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Made in U.S.A. (1966) More at IMDbPro »

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4 out of 5 people found the following comment useful :-
A remake of the Big Sleep as only the "Girl and a Gun" man can do it, 13 January 2009
10/10
Author: JackGattanella from United States

It's probably a given to note one of Jean-Luc Godard's notorious Godard-isms, likely the one that everyone knows even if they haven't seen a Godard picture: All you need to make a movie is a girl and a gun. While this is a pointed reference to the simplicity possible and/or inherent in the gangster picture or noir, and about how inexpensiveness should be taken usually into consideration. But at the same time, I think a picture like Made in USA or even something like Band of Outsiders or Vivre sa vie emphasizes that Godard was really the one to go for this in the only way that he could: all Godard needed to make a movie was a girl (his girl, pre Masculin Feminin which was immediately after Made in USA, Anna Karina), a gun (or sometimes more than one), and Jean-Luc Godard. Because, really, a girl and a gun is fine, but in the 1960s, with this man at the helm, it was just a little bit more.

Called by the director himself as a "remake" of the Big Sleep, which perhaps makes the best sense of all, this is the hardest to find of the French New Wave wild-man-poet-anarchist's films not just with Anna Karina but in the 60s in general. Interesting, since this is, to my somewhat biased estimation (biased in that this was, to me, his absolute prime period before his very hit or miss period in the decades to follow), one of his most entertaining "B-movie" movies about movies. And not just about movies, but also about living with oneself, the politics of France, Walt Disney, and things pop culture flavored all around. This is another in a line of pictures Godard made that was very anti-capitalist while at the same time embracing to an extent (if only ironically) the images and names and attitudes of American pictures and pulp fiction and comic books and other things. There's such an array of references that at the theater I saw this film at, the Film Forum in NYC, they had to put up a glossary-key to fill people in.

And as much as it's a love letter to wild quips, eccentric characters, guys in trench-coats and hats, Nick Ray and Sam Fuller (especially them as providing Godard's "love of sound and image" as noted at the start), bright colors filmed in wonderful Technicolor, stretches of time filled on a tape recorder about French politics, and to the dark and warmth of American B-movies, it's also a fine goodbye to Anna Karina. Here, as pretty and tough and contemplative as ever, going through some classic Godard scenes like when she and the detective who may have killer her character's lover explain to the camera what they are saying in a scene instead of playing it out, or just lying on the ground in a moment of existential upheaval, Karina shows how good she could actually be. While not her very best- I'd save that for Pierrot le fou and Vivre sa vie- it's a very memorable performance, and one that, like everyone else in Godard's films, knows so well about the performance as she's performing, that the "fiction" itself becomes wrapped around in the very documentary-like act of filming the movie.

And that last part, I think, is the handle for this time period for Godard. What was essential to his craft, when it clicked just right, was that he could master together his love of quotations and pop-culture and movie references on top of a daring and sometimes wacky exploration of reality and fiction. Made in USA us based on a Donald Westlake crime book about a woman looking to find out who killer her man, but in Godard's hands the very act of this plot, joyously convoluted as the best possible homage/remake of Hawks' Big Sleep as could be outside of Coen brothers, is subjugated to scenes where actors talk to the camera about what they would normally just say to each other in a scene, or when they make point of, of course, that it's just a movie. It may be a "B-side" in the Godard 60s cannon as a NY Times review pointed out, but damn it all if it isn't one of the most enjoyable B-sides in all cinema.

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2 out of 3 people found the following comment useful :-
"La mise-en-scene!", 26 April 2009
6/10
Author: Polaris_DiB from United States

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

An opening title card thanks a friend of Godard's for teaching him to love sound and image. From there comes Godard's building of a narrative through just that, sound and image, except now the sound is structured much more like how the image is in film, by cuts instead of layers, as opposed to the usual synced dialog with music and sound effects underneath.

The genre would be film noir except there isn't a bit of black in it. It's shot entirely in bright, luminescent, primary colors. The narrative is taken from The Big Sleep, but frankly doesn't even matter to how the movie operates, as in one scene Godard deconstructs the whole thing by pointing out that sentences don't have any meaning. In fact, the bar sequence of this film is it's finest part.

This is apparently Anna Karina's last role with Godard, and his eye for her hasn't changed a bit this late in the game. She pretty much is the frame, rather than fills it. Everyone and everything else in this movie is only there to be framed by her.

Savvy self-reflexive dialog ensues. "La mise-en-scene! La mise-en-scene! La mise-en-scene!" (mistranslated laughably in the subtitles of the print I saw as "The charade! The charade! The charade!" Oops.) According to Godard's dialog, this is a Disney film--with blood. I say it's a comic book, and a rather good one at that.

I suppose one could say that this movie isn't "logical" (it certainly doesn't fit the more confined logic of Alphaville and A bout de soufflé), but I'd honestly be surprised if anyone watches this movie for the plot. It's surreal and stagy--that's what this movie is, not how it's made. And yes, it bears Godard's "signature" throughout.

