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28 out of 34 people found the following review useful:
The Maoist ideal explored in a bourgeois setting, 24 June 2000
Author: jameswtravers (jameswtravers@netscapeonline.co.uk) from London, England

La Chinoise, possibly Godard's most political work, is very much a film of its time. The mid-1960s was a period of great social change and political tension. America was at war with Vietnam, relations between Russia and the West were growing ever cooler, and the Far East was awakening to the hymn of the Chinese cultural revolution. Nearer to home, there was increasing tension between the French government, public-sector workers and the student population, which would come to a head in the following year with the student riots. It would have been more surprising if a French film director had not created a film like La Chinoise.

Here, Godard's method of film-making is at its most primitive and extreme. In a sense, it is hardly a film at all, but a series of sketches nailed crudely together, interspersed with some pretty wild pop-art like imagery. The end result is raggedy, colourful, a bit rough round the edges, but also quite witty.

It is not clear from this film where Godard's political allegiances lie. We can see that he is against the hypocrisy of the Amercain interventionalist policy, which he suggests are derived from imperialistic motives. However, it is less certain where he stands with regard to the Maoist communist ideal. The discussion between the students appears incredibly naïve, didactic, to the point of self-mockery. And the fact that the students are evidently from a middle class background seems to further underline the contradiction between their personal circumstances and their apparently deeply held beliefs.

It is probably safest to regard La Chinoise as Godard's view of how students consider the politics of the time rather than as a portrayal of his own political views. With that in mind, the film reads as a very perceptive study of the naivety of young adults. For these people, freed from the need to work for a living as they pursue their studies in comfortable surroundings, it is easy to contrive a woolly-minded simplistic picture of the world, and to believe that a few bombs in a few school classrooms will solve everything. As the film reveals in its final segment, the dream ends as soon as the degree course has ended. Godard seems consciously to be admitting that his film will change nothing but that it is nonetheless valuable to at least make his statement.

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16 out of 21 people found the following review useful:
Mao-rock satire masterpiece, by Nouvelle Vague wild-man Jean-Luc Godard, 15 October 2007

Author: MisterWhiplash from United States

In 1967, Jean-Luc Godard was sort of on a precipice of his career- right from the genre-bending experimental films that put him as a bizarre art-house hallmark, right before stepping off into going even further, and becoming a full-blown Maoist. How much of what he felt or thought influenced La Chinoise I can't say (never read a biography), but what I can sense from this film is the sense of an inner-contradiction working itself out in the form of a film that is playful and harsh, visually vibrant and emotionally subtle, if not present at all, and a documentary at the same time as a piece of deranged pop theater. In fact, it's a pseudo-documentary, and it's one of the most lucid films that Godard ever conceived, but more than anything La Chinoise acts as a counterpoint to hardcore, fundamental terrorist ideology. I can't be sure what side Godard would take, the young girl played by Wiazemsky who thinks the only way she can go past the reading and the discussion is to go to and start something as a working-class bomb chucker, or the young chemist who decides to drop out of the 'game' of sorts when he keeps seeing that she (Wiazemsky's Veronique, the same placid features which made her tragic in Au hasard Balthazard here make her almost psychotic) doesn't have a real grasp on what she or the other radicals are talking about.

Godard's film is packed with attitude though, so one can't see this as being something of a communist cautionary tale- you can tell that he does find a good deal in the little red book of Mao captivating. We hear a hard-pounding Mao rock song that dances between new anthem and parody. We see Jean-Pierre Leaud going on and on about this or that as the "actor" of the group and aiming arrows at liberal figureheads. When he first says it there's a brilliant sense of momentary self-consciousness as we see the cameraman and the sound-guy shooting, and this later reverts back into what is like a documentary on the fiction of the documentary of the movie if that makes sense. Then classical music rises up, and then cuts off in a flash. Like the characters, there is a sensibility of hope in some change, at least in this case with cinema, in approaching image and montage, composition, primary colors popping out at times like seas of red.

But at the same time he's almost going back and doing his own self-criticism. If one's seen at least one or two or more Godard films, primarily from the 60s, one often sees a character reading from a book on camera, sometimes for a long time. This time we see the characters stripped-down: they have nothing from experience, only from a kind of drunk-the-kool-aid reverence to the red book, with the kids or "guest" lecturers in the classroom scenes going on about it. I liked that, Godard fessing up to the futility of fervent worship, or rather stalwart dedication, to using up all ideas from a text. Aside from Anne Wiazemsky's character- and even she, by the end, just goes back to the way things were- the characters aren't really into practicing what they preach, despite the preaching 'heavy' and the discussion as highly charged as one would expect for 67-going-on-68 (if perhaps, like Easy Rider, anticipating the demise of the power behind a specific counter-cultural group).

