As anyone who has the slightest interest in Jean-Luc Godard's career knows (and that would be anyone interested in "modern" cinema), WEEKEND marked the end of his early career, a 15-film run from 1959's BREATHLESS to this film in 1967. Few in the history of film have ever been as productive, as provocative, and as influential. One thing that has happened in the last decade or so is that many of the films from this era have been restored and re-released in the United States: BREATHLESS, MY LIFE TO LIVE, CONTEMPT, BAND OF OUTSIDERS, PIERROT LE FOU, MASCULINE FEMININE, MADE IN U.S.A. (finally having its first US commercial release), 2 OR 3 THINGS I KNOW ABOUT HER, LA CHINOISE and now WEEKEND.
WEEKEND begins as a rude and vicious satire in which people in cars become violent at the slightest provocation. It proceeds with a bourgeoise couple (Mireille Darc and Jean Yanne) who are bored with each other, openly contemptuous, and seemingly ready to kill. There is the wife's erotic confession, delivered in a quiet deadpan as she is shown in silhouette. This is only the first of many virtuoso sequences which show Godard at his most formally inventive. As soon as the couple gets in their car to begin a journey (they've decided to kill her mother for the inheritance), the viewer knows this journey is one which isn't going to end as expected. And it doesn't. Whimsy, annoyance, rage, disgust and horror greet the couple as this picaresque lurches from Rabelaisean to de Sade (and beyond).
When the movie first opened, Renata Adler in the New York Times wrote that the movie "was hard to take." In a sense, the years have been kind: there are now movies filled with such horrors that WEEKEND can only seem mild-mannered. But as an intellectual provocation, WEEKEND remains a scintillating experience. It should be noted that in 2 OR 3 THINGS I KNOW ABOUT HER and LA CHINOISE, Godard presented his protagonists in ripe, sensual, adoring close-ups; here, everything is presented in medium or long-shot, so that the characters are kept at a distance. Yet Godard is always ready with another joke to keep the movie buoyant: his apocalyptic vision can't help but be filled with passionate rage and humor.
WEEKEND begins as a rude and vicious satire in which people in cars become violent at the slightest provocation. It proceeds with a bourgeoise couple (Mireille Darc and Jean Yanne) who are bored with each other, openly contemptuous, and seemingly ready to kill. There is the wife's erotic confession, delivered in a quiet deadpan as she is shown in silhouette. This is only the first of many virtuoso sequences which show Godard at his most formally inventive. As soon as the couple gets in their car to begin a journey (they've decided to kill her mother for the inheritance), the viewer knows this journey is one which isn't going to end as expected. And it doesn't. Whimsy, annoyance, rage, disgust and horror greet the couple as this picaresque lurches from Rabelaisean to de Sade (and beyond).
When the movie first opened, Renata Adler in the New York Times wrote that the movie "was hard to take." In a sense, the years have been kind: there are now movies filled with such horrors that WEEKEND can only seem mild-mannered. But as an intellectual provocation, WEEKEND remains a scintillating experience. It should be noted that in 2 OR 3 THINGS I KNOW ABOUT HER and LA CHINOISE, Godard presented his protagonists in ripe, sensual, adoring close-ups; here, everything is presented in medium or long-shot, so that the characters are kept at a distance. Yet Godard is always ready with another joke to keep the movie buoyant: his apocalyptic vision can't help but be filled with passionate rage and humor.