“MOVIES SHOULD HAVE A BEGINNING, A MIDDLE, AND AN END,
BUT NOT NECESSARILY IN THAT ORDER.”

Throughout the 1960s, cinephiles eagerly awaited the latest film — or two— by Jean-Luc Godard (born 1930). A founding father of the nouvelle vague, the former critic was its most innovative in form, with each new work seemingly rewriting the grammar of film. Jump cuts, asynchronous soundtracks, self-narration, cinema as essay, cinema as collage, self-referential cinema, cinema of anarchy — you name it, Godard’s 60s oeuvre redefined “cutting edge” — and, with location and available-light shooting, now provides a near-documentary time capsule of Paris and environs. Through JLG’s movies, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Jean Seberg, and Anna Karina became New Wave icons, with the dark-eyed, appealingly vulnerable Karina doubling as the director’s muse through seven quintessential collaborations — and a four-year marriage. Forty years after the tumultuous events of May ’68, and blessed with 100% hindsight, one can almost see the chaos coming through the satire and social criticism in Godard’s chronicles of “the children of Marx and Coca-Cola.” His eventual ever-more outré stylistic leaps would leave even art house audiences behind, but for at least one pivotal decade, Godard was a seminal force in redrawing the map of film. “From Breathless through Weekend, Godard reinvented cinema. Not since D.W. Griffith was knocking out a weekly two-reeler at the Biograph studio on 14th Street had there been anything to equal it.” – J. Hoberman. “The most gifted younger directors and student filmmakers all over the world recognize his liberation of the movies; like James Joyce, he is both kinds of master — both innovator and artist. Godard has already imposed his way of seeing on us; we look at cities, at billboards and brand names, at a girl’s hair different because of him.” – Pauline Kael.

Special thanks to Jonathan Howell (New Yorker Films); Sarah Finklea, Brian Belovarac, Peter Becker, Fumiko Takagi, Kim Hendrickson (Janus Films); Adrienne Halpern, Eric Dibernardo (Rialto Pictures); Delphine Selles (French Ministry of Culture, New York); Suzanne Fedak, Richard Lorber, Jason Viteritti (Koch Lorber); Andrew Youdell, Fleur Buckley (British Film Institute); Stephen Moore (Paul Kohner Agency); Donald Westlake; Laurence Braunberger (Les Films du Jeudi); Frazer Pennebaker (Pennebaker Hegedus Films); agnès b., Chris Apple (agnès b.); Robin Klein, Michael Gochanour, Valerie Collin, Jody Klein (ABKCO); and Mim Scala (Cupid Films).

EVERYTHING IS CINEMA: THE WORKING LIFE OF JEAN-LUC GODARD, a new book by New Yorker writer Richard Brody, is now on sale at our concession and online at our store. Listen to the author Richard Brody on The Lenny Lopate Show (WNYC Radio) Listen to our podcast: Introduction of LA CHINOISE by author RICHARD BRODY (MP3 file - Recorded May 14, 2008)

"No filmmaker working during the decade so successfully and radically rewrote the rules.
Consider this whole series an essential piece of your education—and enjoyment."
– Time Out New York

“From Breathless through Weekend Godard reinvented cinema. There are no analogies—imagine Faulkner's eight-novel run, The Sound and the Fury (1929) through The Wild Palms (1939), as a cultural intervention with the pow of Warhol's ‘silver’ period or the three Dylan-goes-electric LPs. Not since D.W. Griffith was knocking out a weekly two-reeler at the Biograph studio on 14th Street had there been anything to equal it."
– J. Hoberman

"The most gifted younger directors and student filmmakers all over the world recognize his liberation of the movies; they know he has opened up a new kind of movie-making, that he has brought a new sensibility into film, that, like James Joyce, he is both kinds of master - both innovator and artist. Godard has already imposed his way of seeing on us; we look at cities, at billboards and brand names, at a girl's hair different because of him."
– Pauline Kael (1968)