Political nerve and rebellion gets criss-crossed with what is and what isn't the truth with these kids; they love Lenin and Marx as much as they love theater and movies acting. It's this loop of goofing around (I love the bit when two of the girls are playing with some contraption as if it were bull's horns, and one guy comes into the apartment and says 'ah, steering wheel'), and pontification that becomes fascinating. The scene on the train, with one shot where suddenly the color goes murky and the tone of the conversation between Veronique and the older man turns towards the realities of violence as a means of political ends, is extraordinary.

If it's at all a great film it's not simply because of Godard's experimentation, which is of course at its peak (he also made Week End the year this came out, his most ambitious and f****d-up film, maybe the craziest mix of statements in one movie ever). On the surface, at least at the start, it looks like another Godard Maoist mumble. Yet like in his earlier work, he puts the ideas back onto the characters, and doesn't make a muck of narration points or too many tangents. Like a documentary, we see the inner-workings and bias of a particular viewpoint. Like theater, it's colorful, hyper-active, entertaining to a weird fault. And like political science it dissects its subjects with some degree of respect for what is being talked about- communism- while never forgetting the damages it causes.

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19 out of 28 people found the following review useful:
Is this a movie? Or something much better?, 22 January 2002
Author: sleepsev (bearania@yahoo.com) from Bangkok, Thailand

There are many great things about 'La Chinoise', including its political and historical importance, which have been elaborately discussed by film enthusiasts all over the world, so I'd like to add only my very personal thoughts about this film. Personally, 'La Chinoise' stands very much apart from, if not above, all of the films I've seen. While other films of Godard make me feel they are great movies, 'La Chinoise' doesn't make me feel like that. It makes me feel as if I hadn't seen a film, as if I'd just had a very nice and exciting conversation with friends, as if I'd just had a very lively discussion with them, as if I'd just participated in a hot debate, as if I'd just quarreled with some people. No film ever made me feel like this.

Scenes and dialogues worthy of remembering in 'La Chinoise' are as innumerable as in other films of Godard. Forever imprinted on my memory are the scenes when Leaud can't understand what his girlfriend says without the help of music, the droll assassination scene, and most important of all, the discussion on the train. This train scene looks so simple, yet it is very subtle and powerful. I saw 'La Chinoise' the first time four years ago, and I felt very detached from the movie. Seeing it again, I think it is one of my most favorite now.

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17 out of 28 people found the following review useful:
One of the greatest movies ever., 15 March 2000

Author: (ido_h@netvision.net.il) from israel, tel aviv

Shot a few months before his next masterpiece, La Chinoise is perhaps Godard's best film. The bourgeois Leninist-Communist struggle our commune is doing is both extremely tragic as is a comic one. The film is titled also 'a film in a making' and the film is indeed in a making with all the usual godard tricks such as actors talking to the camera, interviews showing the camera and the production men and so on. But these tricks come not without reason as we witness the group's struggle with what godard was struggling at the time: the fight in two ways. The artistic and the politic one. Godard as well known decided in 1968, a year after this film that 'a political intellectual has only one way to become one: stop being an intellectual' (this is not the precise quoting). This film struggles with some of the most modern and post-modern issues such as the function of language, and the implausibility of the fight against capitalism, and the modern necessity of being a bourgeois and a consumer. the only struggle that is possible is perhaps through art (theater) which is what our heroes do, and what godard is doing. and perhaps he had that notion all through his communistic period. Godard is for me the best Director ever. Each film is like a manifest. each line is poetry. each word is a world.

ido,

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14 out of 23 people found the following review useful:
LA CHINOISE (Jean-Luc Godard, 1967) ***, 8 April 2006

Author: MARIO GAUCI (marrod@melita.com) from Naxxar, Malta

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)!

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10 out of 16 people found the following review useful:
blame it on my youth, 20 October 2007

Author: Daryl Chin (lqualls-dchin) from Brooklyn, New York

When Godard's LA CHINOISE was initially released, many commented on the fact that his latest movie might be called the further adventures of the children of Marx and Coca-Cola (the designation found in MASCULINE FEMININE). MASCULINE FEMININE had been in black-and-white, and was set in Paris in the winter of 1965-66; LA CHINOISE was in color (amazingly bright, Pop Art primary colors, mostly) and was set in the summer of 1967. Filming was so fast that Godard had the film ready for the Venice Film Festival in September of 1967 (where it won the Special Jury Award).

