Week-end

“A film found in a skip.”

I thought I’d seen all of Godard’s 60s films, so I assumed that this was a more recent one. But nope.

I guess he’s both against artificial lighting and using a reflector now?

This is quite different from his earlier movies? Not as immediately likeable; more chaotic.

Godard did two other films the same year: La Chinoise and 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her. That’s pretty astounding.

Damn straight!

It’s… it’s a comedy, but the gag is that everybody’s terrible, and everybody shouts all the time. I’m just half an hour in, and I’m already exhausted.

Oh, there’s that guy…

Man, they had a huge budget for car wrecks for this film…

This has all of Godard’s 60s ticks and schticks, but it just seems to scattered and self-indulgent. That is, it looks like everybody involved enjoyed themselves, filming one silly scene after another. But it just doesn’t seem to cohere into anything interesting.

It might just be me — there’s something about late-60s “absurd” comedy that rubs me the wrong way. I couldn’t stand The Bed Sitting Room either, for instance. (It’s all LOOK HOW ABSURD WERE ARE BEING!!! WE”RE BEING TOTALLY SOCIALLY CRITIC AL AND STUFF!!!.) But everybody else loves this movie, so I’m probably just wrong.

Because I don’t think this works. At all.