“A veritable paragon of paradoxes, violent and yet vulnerable, the most elegant stylist and the most vulgar polemicist, the most remorseful classicist and the most relentless modernist, the man of the moment and the artists of the ages.”
– Andrew Sarris (1968)

“Godard. We all went to Jean-Luc Godard in the 1960s. We stood in the rain outside the Three Penny Cinema, waiting for the next showing of Weekend. One year the New York Film Festival showed two of his movies, or was it three? One year at the Toronto festival Godard said, ‘The cinema is not the station. The cinema is the train.’ Or perhaps it was the other way around. We nodded. We loved his films. As much as we talked about Tarantino after Pulp Fiction, we talked about Godard in those days.”
– Roger Ebert

MAY 2/3/4/5 FRI/SAT/SUN/MON

BREATHLESS

(1959) Lip-stroking pug Jean-Paul Belmondo on the run, shooting cops and stealing cars — and cash from the handbag of Herald Tribune-hawking girlfriend Jean Seberg; with the couple engaging in boudoir philosophy, staring contests, sous blanket tussles and plenty of le smoking. The start of JLG’s decade of supreme hipness and seemingly compulsive, often outrageous innovation. Approx. 89 min.
FRI/SAT/SUN 1:00, 2:50, 4:40, 6:30, 8:20*, 10:10
MON 2:00, 3:50, 5:40
*Listen to our podcast: INTRODUCTION BY FRENCH DESIGNER AGNÈS B. ON FRIDAY, MAY 2 [MP3 file]

“Dispensing with virtually every cinematic convention in the book, this dynamic debut served as both an ostentatious calling card for France’s burgeoning nouvelle vague and a much-needed wake-up call to a medium that had grown dangerously stodgy. A free-wheeling masterpiece.”
– Time Out New York

“Godard’s brilliant provocation. A progenitor of the youth-cult film… Breathless still plays beautifully. It lighted the fuse for the whole youth movement in cinema. Some of today’s young directors may not even know how indebted they are to Godard’s work, the fact remains that Breathless is where it—they—all began.”
– Phillip Lopate, The New York Times. Click here to read full article

“Viewing this landmark flick on a tiny screen in my living room would be akin to eating a gourmet French meal on the Times Square shuttle. Breathless needs the proper surroundings—in Godard’s case, a bigger-than-life screen and the ambiance of a dark theater... See you at Film Forum.”
– V.A. Musetto, New York Post

“Even when seen from today’s perspective, long after it’s inventions had been co-opted by Hollywood, its still capable of startling. Exploring the experimental rarely feels so exhilarating.”
– Mike D’Angelo, Time Out New York

“No film has been at once so connected to all that had come before it and yet so liberating . . .
Like a high-energy fusion of jazz and philosophy.”
– Richard Brody

“There’s Potemkin, Citizen Kane, and this . . . Godard’s first film.” – J. Hoberman.

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MAY 5 MON (SEPARATE ADMISSION)

LE PETIT SOLDAT
& Charlotte et son Jules

(1960) Right wing activist Michel Subor gets mixed up with leftist Anna Karina (the soon-to-be Mme. Godard in her debut) and the domestic backwash of the Algerian situation. One of Godard’s starkest and most serious works, banned in France for three years. Plus short Charlotte et son Jules (1958), undress rehearsal for Breathless, as Jean-Paul Belmondo and Anne Colette endure their last lovers’ spat, with extended comic rant by Belmondo (his voice dubbed by JLG). Total approx. 108 min.
7:30, 9:40

“Technically, an innovative work, Godard’s first foray into politics is romance and political extremism and torture and talk of cinema all suspended in an existential mixture.”
– Pauline Kael

“Godard’s ‘little soldier’ is in many ways a prototype for Pierrot le Fou. Looked at in the context of Godard's later, militant work, this film's analysis is at once naive and fascinating.”
– Tony Rayns, Time Out (London)

