as memorable as the box of tricks for which it becomes the vehicle. Yet, unlike for instance, 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her, it does not demand any depth of the viewer. This is about as mainstream as Godard gets. He could have, for instance, used the 'one minute's silence' scene to underline our characters' relationship to each other, an eternity that only they share. But, as he misses no opportunity to remind us, this is Godard's story and his alone. The only relationship that interest him is with you, the viewer.