(1967) Philosophy student Anne Wiazemsky (star of Bresson’s Au Hasard Balthazar and later Mme. Godard), actor Jean-Pierre Léaud, engineer Michel Semeniako, country girl Juliet Berto, and painter Lex de Bruijn (as “Sergei Kirillov”), crashing at an apartment lent to them for the summer, form a Maoist cell; and then... Dostoyevsky as Pop Art; the making of a terrorist; Old vs. New Left; Russian vs. Chinese Communism; the casting out of a “Revisionist;” prescient overtones of the upheavals of May ’68; even political assassination that combines (offscreen) mayhem with absurdity. Godard’s tour de force of idealism, naiveté, and flat affect includes red accents in nearly every shot — chairs, lamp shades, books, doors, pens, walls, drapes, bike handle bars; self-referential, Brechtian alienation effects — shots of the great Raoul Coutard on camera, a stogie-puffing sound man, even a synch-up frame complete with slate; slogans, quotes, aphorisms on walls, posters, book jackets, and title cards filling the screen; occasionally illustrated with visual aids — Léaud’s world politics breakdown punctuated by his changes of national flaglensed shades, and Berto’s turn as Vietnamese peasant girl menaced by toy U.S. fighters; and bizarre digressions — learn why ancient Egyptian teenagers spoke in sheep-like bleats. With riveting centerpiece: the train journey with real life Old Leftist Francis Jeanson continually riposting to Wiazemsky’s matter of fact plans to blow up the Sorbonne with “What next?” DCP. Approx. 96 min. A KINO LORBER RELEASE 

Anne Wiazemsky (1947 - 2017) was born in Berlin, the granddaughter of French writer François Mauriac. She made her film debut in 1966 at the age of 18 in Robert Bresson’s celebrated Au Hasard Balthazar. She went to appear in the films of other great auteurs like Pier Paolo Pasolini (Teorama, Pigsty), André Téchiné (Rendez-vous), and, most importantly, her ex-husband Jean-Luc Godard, for whom she appeared in multiple films, including La Chinoise, Week End, One + One, and Tout Va Bien. Though she acted in her final film in the late ‘80s, she became a celebrated writer of novels like Canines, Hymnes à l’Amour, and Une Poignée de Gens, as well as screenplays, including that for the Claire Denis telefilm U.S. Go Home. Canines was awarded the prestigious Prix Goncourt des Lycéens; her memoir about her life with Jean-Luc Godard, Un An après, is the basis for the upcoming film Redoubtable. 

“AMAZING! LIKE A SPEED FREAK’S ANTICIPATORY VISION OF THE POLITICAL HORRORS TO COME! A fast, clever political comedy... Godard’s hard-edge visual style is stripped down for speed and wit.” 
– Pauline Kael

“One of Godard’s most underrated and misunderstood films... Godard is equally preoccupied by such things as French rock, the color red, the history of cinema, the ‘revisionism’ of the French communist party, and the rebels’ youthful romantic longings... Helped inspire student revolt at Columbia University soon afterward, but that’s a tribute to its style and energy, not its political intelligence.” 
– Jonathan Rosenbaum

“Distinctly disquieting as well as gratingly funny... a remarkably acute analysis of the impulse behind the events of May 1968 in all their desperate sincerity and impossible naïveté.”
– Tom Milne, Time Out (London)

“The most perceptive film about modern youth since Masculine Feminine... More than Godard’s valentine to youth; it is also his valedictory.” 
– Andrew Sarris