Weekend (1967) Week End (original title)

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:

Traffic Jam | Cannibalism | Terrorism | Murder | Experimental Film

Awards:

2 wins & 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)
Lex De Bruijn	...	Revolutionary (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)
• Arthaus Filmverleih (2013) (Germany) (DVD) (Jean-Luc Godard Edition 3)
• Athos Films (France)
• Atlantic Film (2009) (Sweden) (DVD)
• Connoisseur (UK)
• Criterion Collection, The (2012) (USA) (DVD)
• 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:

"Week End" - France (original title)

Runtime:

105 min

Country:

France | Italy

Language:

French

Color:

Color (Eastmancolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.66 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Argentina:16 | Finland:K-16 | Sweden:15 | Switzerland:16 (re-release) | UK:18 | West Germany:18 | Spain:18 | France:-16 | Portugal:M/18 | Australia:MA15+ | USA:Not Rated

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:

References The Searchers (1956)

Soundtrack:

Allo, tu m'entends

A surrealist, comic nightmare of roadkill, class struggle, murder and politics

Jean-Luc Godard's cruelly ironic portrayal of the apocalypse of Western civilization through automobile accidents and petty greed effectively marked the breaking point in his career; after this, he retreated into an overtly political militant cinema for most of the late sixties/early seventies, following some of the leads here first introduced. Whatever plot there is is slowly deconstructed and disassembled throughout the film's length, as a weekend drive by cynical bourgeois couple Mireille Darc and Jean Yanne turns into a surrealist, comic nightmare of roadkill, class struggle, murder and politics as they have to face the progressively more chaotic consequences of their blind ambition and desire for power. Strikingly photographed in long one-take tracking shots, the most celebrated of which showing an apparently endless traffic jam, the film seems to defend the revolt of the proletariat until, by the end, the bourgeois wife is down with the revolutionary Liberation Front of the Seine and Oise, in a cruelly ironic plot twist that literally underlines the cannibal side of politics. With hindsight, many say that "Week End", released in 1967, effectively announced the May '68 urban uprisings in Paris and marked the beginning of Godard's politically active phase; personally, I think that Godard sensed the winds of change and jumped on the political bandwagon as a means to find the drive for his cinema to grow. And the cool, cruel detachment he bestows on the politics on display is enough to prove that his irony has seldom been more incisive than when he's being revolutionary.