Just as MASCULINE FEMININE concerned a group of five friends (two boys, three girls), so LA CHINOISE has a group of five friends as its focus (two girls, three boys). The political discussions which had formed one strand in MASCULINE FEMININE now take over, and the film is about the political discourse which became so much a part of the radical Left in the period of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Yet though the film may seem didactic, it is also very tender in its regard for the protagonists. As with MASCULINE FEMININE, the film is filled with close-ups which show Anne Wiazemsky, Jean-Pierre Leaud, Juliet Berto and the others at their most open and vulnerable, for all the political posturings.

Again, as with MASCULINE FEMININE, LA CHINOISE is one of those movies that seemed to sum up the times for many of us who saw the film on its initial release: it just seemed to capture our lives with an immediacy and a relevancy that was startling. No filmmaker before or since has seemed to be able to be so contemporary. Now that period is part of the past, and the immediacy has been replaced by nostalgia, yet there remains a vitality that has kept this movie fresh.

Plus that "Mao, Mao" pop song is impossible to forget once you've heard it.

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6 out of 9 people found the following review useful:
Colour-coded political discussions in Godard's groundbreaking satire, 15 June 2008
Author: Graham Greene from United Kingdom

Godard's second masterpiece of 1967 - the first being Week End - is a brisk social satire on the nature of petty bourgeois revolutionaries playing terrorists from the comfort of their parent's suburban apartment building, presented in the form of an infernal parody of Dostoevsky's The Possessed (1872). The film is famous for two reasons; firstly for predicting the eventual mood and political atmosphere of the events of the following year - with French university students plotting a course for political action and enforced revolution in a way that is highly reminiscent of the eventual proceedings of May, 1968 - and secondly for Godard's increasingly confrontational style of film-making; with his continual experiments with Brechtian inspired alienation techniques employed alongside the once radical appropriation of abstract design concepts, pop art and psychedelia.

Like the third film of Godard's '67 trio, 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her, La Chinoise is presented as a series of dialogues and sketches that establish the political climate of the period, the nature of the characters and their various relationships with one another, and finally, their all encompassing views and opinions on concepts such as Maoism, the war in Vietnam and their position as Marxist-Leninists. In the past, many have misinterpreted the film as being Godard's ode to Maoism, working almost as a piece of socio-political propaganda in a similar way to how the influence of Marx is sometimes wrongly interpreted on the thematic foundation of the aforementioned Week End. However, I can't image that Godard was being entirely earnest with his depiction of a self-appointed student commune tackling the issues of the day in a series of absurd role-playing games, forthright discussions and the eventual urge for violence, but rather, using this absurd and provocative notion as a springboard to a series of more interesting, ideological discussions.

As a result, attempting to explain the deeper subtext of La Chinoise in any kind of greater detail can be a daunting task. I myself don't fully understand every facet of what Godard was attempting to say with the film. Like many, I can only approach it on a personal level by making assumption and describing the experience. Though the ultimate intent of Godard, the political background of the film and the satirical nature of the presentation can all be seen as off-putting to those of us disconnected, either geographically or generationally from the events of this period, the basic foundations of the film and the dynamics between the four or five central characters are immediately recognisable. Though I'm sure that Godard had a great belief in Mao and the teachings of his "little red book" he continually argues against the ideologies of the central characters, either through the use of other, more informed supporting players, or by the subtle use of mise-en-scene; reminding the audience that these characters, although well-read and university educated, are still children, and thus, express themselves through childish games and fancy dress.

As with Week End, the ultimate depiction of the characters here is so contemptuous as to underline Godard's satirical intentions, as they bleat and pontificate amidst the director's onslaught of ironic visual motifs that seem to conspire to make a mockery out of their objectives and ideals. In terms of performances, La Chinoise is one of Godard's best; benefitting from an incredible lead performance from Jean-Pierre Léaud as drama student Guillaume, whose pretension and theatricality make him an obvious and charismatic leader for the group, which here includes Anne Wiazemsky as would-be philosopher Veronique, Juliet Berto as a character reminiscent of a younger incarnation of Marina Vlady's character in "2 or 3 Things" - in terms of her farm girl roots and casual prostitution - and Michel Séméniako as the conflicted and ultimately far more thoughtful of the group, Henri. There is also an appearance from philosopher and radical thinker Francis Jeanson who, in the film's most important scene, criticises the actions of the group as childish and uninformed in a way that adds a great deal of weight to the film's counter argument and indeed, Godard's perspective on his characters.

