Band of Outsiders is generally considered one of Godard’s most accessible and warmest films. In a review here a while back, Robert Stanley Martin, called it “an ode to the joie de vivre of adolescence,” filled with charm, and humor.
Robert’s review was a big part of why I rented the film. And I can see, at least in part, what appealed to him. “Band of Outsiders” is filled with the joy of moviemaking; the rush of turning on a camera and almost magically creating art. You can see this in the bravura sequences that Robert points to — the scene when the three main characters declare a minute of silence, and the soundtrack cuts off for 30 seconds, or the famous dance number, or the giddy race through the Louvre. But it’s there even in less flamboyant moments. For example, there’s one scene, shot from a distance, in which the protagonists have to step around two men carrying a rug. It’s nothing special, and barely visible, but the very gratuitousness of it is a kind of high spirits — a gleeful insistence on imitating the stochastic bumps of reality, and a kind of celebratory whoop that film makes that imitation possible.
But while, as I said, I can at least partially key into why Robert enjoys the film, I can’t say that I actually liked it myself. Part of the problem, perhaps, was that, where Robert appreciated the movie as an enjoyment of youth and adolescence, I had a lot of trouble doing that for the banal reason that the actors just didn’t seem young. Indeed, Claude Brasseur, who played Arthur, was 28 at the time of the filming, and looked older; Sami Frey, who played Franz, was 27; Anna Karina (Odile) was 24. As a result, much of their childish tomfoolery — passing notes in English class, for example — comes across less as cheerful high spirits, and more as a kind of decadent desperation. Karina’s blushing bashfulness and flirtatious eye-batting, which Robert (and I think many other critics) found winning, seemed to me like almost queasily self-parodic camp. The scene where, after Arthur’s suggestion, Odile mincingly changes her hair-style, suggests both drag and Pygmalion; a fantasy in which a woman becomes, or is possessed by, a suggestible girl.
Godard is a filmmaker obsessed with the filmness of film; as such, I’m sure that the discrepancy between the actor’s ages and the character’s ages was not an accident. Rather, I think Godard is celebrating not so much the dance of youth as the filmic potential of a dance of youth. The film isn’t about “real” adolescence, but about faux adolescence — especially about the power of film to provide a playground for adults. Thus, for example, early in the film Arthur and Franz engage in a mock gun battle; when Arthur is “shot” he performs an elaborate thrashing “death scene”. Towards the end of the film, Arthur is really (or should that be “really”?) shot, over and over again, by his uncle — and his death scene is even more ridiculous and extended than the fake scene from the beginning of the movie. That’s possible because, of course, the real scene isn’t any more real than the fake one. The kids playing around in the first are just like the adults playing around in the second, a truth only emphasized by the fact that the kids playing around in the first are actually adults playing kids playing around.
I’ve no objection to self-referentiality in itself — but the way Godard does it always leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Perhaps it’s the smirking deliberateness of his playfulness. Having the teacher read Romeo and Juliet while Arthur courts Odile couldn’t be much less subtle. And as for that oh-so-cheeky run through the Louvre, turning art into play into (by means of the cinema) art — you just wonder how he manages to even see the footage what with all that winking. The heist tropes, the romantic triangle tropes; their tropeness never functions as critique or even really as comment. They’re just “fun” because they’re “cinema”; nifty elements to manipulate, like the soundtrack. For me, “Band of Outsiders” felt less like an exhilarating romp, and more like an hour and a half of being lectured on what an exhilarating romp I was experiencing. Godard the self-referential lecherous control freak doesn’t entirely thrill me…but it seems at least less oppressively self-congratulatory than Godard the insistently whimsical maestro.
I agree with you. A lot of shit was thrown towards Tarantino when he once said he outgrew Godard, but I have a really hard time sitting through his whiny bullshit now. The way his characters interact makes me want to pull my hair out. It all feels like smart young guy who really wants to prove how smart he is. And as Godard got older, he’s only been encouraged to retreat further into his skull, becoming more indulgent. It’s funny that he’s reportedly making a 3D movie on smartphones, though.
I like Tarantino a lot more than Godard.
It’s interesting because I really like Tarkovsky’s self-referentiality which seems like it’s comparable to Godard’s in some ways. The difference for me I guess is that for Tarkovsky the meta-games around artificiality and filmness are pretty clearly connected to philosophical interests, cosmological speculation, and faith; the reality of artifice, the artificiality of the real. They’re not playful, and so their self-indulgence doesn’t seem as insistently and off-puttingly self-congratulatory.
