Film Forum

(1964, Jean-Luc Godard) In the dreary suburb of Joinville, Claude Brasseur and Sami Frey (“Belmondo’s suburban cousins” - JLG) take turns romancing English language student Anna Karina, then light up when she mentions the big pile of cash stashed at her aunt’s villa. A piece of cake burglary, but then things go memorably awry. A jeu d’esprit – extracted from one of the blackest Série Noire novels, Fools’ Gold by Dolores Hitchens. – with echt Godardian set pieces including the trio line-dancing “Le Madison” and then “doing” the Louvre in record time. 4K DCP. Approx. 95 min.

Reviews

“A reverie of a gangster movie… It’s as if a French poet took a banal American crime novel and told it to us in terms of the romance and beauty he read between the lines; Godard re-creates the gangsters and the moll with his world of associations – seeing them as people in a Paris café, mixing them with Rimbaud, Kafka, Alice in Wonderland.”
– Pauline Kael

“Words are not up to capturing its elfin charm, not even up to hinting how beautiful Paris looks in Raoul Coutard’s unconsciously romantic photography. Although Godard talked a lot about his theories and his methods, if he had a secret, it was a gift for creating irresistible images. Band of Outsiders shows him at his most amusing, and that is no small thing.”
– Kenneth Turan, The Los Angeles Times