(1966; French, b/w) Director Jean-Luc Godard's take on the '60s counterculture in Paris, using young actors with unscripted dialogue in natural settings: a construction site cluttered with cultural slogans, references to pop and political events, periodicals and personalities, songs and singers, idiots and ideology, around scenes from Guy de Maupassant's stories. An alternative title for this film is "The Children of Marx and Coca-Cola."

Recently out of mandatory military service, cynical with an ambition to write, Paul (Jean-Paul Leaud), leaves his job in a chemical plant to work for a magazine and then takes opinion-poll surveys, eventually coming to the realization that both he and the interviewee are deceiving and being deceived. What's the difference between Communists and Catholics? What's the brand of bra you're wearing? Do you prefer the Beatles or the Rolling Stones? Give us cars and television sets and deliver us from liberty.

He and his revolutionary friend Robert (Michel Debord) scrawl anti-war and unionist slogans on buildings and vehicles. Bob Dylan the Vietnik and French President (who's got plenty) de Gaul. After someone asks a waitress for directions to the stadium, Paul gets up and asks the same question. Why, Robert asks him: because he wanted to put himself in the other's shoes.

From the outset he becomes involved with a beautiful, dark brunette, Madeleine Zimmer (Chantal Goya), a rising pop singer (Paul prefers Bach), who helps him get the magazine job, and her friends Elisabeth (Marlene Jobert) and Catherine (Catherine-Isabelle Duport). He questions her at length about herself and going out with him, accusing her of telling lies; she asks him if by "going out" he means "going to bed." Paul says that we can't live alone; tenderness is necessary for survival.

He moves in with the girls, sleeping three to a bed. Some violent incidents are Paul's imagination or a scene being filmed: a couple in a café argue over a child before the woman guns down the man outside; a man comes at Paul with a knife but then stabs himself in the stomach. Killing one person makes you a murderer, killing thousands makes you a conqueror, killing everyone makes you God. Brigitte Bardot sits at a table discussing a script with a director.

When Paul asks Madeleine to marry him, she, in a rush to the recording studio, puts him off; with Elisabeth she ignores him because he's become a pest. In a public vending booth for audio recordings, he makes a disk of his love and anguish for her.

Paul and the others at different times in different locations overhear people talking or reading: two black men and a white woman on a train talk with one black man commenting on white people not understanding black people: "You don't get it."

Paul interviews "Miss 19," asking about her education ("You'd rather have a car than a diploma?"), the distinction between socialism and "the American way" (fast paced, hard work, more freedom for women), children or birth control (pills or diaphragm to remain independent), falling in love (not often but great when it happens), and current wars (unaware of any).

In a Laundromat, Paul describes to Robert how three different men ran after him, trying to scare him. "What is this, a joke?" The third man answered, "Then you don't get it."

In the theater Paul says while watching an erotic movie with the three girls: "We get duped when it's dubbed." Both Madeleine and Paul are sad, disappointed with the picture, not being what they expected; after complaining to the projectionist that the format does not conform to ISO requirements, Paul says none of the movies are "the film we wanted to live."

In a scene similar to Paul's questioning Madeleine, Robert asks Catherine questions, trying to get her to reveal herself, but she repeatedly says: "None of your business." A whore refuses a German client because of the Nazi concentration camps; angrily he says he was only ten years old then. Elisabeth tells Paul that Madeleine is pregnant before the brunette joins them for a meal of mashed potatoes during which Paul relates how his father while eating mashed potatoes stepped into Galileo's shoes, saying, "I got it!" as to why the Earth revolves around the sun.

After Paul makes his exit through a window, Madeleine tells the police she'll use the curtain rod. Robert: "Ever notice there's the word 'mask' in masculine? And also 'ass'?" Paul: "And in feminine?" Robert: "Nothing." Then you don't get it.

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Copyright © 2007 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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