La chinoise (1967)

User Rating:

7.1/10   

Director:

Jean-Luc Godard

Writer:

Jean-Luc Godard (writer)

Release Date:

4 March 1968 (USA)

Genre:

Comedy | Drama

Plot:

A small group of French students are studying Mao, trying to find out their position in the world and...

Plot Keywords:

Terrorism | Experimental Film | Cult Director | Leninism | Politics

Awards:

1 win & 1 nomination

Cast

Anne Wiazemsky	...	Veronique
Jean-Pierre Léaud	...	Guillaume
Juliet Berto	...	Yvonne
Michel Semeniako	...	Henri
Lex De Bruijn	...	Kirilov
Omar Diop	...	Omar
Francis Jeanson	...	Himself
Blandine Jeanson	...	Blandine
Eliane Giovagnoli	...	Son ami

Also Known As:

La chinoise, ou plutôt à la chinoise: Un film en train de se faire

Runtime:

96 min | Argentina:99 min

Country:

France

Language:

French

Color:

Color (Eastmancolor)

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Spain:13 | Portugal:M/16 | Argentina:13 | Australia:M | Finland:S | Sweden:11 | UK:AA (original rating) | UK:PG (video rating) (2005) | West Germany:16

Filming Locations:

Nanterre, Hauts-de-Seine, France

Company:

Anouchka Films

Trivia:

Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908 -1961) was a French philosopher, closely associated with Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989)

Soundtrack:

Mao Mao

LA CHINOISE (Jean-Luc Godard, 1967) ***

Not an easy film to comment on, or even appreciate, given its overt political content - but also the fact that I watched it, without the benefit of English subtitles, on French TV (amusingly, the French ones which accompanied the screening could hardly keep up with Godard's typically loquacious script!); unfortunately, my reception of this cable channel - which has been showing some pretty good, even rare, titles for years - hasn't been perfect in recent times...but, in spite of all this, I still couldn't afford to miss out on one of Godard's most famous films, right?

Anyway, the director's best and worst qualities are well in evidence here: with an obvious emphasis on the color red, it's visually stimulating, indeed overwhelming (as, frustratingly, Godard often puts text in his images while the characters are speaking!), and filled with both sight and sound gags (the French song about Mao and the 'little red book' is hysterical), in-jokes (Godard's voice is often heard indistinctly interviewing the characters) and innumerable pop-culture references. However, it's undeniably exhausting to follow in detail, with the relentless spouting of Communist ideology and wordplay sometimes going over my head in the process...and, by the end, it all sort of runs out of steam anyway - what with most of the characters giving up on their enclosed life-style of theorizing and taking up menial jobs instead, apparently to put in practice what they had so far merely preached - or something similarly vague...er...vaguely similar (why, it's gotten me mouthing abstractions, now!). The young cast is headed by popular "Nouvelle Vague" (and, apparently, politically-involved) stars such as Jean-Pierre Leaud, Anne Wiazemsky - who, for a while, became Mrs. Godard - and Juliet Berto.

Still, the film's anarchic, anything-goes attitude provides a good deal of amusement throughout; especially enjoyable is Wiazemsky's naïve interview, aboard a train, of a noted literary figure who turned conservative (which rebounds on herself and exposes her own political confusion!) and her own botched assassination attempt towards the end. Despite its necessarily heavy-going and obviously dated nature, LA CHINOISE - which has been released on DVD, though not in R1 land - is not quite the embarrassment that was, say, WHAT STALIN DID TO WOMEN (1969; which I watched only a few days ago)...and it's unfortunate that, for the next decade or so, Godard renounced mainstream cinema for underground political film-making (from which period I still have a couple of titles, British SOUNDS [1969] and ICI ET AILLEURS [1975], lying in my "Unwatched Films On VHS" pile)!