Made in U.S.A (1967)
Paula Nelson goes to Atlantic City to meet her lover, Richard Politzer, but finds him dead and decides to investigate his death. In her hotel room, she meets Typhus, whom she ends up knocking out. His corpse is later found in the apartment of David Goodis, a writer. Paula is arrested and interrogated. From then on, she encounters many gangsters.
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To me, this movie is perfection.
The Worst Film Ever
The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.
Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.
If you aren't a fan of Godard, chances are you will leave this film unamused and irritated. If you ARE a fan of Godard, as I am, chances are you will probably enjoy this film quite a bit...that is if you're a big enough fan (people who perhaps have favourable opinions on only some of his films and are likely to dislike others may or may not actually be into 'Made in U.S.A.'), and since I am a pretty big fan of Jean-Luc Godard and the decent number of his films I have seen, this was a largely fun watch. The typical political elements of a Godard film of this nature did go a little overboard for me at times and sometimes even became sorta vaguely annoying, but for the most part the satire is strong and on point, complete with some meta jokes and the scent of genre parody running through this film's 85 minutes. It's a rather funny film, one sequence particularly stands out to me as comic gold in which the lead character visits a bar with one of the most odd and quirky bartenders of all as a couple of other characters seem to be showing off their quirks as well with some hilarious dialogue (another fantastic thing about this scene is its construction, it is all one lengthy shot and the camera remains mostly stationary while occasionally panning to the left, normally just to follow the moving bartender, and yet it isn't visually bland, and the scene itself refuses to ever become at all boring). The plot is a mixture of cliche and cultural commentary and is interrupted with Avant-Godardism and philosophical rambling, much of which is spoken by the actors while directly staring at the camera, and absurdist antics, and for a large portion of the film it is highly entertaining and occasionally genuinely masterful. Perhaps not Godard's best, but certainly a film worthy of his legendary name.
An opening title card thanks a friend of Godard's for teaching him to love sound and image. From there comes Godard's building of a narrative through just that, sound and image, except now the sound is structured much more like how the image is in film, by cuts instead of layers, as opposed to the usual synced dialog with music and sound effects underneath.The genre would be film noir except there isn't a bit of black in it. It's shot entirely in bright, luminescent, primary colors. The narrative is taken from The Big Sleep, but frankly doesn't even matter to how the movie operates, as in one scene Godard deconstructs the whole thing by pointing out that sentences don't have any meaning. In fact, the bar sequence of this film is it's finest part.This is apparently Anna Karina's last role with Godard, and his eye for her hasn't changed a bit this late in the game. She pretty much is the frame, rather than fills it. Everyone and everything else in this movie is only there to be framed by her.Savvy self-reflexive dialog ensues. "La mise-en-scene! La mise-en-scene! La mise-en-scene!" (mistranslated laughably in the subtitles of the print I saw as "The charade! The charade! The charade!" Oops.) According to Godard's dialog, this is a Disney film--with blood. I say it's a comic book, and a rather good one at that.I suppose one could say that this movie isn't "logical" (it certainly doesn't fit the more confined logic of Alphaville and A bout de soufflé), but I'd honestly be surprised if anyone watches this movie for the plot. It's surreal and stagy--that's what this movie is, not how it's made. And yes, it bears Godard's "signature" throughout.--PolarisDiB
It's probably useless to say anything against Godard, since it's some kind of an unwritten law, that Godard is a cinematic god, and if you don't confess your belief to him, you're a vulgar idiot. - still I have to say that he's one of the most overrated directors in film history.Yeah, sure I admit his historical value, the man made a huge change in to the course of film making, and I respect him for that. I have also read Godard's book about the structure and nature of film, and found it very fascinating. Still, for a man who knows a lot about the structure of cinema, a decision to throw every single characteristic in storytelling away, feels very strange to me. It just doesn't work. He, if anybody should know, that they don't exist for nothing.I can see why he achieved this "film god" status. He was something never seen before, something outrageous. But hey people, let's face it. An hour long political essay disguised as a movie is not "beutifully poetic" or what ever you want to call it. It's just plain boring. No one ever has anything else to say about Godard's movies, than they are "surrealistic" and have such a "strangely poetic mood" in them. Like it's some kind of a magnitude. Poetic or not, The characters are unidimensional and flat.If you want poetic movies with surrealistic mood, I suggest you to watch for example Robert Bresson's, Andrei Tarkovsky's or Krzysztof Kieslowski's films. They have a lot more in them than just the mood.
the critics call it incoherent and lynch-like and i thought from one point i started to loose it cause of my poor french, nevertheless godard's communist manifesto will really get u "high"!the cinematography is amazing with orange colour as base,amazing gros plan and surealistic dialogues that take you to another level!I think Godard tries to take a little bit of taty's magic and really manage to make a film of both totall irrationalism and clear political manifestation combined with the glamourous 70s feeling!Of course u can blame him for talking too much nonsense from time to time and some noises heard are really impossible to connect with anything on the film.But this is la Nouvelle vague,its take it or leave it and as far as im concerned its super stylistique and stucks in ur mind for quite some time!