One of Godard's most interesting and funny films.
A group of young bourgeois occupy an apartment and as a communist cell, start planning revolutionary terrorist acts. Coming out of a purely university and intellectual environment, they live in a kind of parallel reality: waking up with the international, doing gymnastics to the rhythm of communist proclamations, devoting hours and hours to reading the red book, analyzing dogmas in the classroom in humorous political-philosophic sessions; filling the shelves with hundreds and hundreds of red books to replace the now dismissed as reactionary cultural contributions of centuries and centuries; labeling the walls with proclamations: the image is that of a delirious and totally abducted group of hillbillies who take themselves too seriously and live on the fringes of any social reality.
When the time comes, they are unable to carry out the most basic plan, due to their clumsiness worthy of the great silent film comedians. And when the holidays are over, the group disperses and we see how the young Veronique, who wanted to close the universities, returns to her studies at the Faculty of Politics.
The rabidly militant Godard of the time, a cinematographic genius capable of giving us authentic cinema gems or mediocre contentless clunkers, capable of saying the most surprising stupidities with the greatest conviction, gives us here an obviously burlesque film, but it's difficult to establish his position regarding the material. Despite his clear political positioning, which would make him closer to his main character Guillaume, played by Jean-Pierre Léaud, it is impossible not to see the most insulting irony and sarcasm in the film.
The group is very heterogeneous: we have Guillaume, a pedantic and crazy actor and apparent leader of the group, and his not too bright but very applied girlfriend Veronique (hilarious Anne Wiazemsky), who recites the lesson with a face of disoriented conviction; Yvonne (the always funny Juliet Berto), a young peasant committed to the cause who goes blank when asked about Marxism-Leninism, whose function in the commune is to do housework and from time to time prostitute herself to support the group, and who often receives scolding for his intellectual disability; and Henry, a young man with more conciliatory tendencies, who gives hilarious dictations to his classmates about the scientific contributions of Marx, but who ends up being expelled from the group as revisionist.
These bourgeois who pose as communist intellectuals during their student vacations were enormously pertinent at the time of their premiere and announced May 68, and they are still extremely topical. We can almost give them names and surnames from today's political world.
The lessons include teachins as:
"What the death of Stalin has given us is the right to make an exact account of what we possess, to call our wealth and our poverty by their names, to raise our problems aloud, and to embark on the rigor of a true search"
Or this hilarious lesson from Veronique to the unintellectual Ivonne as she washes the dishes without protesting at all:
"Every action of a revolutionary party is the application of its policy. If you don't apply a fair policy, you apply a wrong policy; and if you don't apply it consciously you apply it blindly; For example, wash the dishes, why do you do it? - To clean them - That's right, you've understood - So France in 1967 is like dirty dishes? - Yes.
Between their crazy disputes in the occupied apartment, and the scenes of the terrorist act abroad, a long dialogue between the young Veronique and the philosopher Francis Jeanson (recently returned to France after the amnesty of 1966, having been convicted for high treason after his collaboration with the FLN) contrasts the calm and meditated ideas of the professor, with the declared dialectical incapacity of the young woman.
Aesthetically, the film is a brilliant and colorful collage (with, as always, wonderful photography by Raoul Coutard), with the customary baroque music in the background (here with an undoubted ironic effect), minimalist sets, constant stylistic breaks, playful discontinuities, fourth wall ruptures, interviews with the actors/characters of the film, continuous distancing effects, and the unforgettably comic song Mao Mao.
Godard has made literally hundreds of movies, some masterpieces, others just inflated ideas; it seems he was capable of filming everything that occurred to him. His innovative capacity has positioned him among the great revolutionaries of cinema. But his films are a lottery: Pierrot le fou, Vivre sa vie, Week end, La Chinoise seem to me to be his greatest; Bande apart, A bout de soufflé, Deux ou trois choses que je sais d'elle are other very good films; Les carabiniers, A woman is a woman, Masculin Féminin, Made in USA, Les mepris, Une femme marieé among his worst.
La chinoise, being a film full of very specific references to a moment and verbose ad nauseam, is incredibly funny and a marvel of cinematographic invention. Totally recommended.