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MAY 6/7 TUE/WED

TWO OR THREE THINGS I KNOW ABOUT HER

(1966) Is she Marina Vlady or Juliette Janson? asks the narrating Godard in a conspiratorial whisper. She’s both: an actress in a film and a housewife from the Paris suburbs who turns tricks in the city to make ends meet. With characters casually addressing the camera; a conversation between complete strangers in a bistro — all underscored by relentless thuddings of a pinball machine — and an unblinking gaze at the cosmic whirls of foam in a coffee cup. Approx. 95 min.
1:30, 3:30, 5:30, 7:30, 9:30
Click here for more information about TWO OR THREE THINGS I KNOW ABOUT HER

"Godard’s color and ‘scope Pop Art quasi-documentary essay —the movie that illuminated the entire screen with a glowing cigarette and discovers a universe in a cup of coffee—could be the single greatest work in the master’s entire career. "
– J. Hoberman, Village Voice

“Amid splashes of bold color, discordant sound, and brilliant observation, the personal meets the political… the new CinemaScope print makes this perennial must-see a must-see-now.”
– Manohla Dargis, The New York Times. Click here to read full article

“Repeated viewings bring out more details and a musical sense of a mind in flow;
Mr. Godard tucks meaning into every cut and composition.”
– Nicolas Rapold, The New York Sun. Click here to read full article

“The most banal objects provoke the most cosmic thoughts. Yet the film's swift movements, its lucid, colorful look
and its heroine's beautiful, sharp face combine to make the film one of Mr. Godard's most concrete and absorbing.”
– Caryn James, The New York Times. Click here to read full article

“Its virtuoso display of confession and analysis, the sublime and ridiculous,
show Godard’s deft grasp of the subversive nature of laughter and passions. Too good to miss.”
– Time Out (London)

“The richest of Godard’s films...a uniquely rewarding film that requires many viewings.”
– James Monaco, The Movie Guide

“A pivotal film, anticipating the mood and ideas that brought about les événements of 1968.”
– Philip French, The Observer

“I wanted to include everything: sports, politics, even groceries. Everything should be put into a film.”
– Godard

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MAY 8/9/10 THU/FRI/SAT

PIERROT LE FOU

(1965) “The last romantic couple,” as Jean-Paul Belmondo, fed up with wife and Paris, heads for the south of France with old flame Anna Karina, a classic pulp fiction moll of a gang of crooks. Echt 60s Godard, with sun-splashed color & Scope photography by Raoul Coutard, a cameo by tough guy director Sam Fuller, and an explosive finale. Approx. 110 min.
1:00, 3:10, 5:20, 7:30, 9:40

View the Trailer: High | Low
REQUIRES QUICKTIME- DOWNLOAD HERE

"May be the quintessential Godard picture: part road movie, part improvisational exercise, part genre deconstruction."
– Time Out New York

“The dazzling mise-en-scéne alternates Lichtenstein with Cézanne, pop art with impressionism, the shadow of Amerika falling across the Provençal sun."
– Amy Taubin

“Belmondo represents Godard, forever discussing and writing about art and emotion, but Karina is the feminine movie sensibility, a photographed woman who turns the spectator’s heart with the speed of the projector. It is Karina’s masterpiece as well as Godard’s. As the structure of genres broke down, Godard began to make films, with the same mix of honey and acid you get in Billy Wilder. This is his film where all genres are snakes eating their own tails (and tales).”
– David Thomson

“A film of fireworks and water, of explosion and immersion, the metaphorical expression of passion
being cooled by existence, the visual equivalent of feelings being chilled by words.”
– Andrew Sarris

“Like visiting another planet. It's an explosion of color, sound, music, passion,
violence and wit that illustrates what used to be regarded as cinema."
- The Chicago Reader

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MAY 11/12/13 SUN/MON/TUE

A WOMAN IS A WOMAN

(1961) Anna Karina, an afternoon stripper in the crummy Zodiac Club, yearns for motherhood, but live-in boyfriend Jean-Claude Brialy “isn’t ready yet,” while hanger-on Jean-Paul Belmondo is more than happy to oblige. Godard’s first in color and Scope, and his nearest approximation of a musical, with cinematic in-jokes and anarchic humor galore. Winner of Berlin Silver Bear for its “originality, youth, audacity and impertinence,” with Karina named Best Actress. Approx. 83 min.
SUN/MON 1:00, 2:45, 4:30, 6:15, 8:00, 9:45
TUE 1:00, 2:45, 4:30, 6:15

VIEW THE TRAILER!

