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A scribbled note kicks off Jean-Luc Godard's war on cinematic seamlessness, set noises are heard: "Let it roll. Military march, take one." The shrubby, overcast French countryside stands for the abstract kingdom, a pair of lumpy yokels (Marino Masé, Patrice Moullet) are given machine-guns and sent to the front with promises of treasures. Forget your suffering, go cause somebody else's! "Can we steal slot-machines? Pillage, rape, massacre?" "Oui, c'est la guerre." Offhand vaudeville is the method, blackout skits alternate with ragged newsreels of bombardiers and contorted corpses, the rattle of gunfire is punctuation. One of the rustic mercenaries tries to buy a Maserati with the King's recruitment note, the other takes time off from molesting a prisoner with his rifle to notice a Rembrandt on the wall, "un soldat salut un artiste." The battleground is a procession of pastoral vistas pockmarked with deadpan thuggery, back home their preening wives (Geneviève Galéa, Catherine Ribeiro) devour glossy magazines. "There is no victory, only flags and fallen men." Keaton's awestruck projectionist reaching for the bathing beauty and Eisenstein's fraternal cry before the fusillade, above all Rossellini's contemplative long-shot (Paisà), furiously sketched gags in an astringent flipbook. A catalog of plunder brought home fills the screen in the astounding punchline, postcard after postcard pulled out of a suitcase and slapped down before the stupefied spouses: The Pyramids and Niagara Falls, Versailles and Rin Tin Tin, Ava Gardner and Lola Montez, commodified images one and all. (The Parthenon is turned down by Ribeiro, "c'est une ruine.") Lester takes the baton in How I Won the War, and there are consequences for Jancsó (The Red and the White) and Malick (Badlands). Cinematography by Raoul Coutard. With Jean-Louis Comolli, Odile Geoffroy, and Barbet Schroeder. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |