Band of Outsiders (1966)

It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Style over substance. It's an interesting approach to filmmaking, but it also stops the viewer from really caring about the characters. Director Jean-Luc Godard shows his talent for visuals and there are a number of scenes in the film that really stay in your mind. The story itself is not much engaging and there are no real thrills. What you will get is, perhaps, more of a reflection upon existence.

Jean-Luc Godard's 1964 film "Bandè a part" (sometimes titled "Band of Outsiders") is an adaptation of an American crime novel that transcends its pulp origins through Godard's cinematic invention. The young lady Odile (Anna Karina), who isn't very bright, meets lowlife Franz (Sami Frey) in an English course and makes the mistake of telling him that the home in which she lives with her aunt holds a large amount of cash. Franz and fellow criminal Arthur (Claude Brasseur) plan a heist while at the same time vying for Odile's love, or at least her body. As is common in the French New Wave, the auteur only uses a crime caper as a skeleton for his own storytelling. A narrator (Godard himself) occasionally reads descriptive passages from the original novel, which are horribly purple prose, as if Godard is poking fun at his own source of inspiration."Bande à part" has occasionally been treated as a departure from this director's work, as "Godard for people who don't like Godard". However, anyone who has seen Godard's films to date will immediately recognize elements typical of his work at the time. For example, someone reads aloud a classic work of literature, this time an English teacher in a parody of modern language-learning methods. There is leftist social commentary, as the two criminals kill time by reading aloud tragic passages from Parisian newspapers. There is also dancing, as in the film's most famous scene Odile, Franz and Arthur interrupt their plotting for an amusing line dance in a café, over which the narrator tells us their unspoken thoughts.And then there is Godard's many references to the film canon. "Bande à part" is deeply imbued with the spirit of American noir films, which fits with the crime caper plot, but it also nods to classic slapstick and romance, which gives it a levity and charm I wouldn't have expected from a film with these particular characters. "Bande à part" may not be among the most awesome masterpieces of cinema, but it is memorable and funny, and very much worth seeing for fans of mid-century French films.

When the film started I didn't had a clue as to what was going on, but gradually they conveyed the story, and it became clear only after 20-25 minutes. Those 20 minutes I was entirely restless. Well the best part of the film was the character that the girl who portrayed it. She acted very nicely. Whoever has written the character has my regards. I believe that it is not necessary to change locations, characters or have actions to make the film interesting. There are films which are driven only by their plot (which pulls the audience in from the start) and through dialogs. So another weak link I found here was that the dialogs were either too complex to understand or simply not worked properly, because they were not enough to make me bond with the characters. However their roaming around the city and doing stuffs was kind of refreshing and the only thing that kept me watching the film. It also invoked interest when we reach towards the end. In all, the film is a little dull at some points but has cute, complex and funny moments that you may remember for a long time.Message: "Plan properly." Verdict: "Watch for sure if you understand Godard."

In 1960, French visionary Jean-Luc Godard made A Bout De Soufflé, a film that influenced generations of filmmakers, and had a style that is still seen in films today. It was a low-budget, free-spirited crime film that mixed genres, conventions and techniques, and kicked off the French New Wave movement. As Godard progressed, he became more confident and experimental, making musical comedy Une Femme Est Une Femme in 1961, political thriller Le Petit Soldat in 1963, and the satirical Le Mepris in the same year. He had unfinished business, it seemed, as he returned to the B-movie crime genre in 1964 with Bande A Part, similar in themes to his debut. Why he did this is unclear, but thank God he did, as, in my opinion, it's an ultimately better film.Shy student Odile (Anne Karina), is befriended and by two partners in crime, the quirky and silent Franz (Sami Frey), and the confident and reckless Arthur (Claude Brasseur). Both men are seemingly besotted with the beautiful Odile. The three become friends, hanging out in cafes, driving around, and generally messing about. After a while, a strange love triangle forms as the two men try their best to seduce Odile, who initially only seemed interested in Arthur. It soon becomes apparent, however, that the two men are using Odile to plan a heist of her Auntie, who she mentions has a large amout of cash stashed in her apartment.The first two thirds of the film sees Godard at his most playful. The famous scene in which the three dance in time to a jazz song is one of the most delightful scenes I've seen in a Godard film. The music occasionally stops, allowing us to hear the characters inner thoughts, and also to see how ridiculous the characters look without the music playing. To me, it seemed Godard was both showing how wonderful cinema could be, as well as highlighting the deceitfulness of it. Perhaps I was mis-reading it, or maybe Godard was leaving it open to interpretation, or maybe it is just a fun scene. Either way, it's a great scene.It's also delightful to see Anna Karina, as it always is. She is one of the darlings of French cinema (even though she is Danish), and truly one of the most beautiful women to have ever graced the screen. She was, at the time, married to Godard and appeared in many of his films until their divorce in 1967. She gives one of her best Godard performances here, playing shy and timid early on, to become more confident and calculating later on, having the two men practically worshipping her. That is until the final heist scene when the men become drastically vicious and nasty as they get desperate in their greed.It is one of the last of the light-hearted films Godard made before taking a more political and controlled approach to cinema. After this he went on to make sci-fi masterpiece Alphaville and, in my opinion, his best film Weekend, a dark and hypnotic odyssey into a bourgeois- consumerist nightmare future. Bande A Part may lack a recognisable plot, but it has spirit in abundance, and style to spare.www.the-wrath-of-blog.blogspot.com