Week End (1967)

Director:

Jean-Luc Godard

Writer:

Jean-Luc Godard
(more)

Release Date:

27 September 1968 (USA)

Genre:

Comedy | Drama

Plot:

A supposedly idyllic weekend trip to the countryside turns into a never-ending nightmare of traffic jams...

Plot Keywords:

Murder | Traffic Jam | Terrorism | Cannibalism | Cult Favorite

Awards:

1 win & 1 nomination

Cast

Mireille Darc	...	Corinne Durand
Jean Yanne	...	Roland Durand
Jean-Pierre Kalfon	...	Le chef du Front de Libération de la Seine et Oise
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Yves Afonso	...	Gros Poucet (uncredited)
Yves Beneyton	...	Un membre du FLSO (uncredited)
Juliet Berto	...	Une activiste du FLSO / La jeune bourgeoise accidentée (uncredited)
Michèle Breton	...	Girl in the woods (uncredited)
Michel Cournot	...	Man From Farmyard (uncredited)
Omar Diop	...	Mon frère africain (uncredited)
Jean Eustache	...	L'auto-stoppeur (uncredited)
Jean-Claude Guilbert	...	Le clochard (uncredited)
Paul Gégauff	...	Le pianiste (uncredited)
Blandine Jeanson	...	Emily Bronte (uncredited)
Louis Jojot	...	Monsieur Jojot (uncredited)
Valérie Lagrange	...	La femme du chef du FLSO (uncredited)
Jean-Pierre Léaud	...	Saint-Just / Le jeune minet du 16ème (uncredited)
Ernest Menzer	...	Ernest - le cuisinier / Le boucher du FLSO (uncredited)
Daniel Pommereulle	...	Joseph Balsamo (uncredited)
Isabelle Pons	...	(uncredited)
Helen Scott	...	Woman in Car (uncredited)
Georges Staquet	...	Le conducteur du tracteur (uncredited)
László Szabó	...	L'arabe (uncredited)
Virginie Vignon	...	Marie-Madeleine (uncredited)
Anne Wiazemsky	...	Une fille à la ferme (uncredited)

Directed by
Jean-Luc Godard

Writing credits (in alphabetical order)
Julio Cortázar		short story "La autopista del Sur" (uncredited)
Jean-Luc Godard

Original Music by
Antoine Duhamel

Cinematography by
Raoul Coutard

Film Editing by
Agnès Guillemot

Production Management
Ralph Baum	....	production manager
Philippe Senné	....	production manager

Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
Claude Miller	....	assistant director

Sound Department
René Levert	....	sound

Production Companies

• Comacico
• Films Copernic
• Lira Films
• Cinecidi (co-production)

Distributors

• Adams Filmi (1969) (Finland) (theatrical)
• Les Films Copernic (1968) (Belgium) (theatrical)
• Athos Films (France)
• Atlantic Film (2009) (Sweden) (DVD)
• Connoisseur (UK)
• Grove Press (1968) (USA) (subtitled)
• Kinokuniya (2003) (Japan) (DVD)
• Magna (Italy)
• New Yorker Video (2005) (USA) (DVD)
• Pan Vision Oy (2009) (Finland) (DVD)
• Sherlock Home Video (2005) (Spain) (DVD)
• Yleisradio (YLE) (1991) (Finland) (TV)

Also Known As:

"Weekend" - USA (promotional title)

Runtime:

105 min

Country:

France | Italy

Language:

French

Color:

Color (Eastmancolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.66 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Spain:18 | France:-16 | Portugal:M/18 | Australia:MA15+ | Argentina:16 | Finland:K-16 | Sweden:15 | Switzerland:16 (re-release) | UK:18 | West Germany:18

Filming Locations:

Paris, France

Company:

Comacico

Trivia:

The intertitle before the slaughter of the pig reads "Thermidor", which is the name of the month of the French revolutionary calendar when Robespierre was executed.

Quotes:

Saint-Just:[in the midst of a bourgeois' car collision] From French Revolutions to Gaullist weekends, freedom is violence.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Mauvais sang (1986)

Soundtrack:

Allo, tu m'entends

weekend: one of the few truly great political films

Weekend is one of the best movies I've ever seen, but it's also one of the most troubling. Its depth politically is, I believe, unmatched in cinema; Godard is truly a master, but this is, like a Sun Ra record, art for which you might need to be prepared.

By telling you to "be prepared," however, I don't mean to say you should go read up on film history. Sure, you'll miss a trick or two if you don't, but there's enough material to keep you very, very interested even if you're not a film student. Nor, in fact, should you even feel the need to read up on French history; it suffices to say that, to be very simplistic about it, as the U.S. was to Vietnam at the time, so France was to Algeria. Really, if you wanted to be ready for ALL the intellectual references and name-dropping, you ought to have a good classical education. That's hard to get, so I can't possibly suggest that...

What I do mean by "be prepared" is: be prepared for long shots that might not make sense, be prepared to consider your place in the world... be prepared to think about the movie while it's running. Hollywood encourages us to turn off our brains while we're watching a movie; Godard doesn't allow it. His film is intentionally aggravating and annoying at times, but Godard knows precisely what he's doing, and he manipulates the viewer expertly. (The infamous "car-jam scene" is to this day the most annoying and at the same time one of the most rewarding experiences of my life.) Be prepared to consider your place in society, society's place in the world, and the problems of those situations. Godard raises numerous incredibly important questions: what is the final fate of literature and the wealths of past generations handed down after political upheaval is finished with them? what is the point of any rhetoric-- communist or otherwise-- in a world of selfish, stupid bourgeois pigs (and, as anyone who's ever worked in fast food will tell you, this one is)? does art even have a purpose in a marketplace?

I personally disagree with those who claim that Weekend is dated and only interesting historically. The message is only obscured to us because the draft is no longer in full swing and because the entertainment industry has succeeded in lulling us into false security. We still have our Vietnams, though they may be secret; and, facts must be faced, most of us are still complete and total jerks, caring very little for the world around us and very much for our own pleasure. At the heart of Godard's movie is a deep and abiding love and compassion for humanity; the decadence of the world around us, however, forces the surface of the film to be cynical and hateful toward all the disgusting influences which keep us from being what we could be.