A group of young bourgeois occupy an apartment and as a communist cell, start planning revolutionary terrorist acts. Coming out of a purely university and intellectual environment, they live in a kind of parallel reality: waking up with the international, doing gymnastics to the rhythm of communist proclamations, devoting hours and hours to reading the red book, analyzing dogmas in the classroom in humorous political-philosophic sessions; filling the shelves with hundreds and hundreds of red books to replace the now dismissed as reactionary cultural contributions of centuries and centuries; labeling the walls with proclamations: the image is that of a delirious and totally abducted group of hillbillies who take themselves too seriously and live on the fringes of any social reality.
When the time comes, they are unable to carry out the most basic plan, due to their clumsiness worthy of the great silent film comedians. And when the holidays are over, the group disperses and we see how the young Veronique, who wanted to close the universities, returns to her studies at the Faculty of Politics.
The rabidly militant Godard of the time, a cinematographic genius capable of giving us authentic cinema gems or mediocre contentless clunkers, capable of saying the most surprising stupidities with the greatest conviction, gives us here an obviously burlesque film, but it's difficult to establish his position regarding the material. Despite his clear political positioning, which would make him closer to his main character Guillaume, played by Jean-Pierre Léaud, it is impossible not to see the most insulting irony and sarcasm in the film.
The group is very heterogeneous: we have Guillaume, a pedantic and crazy actor and apparent leader of the group, and his not too bright but very applied girlfriend Veronique (hilarious Anne Wiazemsky), who recites the lesson with a face of disoriented conviction; Yvonne (the always funny Juliet Berto), a young peasant committed to the cause who goes blank when asked about Marxism-Leninism, whose function in the commune is to do housework and from time to time prostitute herself to support the group, and who often receives scolding for his intellectual disability; and Henry, a young man with more conciliatory tendencies, who gives hilarious dictations to his classmates about the scientific contributions of Marx, but who ends up being expelled from the group as revisionist.
These bourgeois who pose as communist intellectuals during their student vacations were enormously pertinent at the time of their premiere and announced May 68, and they are still extremely topical. We can almost give them names and surnames from today's political world.
The lessons include teachins as:
"What the death of Stalin has given us is the right to make an exact account of what we possess, to call our wealth and our poverty by their names, to raise our problems aloud, and to embark on the rigor of a true search"
Or this hilarious lesson from Veronique to the unintellectual Ivonne as she washes the dishes without protesting at all:
"Every action of a revolutionary party is the application of its policy. If you don't apply a fair policy, you apply a wrong policy; and if you don't apply it consciously you apply it blindly; For example, wash the dishes, why do you do it? - To clean them - That's right, you've understood - So France in 1967 is like dirty dishes? - Yes.
Between their crazy disputes in the occupied apartment, and the scenes of the terrorist act abroad, a long dialogue between the young Veronique and the philosopher Francis Jeanson (recently returned to France after the amnesty of 1966, having been convicted for high treason after his collaboration with the FLN) contrasts the calm and meditated ideas of the professor, with the declared dialectical incapacity of the young woman.
Aesthetically, the film is a brilliant and colorful collage (with, as always, wonderful photography by Raoul Coutard), with the customary baroque music in the background (here with an undoubted ironic effect), minimalist sets, constant stylistic breaks, playful discontinuities, fourth wall ruptures, interviews with the actors/characters of the film, continuous distancing effects, and the unforgettably comic song Mao Mao.
Godard has made literally hundreds of movies, some masterpieces, others just inflated ideas; it seems he was capable of filming everything that occurred to him. His innovative capacity has positioned him among the great revolutionaries of cinema. But his films are a lottery: Pierrot le fou, Vivre sa vie, Week end, La Chinoise seem to me to be his greatest; Bande apart, A bout de soufflé, Deux ou trois choses que je sais d'elle are other very good films; Les carabiniers, A woman is a woman, Masculin Féminin, Made in USA, Les mepris, Une femme marieé among his worst.
La chinoise, being a film full of very specific references to a moment and verbose ad nauseam, is incredibly funny and a marvel of cinematographic invention. Totally recommended.