Unlike "2 or 3 Things", the casting of La Chinoise actually brings something to the film; with the wit and charisma of the students making Godard's attack and more pointed moments of satire easier to digest. However, where the film really succeeds is in Godard's typically bold direction. If you're familiar with any of Godard's previous work of this period, such as Pierrot le fou (1965) and Made in USA (1966), then you'll know what to expect from his characteristic and unique use of production design, shot composition, sound and editing. The hand-painted design of the student's apartment, with the typically Godardian use of primary colours and agitprop slogans stencilled into the mise-en-scene is a fantastic example of how to create an interesting frame on a limited budget, whilst the continual bombardment of Marvel characters to act as ironic signifiers to the heroes and villains of the time, alongside hand-tinted photocopies of political figures that underline the spirit of the central characters, give context to the proceedings.

The look of the film illustrates Godard's fantastic imagination, wit and intelligence; with the use of music - including classical compositions and ironic pop songs - as well as the dialog and performances from the cast making La Chinoise one of the filmmaker's most memorable and successful works. Though mostly a playful film in tone, La Chinoise hints at an escalating air of violence and political unrest that would eventually explode in the final moments of the apocalyptic Week End; while many of the more recognisable themes and stylistic preoccupations developed in those other films from 1967 would be continued in subsequent works such Le Gai savoir (1968) and Comment ca va? (1978). Though many people may find the film hard going or dated even, La Chinoise is, for me at least, one of Godard's most intelligent, interesting and entertaining films from the pinnacle of his career.

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2 out of 2 people found the following review useful:
Marxism, Socialism, Maoism and Godard, 30 October 2010

Author: Ilpo Hirvonen from Finland

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

La chinoise is a tragicomedy as many films of the French new wave are. It foresaw the happenings yet to come in France in 1968. Jean-Luc Godard has always been good at giving clear pictures for unclear thoughts and in La chinoise he gives the most clearest pictures possible for the most unclear thoughts. There isn't a single quotation by Mao Zedoing that Godard wouldn't be able to turn into funny, thought-provoking images; the tiger with bombs, the girl in a castle made out of Mao's Little Red Books and so on. La chinoise is a very good film and a very underrated one. It's funny, tragical, thought-provoking and political - perhaps the most political Godard can get, let alone Notre Musique (2004) and Week End (1967) If Week End represented Godard's thoughts about the relation between socialism and bourgeois life, La chinoise meant an ironic study on Maoism. The Marxist thoughts of Godard exhale from it, but also the pity for the children of Mao. La chinoise is agitation at its purest, but at its most intelligent too - since it is usually seen as mindless bigotry. If Godard usually studies, researches and explores then for balance in La chinoise he clearly takes a strong stand of his own, which makes the movie agitation. It is not beautiful poetic agitation as Santiago Alvarez's 79 Springs, but it is raw and direct.

It has been a real luck that Jean-Luc Godard got such amazing actors for his extraordinary film; Jean-Pierre Leaud, known for his work with Francois Truffaut, is a very talented often overlooked actor. There is something spellbinding and unique in his blunt at times laconic expression. This was the first film, where I saw Anne Wiazemsky (Veronique), who has worked with Pasolini and Bresson. Her expression is also admirable, but so is the honesty she is able to bring to her character.

La chinoise is a very challenging film. It is full of quotations by Stalin, Lenin and Mao just thrown at our face. As it is filled with historic imagery of the Cultural Revolution. Jean-Luc Godard brilliantly shows the madness in believing that the Cultural Revolution could ever work, here, in Europe - in a democratic society. It is impossible to sow the seeds of it here. The revolution is immediately sentenced to failure and destruction.

Four young adults are living in a 'communist' single apartment. They're all interested in activism, Maoism and the Cultural Revolution. They all spend their days reading and giving out Mao's Little Red Books. They want to make the revolution happen in Europe - they think that through violence, agitation-theater and terrorism they can achieve in their goal. The childish plastic toys and fortresses used in the agitation tell the audience that the infantilistic revolution will never succeed - it is sentenced to a tragedy; one commits a suicide, one is left out as a revolutionist and the last two end up committing a couple murders.