I’d just rather listen to Khanate than to They Might Be Giants, is what I’m trying to say.
Well, Tarkovsky never pushes you outside his narrative, whereas Godard almost always does (or did — maybe not so much these days). I guess that’s another way of saying the latter’s meta-commentary is Brechtian and the former’s is not. Godard reminds you that you’re watching a film. I think that might be why I prefer Bunuel and others who are every bit as conscious of the structures they’re working with, but pull you in all the same.
I’m going to continue not listening to both Khanate and TMBG.
Hmmm…I don’t know if I quite agree. Tarkovsky definitely gets you outside the narrative…the way he does it is just different. Less jokey maestro manipulation, and more boredom or inconsistencies that just kind of sit there rather than announcing themselves….
I’m always glad to read that something I wrote inspired a reader to check something out. That said, here are a few thoughts:
The charge that “the actors just didn’t seem young” doesn’t quite click with me. The easy, pedantic objection is that Noah overstates the actors’ ages a bit. The film was shot in March and April of 1964; Karina was 23, Frey was 26, and Brasseur was 27–all a year younger than Noah states. That aside, I can see Noah’s point with Brasseur, but not with the other two. This may be be due to my perception of Frey and Karina from their other films. Before seeing Band of Outsiders, I knew Frey from his Hollywood roles in the ’80s, specifically as the Palestinian super-terrorist in the adaptation of le Carré’s The Little Drummer Girl, and as the multimillionaire at the center of the love triangle in Bob Rafelson’s Black Widow. My image of him going into the film was that of a middle-aged man, and the contrast does throw one off. But one also has to consider that Frey looks younger than he actually is: his slender build and narrow face would make him look like a late adolescent even into his mid-twenties; I’d have certainly ID’ed his Band of Outsiders character if he was trying to buy beer. With Karina, Odile certainly comes off as younger than her characters in Le Petit soldat, A Woman Is a Woman, and Vivre sa vie–and she was 19 when Le Petit soldat, the earliest of them, was shot. If one is bringing the baggage of recollections of her in the earlier films to the picture, she’s much easier to accept as a 17- or 18-year-old.
I don’t agree that the characters are just “fun” because they’re “cinema.” Godard is the great cinematic romanticist of late adolescence and post-adolescent early adulthood. Weekend aside, Godard’s best work is when he plays into this. Godard captures these characters’ spirit; he also captures their dark side, particularly the spectacle of their fantasies hitting the wall of reality–Band of Outsiders‘ most powerful moment is when Odile recognizes the ugly violence of the robbery the Brasseur and Frey character carry out.
Brasseur’s death scene does look ridiculous. I’m not sure to what extent it’s deliberately riduculous, and to what extent the ridiculousness is due to Godard’s inability to stage it convincingly. (By Hollywood standards, he’s an inept director in may ways; competent hackitude is something Godard could probably have never achieved.) The jokiness strikes me as a way of compensating for incompetence (I meant to do that, and so on.) Godard is erratic, but when he’s on he leaves most other filmmakers in the shade, and in the best moments of Band of Outsiders, he is most definitely on. If one wants to see how awful Godard can be when he’s expressing the “fun” of “cinema,” Band of Ousiders isn’t the film to dump on. Just check out Made in U. S. A.
“he also captures their dark side, particularly the spectacle of their fantasies hitting the wall of reality”
I just have trouble getting that from it because everything seems so self-consciously a trope. The gangster film turning squicky at the end is part of the gangster film; it doesn’t seem real to me anymore than the death scene — and Godard is so insistent on emphasizing the filmic quality of the film to begin with that it’s hard for me to believe that he *wants* it to feel real.
This happened in Contempt too, Robert; you have a more…visceral? immersive? — not sure what the right adjective is, but you seem more able to react to the narratives in the film as stories or narratives. For me with Godard, everything comes across as very much in quotes.
The bit that stays with me is Odile’s moment of horror in the robbery when the fantasy blinders fall away. I don’t see it as a trope so much as a realist effect. It’s very powerful.
The adjective you want is probably “immersive.” I like to lose myself in a narrative, and I value films, novel, comics, etc. that can make me do it. That is so rare these days that I treasure anything that manages that reaction. However, I admit there has to be something about the piece that hits my particular romantic buttons if it’s having that effect.
“Band of Ousiders isn’t the film to dump on. Just check out Made in U. S. A.”
Not recommended. I like Godard a lot (I love Band of Outsiders), but Made in USA even had me counting the moments until it was over.
Dump on em all and let God sort em out. That’s my motto.