“Jean-Luc Godard’s idea of a musical is, of course, the idea of a musical... It’s the grande folie of Godard’s early career.”
–J. Hoberman, The Village Voice

“Deliriously kooky… staccato bursts of adorable visual jokes, precocious editing and in-crowd movie asides.
Godard’s playful side pops out in subsequent pictures, but in Woman his mischief is front and center. “
– Stephen Garrett , Time Out New York

“An intoxicating expression of that devotion, and of the idea, more liberating then than now,
that movie love was the stuff that movies could be made of.”
– A.O. Scott, The New York Times. Click here to read full article

“If Karina, Brialy, Belmondo, the recorded voice of Charles Aznavour and a thrilling glimpse of toplessness
(circa 1961, at least) in a sleazy strip joint called the Zodiac Club don't turn you on, then tant pis! for you.”
– Andrew Sarris. Click here to read full article

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MAY 13 TUE (SEPARATE ADMISSION)

LES CARABINIERS
& Une histoire d’eau

(1963) Two lunkheaded peasants are recruited to fight for the king, but when they return in triumph they find that peace has broken out. Obviously a fable — and both Godard’s biggest commercial disaster and the ultimate un-war film — with a bizarrely mesmerizing master stroke: the warriors’ plunder consists of relentlessly catalogued postcards of famous sights. Co-written by Roberto Rossellini. Plus short Une histoire d’eau (1958): “a verbal extravagance of pinball rapidity.” – Richard Brody. Total approx. 105 min.
8:00, 10:05

"Godard's absurdist antiwar film is shamefully underrated.
The postcard scene alone is worth springing for the admission price."
– Time Out New York

"A film of such extraordinary and understated brilliance that it advances the possibilities of film. The film gets better and better as it goes along…The conclusion is one of the most impressive sequences in any movie ever. It is about man and film. Yet it holds at the level of bubble-gum wrappers and trading cards."
– Renata Adler, The New York Times

“Godard’s strangest movie…Perhaps the most usefully extreme film of its kind ever made.”
– Tony Rayns, Time Out (London)

“A rambling, picaresque-piquant war film, seen through the exalted, close-to-earth vision of Dovschenko.”
– Manny Farber

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MAY 14/15/16 WED/THU/FRI

LA CHINOISE

(1967) Philosophy student Anne Wiazemsky (Au Hasard Balthazar, later Mme. Godard), actor Jean-Pierre Léaud, and friends, crashing at an apartment lent to them for the summer, form a Maoist cell; and then... Godard’s tour de force of idealism, naïveté, and flat affect includes red accents in nearly every shot; self-referential, Brechtian alienation; slogans, quotes, aphorisms on walls, posters, book jackets, and screen-filling title cards; and bizarre digressions. Approx. 95 min.
WED/FRI 1:30, 3:30, 5:30, 7:30*, 9:40
THU 1:30, 3:30, 5:30, 7:30

• Listen to our podcast: Introduction by author RICHARD BRODY (MP3 file - Recorded May 14, 2008)
• Listen to Richard Brody, author of new book on Godard, on The Lenny Lopate Show (WNYC Radio)
• Click here for more information about LA CHINOISE

“An intergral part of the ’68 juggernaut! Guerilla-theater agitprop disrupts the action like the Busby Berkeley numbers
in an old Warner Brothers musical. Not just a period film, a chunk of the period.”
– J. Hoberman, The Village Voice. Click here to read full article

“The cinematic techniques Godard used to evoke radical youth culture seem years ahead of their time.”
– Stephen Holden, The New York Times. Click here to read full article 