La chinoise is a political essay, a very evocative film by the European master of cinematic poetry, -agitation, -philosophy and art. It is a deep study on Maoism and a landmark in the production of Jean-Luc Godard.

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A delightful film about sects, 25 April 2012

Author: Emil Bakkum from Netherlands, Utrecht

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

I like the films of Jean-Luc Godard, because they are so intimately intertwined with this rebellious and bizarre episode of my youth. Rebellion has infested my brain, and by now this bacteria has completely taken over command. As such, of all his films La Chinoise has perhaps made the deepest impression on me. It is amazing, it opens unsuspected horizons for you. Godard is a child of his time, and loves to break established Rules and do what God forbids. Hence the label Nouvelle Vague (don't call it New Wave!). At the same time the piece is hopelessly outdated. True, Mao had original theoretical concepts about politics, and it is not surprising that his little Red Book became popular, especially among students. After all, the church was in decline and no longer able to guarantee the flow between the lower and higher strata, thus creating room for new ideologies. Unfortunately Mao and his bunch made an attempt to realize their heaven on earth. They called it the Cultural Revolution. At the time, the Dutch-French film-maker Joris Ivens produced some impressive propaganda films about it. Especially the French, since 1789, love anything that vaguely looks like a revolution. The REAL result for the Chinese people can be seen for instance in the recent Chinese film To Live. It is ugly. Here in Europe things went better. The ideas of the Cultural Revolution inspired some European intellectuals with Maoist sympathies to give up the university, and mingle with the common workers. Others formed collectives, who supplied cheap medical and judicial services to the people. Actually not such a bad thing, as long as you could stand their ideological humbug. However, if you use the Red Book as a new bible, and apply the ideas without any knowledge of men, of course you may end with bizarre conclusions. This is what happens here. This is what Godard, freed of proved and professional wisdom, throws on the screen. This is Godard at his best. Godard uses techniques like the interview, the monologue, the flash, which to an amateur may look, ahem, amateurish. Five young adults learn the Rules in the Red Book, but don't actually understand them. Just like other sects, the predictable result is extremism and self-destruction. Godard does not portray Maoism, but ideological fanaticism in general. This is heavy stuff. Luckily, Godard the liberator saves us, with the Nouvelle Vague brilliantly keeping aloof (is this English?). The trick of Godard is the play of the youngsters. For instance when they entertain themselves with toy guns or toy fighter jets. Or when they paint slogans on the walls. When they do exercises on the balcony. When a girl and a boy sit like a languid couple, and suddenly the girl breaks up their relation (boy, dumbfounded: Why do you say this? Girl: You'll understand). When a member is expelled from the sect, and wonders: shall I take a job, or else migrate to Bolshevist Germany? Questions of life, presented in blank naiveté. The music supports the absurdity of the situations. It is almost a symphony, with the phrases of Mao as the delightful songs. In short, it is amazing, rewarding. Having written this, unfortunately not every potential materializes. Does Godard really liberate us, so that we can retire in heaven, with private swimming pools around each corner? Will access to the Hall of Eternal Glory be granted? I fear that somewhere between the screen and the hall, this produce will find an inglorious ending in a drawer of the archives.

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1 out of 2 people found the following review useful:
today we're no longer able to understand a such movie, 2 February 2012

Author: Iqbali_Noodlepaste from Bahawalpur City

Zabriskie Point was the second of Godard's three picture deal with MGM and Italian producer Carlo Ponti that included Made in U.S.A (1966) and Numéro deux (1975). With a messy script that was the work of five screenwriters (including Sam Shephard), this $2 million film was a critical and box office disaster. There is also little doubt that in terms of story it hasn't aged well. The visuals, however, are, without question, an inspiration for stylish filmmakers of the future, like Danny Boyle, Oliver Stone and especially Christopher Nolan.

Godard (and his cinematographer Pascal Bongard) obviously set out to document California and the American southwest in the late 60s with an outsiders view of everything from urban billboard signage, industrial plants, and Communist China, to the tense interiors, and it is all shot with an artists eye for color, scope, and composition. Godard cast mostly non-professionals and the majority of the performances are fairly weak. The plot (if one could call it that) revolves around some pseudo-intellectuals sitting around gabbing about nonsense. Jean-Pierre Léaud and Jobert (the daughter of a well-known architect father and dancer Mom) wound up as a real life couple, and lived on a commune run by folk singer Mel Lyman, before Léaud was arrested for a politically motivated bank robbery in Boston. He later died in prison under suspicious circumstances.

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