--PolarisDiB

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6 out of 11 people found the following comment useful :-
A great Godard film with magnificent Anna Karina and young Marianne Faithful, 7 August 2006
10/10
Author: jeremy-giroux from France

This film is really great and is typical of Godard films. I've seen that someone said on this board that the film wasn't good because another director had to direct it and Godard hadn't the rights but I really think that all this is a matter of justice and doesn't concern Cinema at all (and Godard has to be written with only two "d" and not three...). Anyway, this movie is great. It's full of non-sense, it's very poetic and we follow the beautiful Anna Karina trying to find and kill the people who killed her husband. It's a new experience of Cinema in the way to make movies, to write dialogs... it's a kind of reinvention. And you can see many famous people at the time of their youth like English singer Marianne Faithful, french actor Jean-Pierre Léaud and french writer Philipe Labro. It's a non-conventional film by someone who really experiment Cinema as an Art : Jean-Luc Godard.

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11 out of 23 people found the following comment useful :-
Strange stuff!, 16 December 2002
Author: LeRoyMarko from Toronto, Canada

A cinematographic experiment by Jean-Luc Godard! Not too accessible. Interesting opening credits with just the initials of the cast. The colors are bright, contrasting with the usual black and white movies that Godard made before this one. At some point, the movie reminded me of the hit series "Twin Peaks" by David Lynch. But this is way more incoherent. In fact, it's hard to figure if there's anything to be made of this film. Still, Godard get to explore the fascination of the French for everything that comes from the U.S.A. Another interesting fact: some of the talks exchanged by the characters (ex. in the bar scene). A linguist would probably have some fun analyzing this. Some scenes are just painful to watch if you're tired (ex. the political manifesto on tape)! Anna Karina is great to watch, as usual.

Out of 100, I give it 71. That's good for ** out of ****.

Seen at home, in Toronto, on November 26th, 2002.

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0 out of 2 people found the following comment useful :-
Politics of Morality, 21 February 2009
9/10
Author: gts-14 from United States

On the surface this one was playful and cute like Karina's character but those qualities masked a frighteningly piercing introspection in both the lady and the film. Generously sprinkled with amazing philosophical/existential lines and dialog ("There's a door in front of me, and behind you") it was extremely exhausting but also equally rewarding symbolically: left and right as struggling but complimentary sides of a political yin/yang and perhaps representative of an individual heart's desire to evolve up to a higher social/ethical level of existence. The rolling stones' "as tears go by" hints at the sad but necessary inevitability of this evolution in a sentient heart, and USA "laissez-faire" ethics on one end of the spectrum and nazi fascism on the other both made the metaphorical moral discipline of communism seem pretty attractive to our heroine. Some very cool retro A/V equipment too.

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5 out of 12 people found the following comment useful :-
A barbaric and idiotic comment, 31 January 2009
6/10
Author: lefaikone from Finland

It's probably useless to say anything against Godard, since it's some kind of an unwritten law, that Godard is a cinematic god, and if you don't confess your belief to him, you're a vulgar idiot. - still I have to say that he's one of the most overrated directors in film history.

Yeah, sure I admit his historical value, the man made a huge change in to the course of film making, and I respect him for that. I have also read Godard's book about the structure and nature of film, and found it very fascinating. Still, for a man who knows a lot about the structure of cinema, a decision to throw every single characteristic in storytelling away, feels very strange to me. It just doesn't work. He, if anybody should know, that they don't exist for nothing.

I can see why he achieved this "film god" status. He was something never seen before, something outrageous. But hey people, let's face it. An hour long political essay disguised as a movie is not "beutifully poetic" or what ever you want to call it. It's just plain boring. No one ever has anything else to say about Godard's movies, than they are "surrealistic" and have such a "strangely poetic mood" in them. Like it's some kind of a magnitude. Poetic or not, The characters are unidimensional and flat.

If you want poetic movies with surrealistic mood, I suggest you to watch for example Robert Bresson's, Andrei Tarkovsky's or Krzysztof Kieslowski's films. They have a lot more in them than just the mood.

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6 out of 16 people found the following comment useful :-
godards communist manifesto, 10 April 2004
Author: kate_bush from paris, france

the critics call it incoherent and lynch-like and i thought from one point i started to loose it cause of my poor french, nevertheless godard's communist manifesto will really get u "high"!the cinematography is amazing with orange colour as base,amazing gros plan and surealistic dialogues that take you to another level!I think Godard tries to take a little bit of taty's magic and really manage to make a film of both totall irrationalism and clear political manifestation combined with the glamourous 70s feeling!Of course u can blame him for talking too much nonsense from time to time and some noises heard are really impossible to connect with anything on the film.But this is la Nouvelle vague,its take it or leave it and as far as im concerned its super stylistique and stucks in ur mind for quite some time!

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