115 - Made in U.S.A., 1966, France. Dir. Jean-Luc Godard.

Tuesday, April 25, 2017

115 - Made in U.S.A., 1966, France. Dir. Jean-Luc Godard.

We are in Paris, but let us pretend we are in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

We are speaking French, but let us pretend we are speaking English.

We are driving Peugeots and Citroens, but let us say they are Chevys and Fords.

We are young, hip people in contemporary fashionable clothes, but let us pretend we are Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall.

We are making random political statements celebrating the tyranny of Communism, but let us claim we are in a nation founded on limited government and individual liberty.

We are staging bodies with laughably amateurish fake blood, but let us pretend it looks like real blood.  Or just say we are doing it on purpose to subvert film grammar.

While we are at it, let us name-drop names of lots of American politicians and movie people.

Get it?  Get it?

Made in U.S.A. was made in France.  And looks like it.  And sounds like it.  And feels like it.

And it either asks you to suspend your disbelief anyway or claims it is being ironic so that it is off the hook.

Godard requires repeated viewing.  And the time to decode his references.  He is an acquired taste.

If you react to his shenanigans, he will view it as a compliment.

He wants to poke you.

Meanwhile, time will tell how time will treat his work.

As his references fade from the public's memory, and as his gimmicks no longer seem fresh and clever, will future generations continue to embrace him?

He will always have a place in film history, but will it grow more marginalized, pushed into a corner reserved for academic specialists?

Or will he continue to come back in waves as new generations discover him and find ways of appropriating his ideas, as someone like Tarantino has done?

At least the film is pretty.  The colors are nice.  Filmed again by Raoul Coutard.  In Eastmancolor.  We pan across a garden, the flowers all in bloom.

Paula wears a sweater dress covered in colorful squares.

If she stood in front of the Partridge Family's bus, you would not see her.  Except for her dismembered head.

And we have every right to smash ideas and images together like that.

Godard himself does.  He pairs Walt Disney and blood in this film.

And he blesses Nicholas Ray and Samuel Fuller for inspiring him to do so.

So we can pair the Partridge Family and camouflage.  The deconstructed pop image as anarchist revolt!

(In other words, make a meaningless statement and demand your reader decode it.)

Insert title card:

Bam!