“Eerily prophetic and spectacularly stylized.” – Andrew Sarris, The New York Observer. Click here to read full article

“Léaud looks young, Wiazemsky beautiful, and La Chinoise, thank God, not a day past essential.”
 – Nathan Kosub, Reverse Shot. Click here to read full article

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MAY 15 THU (SEPARATE ADMISSION)

UN FILM COMME LES AUTRES

(1968) In a meadow outside Paris after the events of May ‘68, Renault auto workers and students from Vincennes do a mass recap and try to look ahead, with scenes from “Ciné-tracts,” shot by Godard and others during the turbulence, intercut throughout. The first step of the Dziga Vertov Group’s “road to correct ideas.” For its NYFF premiere, Godard told the projectionist to determine the order of the reels by a coin toss. Digital projection. Approx. 111 min.
9:30 ONLY

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MAY 17/18/19 SAT/SUN/MON

WEEKEND

(1967) Bourgeois slimeballs Jean Yanne and Mireille Darc wreck cars, battle with neighbors, and rip off gas stations en route to that weekend in the country. Mixing porno, slapstick, violence, political rhetoric, and virtuosic camerawork, an epic vision of the last throes of middle-class society and its car culture, with a pièce de resistance: the screen’s greatest traffic jam, Godard’s camera tracking along a hilarious succession of set piece tableaux for nearly a full reel. With Jean-Pierre Léaud as “Saint-Just.” Approx. 105 min.
SAT/SUN 1:00, 3:10, 5:20, 7:30, 9:40
MON 1:00, 3:10, 5:20

"Nightmarishly funny... a mere description of the plot can't do justice to Godard's fractured narrative and sudden intrusions of nihilistic satire."
- The Onion

“Godard seems to be tuned into the youthful frequency of the future. I felt the film unwinding with all the clattering contemporaneity of a tickertape, and the reading for Western Civilization was down, down, and out.”
– Andrew Sarris

“This film has more depth than any of Godard's earlier work. It's his vision of Hell and it ranks with the greatest.”
– Pauline Kael

“It is as though the violent quality of life had driven Godard into and through insanity, and he had caught it and turned it into one of the most important and difficult films he has ever made. The film must be seen, for its power, ambition, humor, and scenes of really astonishing beauty. There are absurdist characters from Lewis Carroll, from Fellini, from La Chinoise, from Buñuel. It is an appalling comedy. It is hard to take. There is nothing like it at all.”
– Renata Adler, The New York Times

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MAY 19 MON (SEPARATE ADMISSION)

A MARRIED WOMAN

(1964) Twenty-four hours in the life of Macha Méril, as she leaves lover Philippe Leroy to meet husband Bernard Noël. Subtitled ‘Fragments of a film shot in 1964’, with detached love scenes underscored with Beethoven; interviews titled Memory, the Present, Intelligence, etc.; quotations from Céline and Racine; and Méril on the receiving end of the already-overwhelming barrage of advertising — at one point double-checking her bust size against the ideal. Digital projection. Approx. 95 min.
7:30, 9:40

“Firmly established Godard as a politically and socially engaged artist. It placed Godard fully within his times and put his times clearly on his side. It also established the tonality for his work to come, both it its forthright assertion of the cinema as an analytical instrument and in its unique permeability to the events, moods, and ideas of the day.”
– Richard Brody

“His best work since Breathless…Godard has made the bedroom scenes genuinely sexual and humanly genuine. The over-all effect is of a lonely loveliness.”
– Stanley Kauffman

“One of Godard’s most sociological films, as well as one of his most formally accomplished.”
– Jonathan Rosenbaum

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MAY 20 TUE

LE GAI SAVOIR

(1969) “We must start again from zero.” “No, we must first go back to zero.” The beginning of Godard’s farewell to narrative, with Jean-Pierre Léaud and Juliet Berto meeting after hours in a TV studio to embark on seven dialogues on the relationship between politics and film, with street scenes occasionally intercut. Digital projection. Approx. 95 min.
1:30, 3:30, 5:30, 7:30, 9:30

“It was not going to be possible to make the new cinema by using the language of the old. Having returned to zero, Godard had to start over again. Le Gai Savoir is the first step.”
– James Monaco, The Movie Guide

“One of Godard's most beautiful, most visually lucid movies, even when the screen goes completely black and the whispered dialogue is translated in hypnotically white subtitles.”
– Vincent Canby

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MAY 21 WED

ALPHAVILLE
& Charlotte et Véronique

(1965) A trip into the future with erstwhile B movie hero Lemmy Caution (Eddie Constantine) trekking through space to track down Professor “von Braun,” aided by prof’s daughter Anna Karina, squaring off in a final showdown with the Alpha 60 computer. Plus short Charlotte et Véronique (aka All The Boys Are Called Patrick, 1958): “A profusion of winks and nods to initiates . . . The principal mode of expression is in the collection of fetish objects it depicts.” – Richard Brody. Total approx. 115 min.
1:00, 3:15, 5:30, 7:45, 10:00

“One of Godard’s most sheerly enjoyable movies, a dazzling amalgam of film noir and science fiction. Not the least astonishing thing is the way Coutard’s camera turns contemporary Paris into a icily dehumanized city of the future.”
– Tom Milne, Time Out (London)

“It is difficult to think of any parallel work which so successfully shows the future in the present,
and which can sustain viewings forty years after it was made.”
– Colin MacCabe

“A science fiction film without special affects. Shifts in tone from satirically tongue-in-cheek futurism, to a parody of private-eye mannerisms, to a wildly romantic allegory depicting a computer-controlled society at war with artists, thinkers, and lovers.”
– Andrew Sarris

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MAY 22 THU (SEPARATE ADMISSION)

MADE IN U.S.A.

(1966) Trench-coated Anna Karina arrives in Atlantic City (apparently a provincial French town) to track down boyfriend Richard Widmark (a character, not the actor), only to find... And then the bodies start dropping, amid encounters with gangster M. Typhus, his nephew David Goodis (a character, not the Shoot the Piano Player author), Goodis’s singing Japanese girlfriend, and a reel-long Hegelian bar bull session. A (very) metaphorical treatment of the murders of JFK and Ben Barka.. . and Godard’s Karina swan song. With Marianne Faithfull and Jean-Pierre Léaud as Donald Siegel (the character, not the Dirty Harry director). Digital projection. Approx. 90 min.
7:30, 9:30

PLEASE NOTE: A RARE 35mm PRINT OF "MADE IN U.S.A." THAT WE ORIGINALLY PLANNED TO SCREEN IS NOT RUNNABLE. IN ITS PLACE, WE ARE SHOWING A DIGITAL VERSION. WE HOPE TO SCREEN A NEW 35mm PRINT SOME TIME IN THE FUTURE.

“Offers the cinema after Pierrot le Fou what Finnegans Wake gave to the novel after Ulysses.”
– Michel Capdenac, Les Lettres francaises

“Demonstrates the complete inability of the form to deal with the reality of politics which eludes
the easy solutions of the thriller genre. An almost unconscious farewell to Anna Karina.”
– Colin MacCabe

“The film’s visual raison d’etre is the extraordinary number and duration of close-ups of Anna Karina.
The close-ups are the most expressive ones in color that Godard has made to date.”
– Richard Brody

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MAY 22/23/24 THU/FRI/SAT

BAND OF OUTSIDERS

(1964) “All you need to make a movie is a girl and a gun.” – Godard. In the dreary suburb of Joinville, Claude Brasseur and Sami Frey (“Belmondo’s suburban cousins” – JLG), and mutual girlfriend Anna Karina, horse around with the idea of burglarizing the villa where she’s staying, but then things go memorably awry. A jeu d’esprit, with set pieces including the trio dancing “Le Madison” (“Probably the singled most imitated sequence in art films.” – Phillip Lopate, NY Times) and then “doing” the Louvre in record time. Approx. 97 min.
THU 1:30, 3:30, 5:30
FRI/SAT 1:30, 3:30, 5:30, 7:30, 9:30

• CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFORMATION ON "BAND OF OUTSIDERS"
• CLICK HERE FOR BAND OF OUTSIDERS PRESSBOOK

“A reverie of a gangster movie…Godard re-creates the gangsters and the moll as people in a Paris café, mixing them with Rimbaud, Kafka, Alice in Wonderland. This lyrical tragicomedy is perhaps Godard’s most delicately charming film.”
– Pauline Kael

“Godard’s band of outsiders are the Beautiful and Damned, whose grace and flair can dance into folly
and explode into fatality. Transcendent…crisp editing, fine on-location photography and endless invention.”
– Time magazine

“A joy ride done strictly for the fun of it. A giddy delight.” – New York Daily News

“Godard at his most off-the-cuff takes a série noire and spins a fast and loose tale.
One of his most open and enjoyable films.”
–Time Out (London)

"[There is] beauty and otherworldliness in its every shade of grey...
Along with Raoul Coutard's radiant cinematography, what makes the film extraordinary is Karina,
the pure curves of her face a contradiction to the marionette angularity of her body."
– The Village Voice. Click here to read full article

“About the tyranny of living a life of movie-fed fantasies, and while it makes us see the poverty of those fantasies,
it also makes them unaccountably rich, poetic, sad.”
– Charles Taylor, Salon. Click here to read full article

“The audience, thrust out of its dream by Godard’s Brechtian alienation devices,
is also flattered into becoming collaborators in the filmmaking process.”
– Phillip Lopate, The New York Times. Click here to read full article

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MAY 25/26/27 SUN/MON/TUE

MASCULINE FEMININE

(1966) “This film could be called ‘the children of Marx and Coca-Cola.’” Literary lion-wannabe Jean-Pierre Léaud chases budding yé yé star Chantal Goya, then gets a job as an unlikely opinion pollster. A portrait of youth and sex, with the story repeatedly interrupted: a woman blows away her husband; a scene in the Métro paraphrased from LeRoi Jones’ Dutchman; Brigitte Bardot rehearsing in a bistro; a Swedish artfilm-cum-sexfilm-within-a-film, etc., topped by Léaud’s probing off-camera questioning of “Miss Nineteen.” Approx. 103 min.
SUN/MON 1:10, 3:15*, 5:30, 7:35, 9:40
TUE 1:10, 3:15, 5:30
*3:15 SHOW ON SUNDAY INTRODUCED BY AUTHOR RICHARD BRODY

• Listen to Richard Brody, author of new book on Godard, on The Lenny Lopate Show (WNYC Radio)
• Listen to our podcast: Introduction of LA CHINOISE by author RICHARD BRODY (MP3 file - Recorded May 14, 2008)
• VIEW THE TRAILER!

“Not to be missed... An inimitably impish contemplation of 1965 Paris—
its youth, sex, politics and Americanized pop culture.”
– Andrew Sarris, New York Observer. Click here to read full article

“For the children of Ronald Reagan and Red Bull as much as for their precursors. This document of youthful confusion has not aged one minute. More acute, and more prophetic, than ever… Godard’s insight into the moods and idioms of coming-of-age in the metropolitan West remains unsurpassed.”
– A.O. Scott, The New York Times. Click here to read full article

“Godard’s classic seismograph of the 1960s youth quake… While all of Mr. Godard’s trademarks are here this is the most naturalistic of his 1960s films. There is a strong documentary impulse in the mise-en-scène, with its unmediated street scenes and verité swiftness…. With its warmth, immediacy, and subtle multivalence, it might just be the closest thing he’s ever made to that mythic total movie.”
– Nathan Lee, New York Sun

“A masterpiece! Who wouldn’t want to live in the supercool, girl-pop world of Godard’s freshest comedy? Nobody makes films like Masculine Feminine anymore.”
– Joshua Rothkopf, Time Out New York

“Documents a world of jukeboxes, pinball machines, and girls in white go-go boots—as well as the shabby cafés and disco-theques frequented by two 20-year-olds… Directed by anyone else, Masculine Feminine—one of three movies that Godard made in his peak year, 1966 — would be a masterpiece. For the young JLG it’s business as usual.”
– J. Hoberman, The Village Voice. Click here to read full article

“A classic of sex, politics and youth that's nearly 40 years old yet seems ageless.”
– Matt Zoller Seitz, NY Press. Click here to read full article

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MAY 27 TUE (SEPARATE ADMISSION)

SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL

(1968) The camera endlessly prowls through the Rolling Stones’ recording session of the title song, shot in long, long takes, intercut with a mock TV interview with Anne Wiazemsky; someone reading from revolutionary tracts in a porno book store; and blacks capturing and apparently executing whites in an automobile junkyard: a combination simultaneously deadening and hypnotic. Approx. 100 min.
7:35, 9:40

“A movie experience of major importance…
beautifully and carefully composed, a kind of testament to Godard’s very original, creative impulse”
– Vincent Canby, The New York Times

“A wryly sophisticated film. The parody is far out, accurate, puerile, and funny. Godard uses interviews like no one else. He can make them seem a genuine disputation, or the work of an obscurantist shoving dimes into a speak-your-future machine.”
– Penelope Gilliatt, The New Yorker

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MAY 28/29 WED/THU

CONTEMPT

(1963) That’s what Brigitte Bardot has for husband playwright/screenwriter Michel Piccoli — but why? Does she think he used her to get that lucrative assignment (adapting The Odyssey) from overbearing American producer Jack Palance? Or does she just “not love him anymore?” Given international stars, an Alberto Moravia best-seller, and the biggest budget of his career, Godard still managed to overturn movie conventions while producing a meditation on post-Hollywood filmmaking; CinemaScope; modern interpretations on classical themes; and Bardot’s derrière. Approx. 102 min.
1:30, 3:30, 5:30, 7:30, 9:30
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“One of the masterworks of modern cinema that has influenced a generation of filmmakers, including R.W. Fassbinder, Quentin Tarantino and Martin Scorsese...it moves us because it is essentially the story of a marriage. Godardians regard Contempt as an anomaly, the master's most 'orthodox' movie. The paradox is that it may also be his finest...with Contempt Godard was able to strike his deepest human chords."
– Phillip Lopate, The New York Times

“One of the defining moments of modernist filmmaking… One of those works in which you can feel the aesthetic ground shifting beneath your feet. Like a Cezanne still life or a Sullivan skyscraper, it yields a low rumble—the sound of rules changing…”
– Dave Kehr, Film Comment

“Restored, refreshed, and still raring to offend the cinema status quo. A lament—for both cinema and love, Godard’s two great themes, and for the sad fact that people always have their reasons. With its Homeric echoes and Sunset Boulevard-esque casting, Contempt is almost too ripe with metaphor to be contained, even in CinemaScope. Contempt is a comedy, wrapped in a tragedy. What we’re actually watching is warfare, played out in film and fought with the modern weapons of words, images and money.”
– John Anderson, Newsday

"Brilliant, romantic and genuinely tragic.
It's also one of the greatest films ever made about the actual process of moviemaking."
– Martin Scorsese

"They don't make them like this anymore. Point of fact, they never did; Godard's Contempt is a once-a-century cultural constellation."
– Nick Pinkerton, The Village Voice. Click here to read review

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MAY 30 - JUNE 5 • ONE WEEK!

VIVRE SA VIE

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1:00, 2:45, 4:30, 6:15, 8:00, 9:45

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Available at concession ONLY:
CONTEMPT Poster designed by illustrator Yoko Komura, on sale exclusively at Film Forum (no mail order sales). $24 (tax included) for limited time only Actual size: 27" x 40" (click here for larger image)	MASCULINE FEMININE Poster designed by illustrator Keiko Kimura on sale at Film Forum (no mail order sales). $24 (tax included) for limited time only Actual size: 27" x 40"

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