The French New Wave is in rare form this week at the IMU’s Bijou Theater. Hitting the silver screen are the previously unavailable Jean-Luc Godard films, *Made in U.S.A* and *Two or Three Things I Know About Her*, as a double feature.
Tonight, *Made in U.S.A.* screens at 7 p.m. and *Two or Three Things I Know About Her* will follow at 9 p.m. Showings will run through October 1 and a complete list of times is available on the Bijou’s website (www.uiowa.edu/~bijou). Admission is $7 for both movies or $5 for a single showing.
Jean-Luc Godard is most closely associated with the French New Wave cinematic movement and is known as a prolific French filmmaker who infused his love of the cinema and his political leanings into his films. While he is credited as a dissenter from the classic filmmaking style of Golden Hollywood, he often makes reference to American films.
*Made in U.S.A.* was loosely adapted from a Donald E. Westlake book, *The Jugger*, and because neither Godard nor his producers paid for the rights, the film only recently became accessible in the United States. Paula Nelson, played by Godard’s ex-wife Anna Karina, has been described as the female Humphrey Bogart circa *The Big Sleep*.
Paula plays the gum shoe detective after discovering that her lover, Richard P. (we are unsure of his last name, as it is constantly smothered by ringing phones and car horns), has been murdered. The film is set in a French suburb named Atlantic City and the story unfurls amid reference to massive political events, including the Kennedy assassination and the disappearance of Ben Barka.
The narrative becomes almost indistinguishable and is colored by characters Inspector Aldrich, Richard Nixon and Robert McNamara, some of who sport bathrobes and “Kiss Me, I’m Italian” buttons. The violence is cartoonish. However, the story at the center of this film is not of much importance — rather, it is what exists in the periphery that matters.
Film scholars argue that *Made in U.S.A.* is a criticism on truth. The viewer sees Godard’s characters as caricatures, though they feel they are accurately representing themselves. It comments on violence in ’50s Hollywood cinema and it remarks on the political left’s supposed inability to communicate. In classic Godard fashion, this is much more than a film.
*Two or Three Things I Know About Her* is a remarkably appropriate film for a country in the midst of an economic recession. Though it was filmed in 1966 (simultaneously with *Made in U.S.A.*), *Two or Three Things … * comments on what Godard views as western society’s adherence to consumerism.
The film centers on two “hers.” The audience follows a day in the life of Juliette Janson (Marina Vlady), a suburban housewife in her thirties. She is consumed by the need for possessions and routinely works as a prostitute to pay for her upper middle class lifestyle. Godard also looks at the changing landscape of Paris, the film’s second “her.” He blames Janson’s capitalist environment for her situation.
At one point Jason describes her condition: “You go on using gas and water and electricity without giving a thought to the end of the month when the bills have to be paid … Either it is no money to pay the rent or no telly. Or else we keep the telly but no car. Or a washing machine but no holiday. Therefore in no way a normal life.”
*Two or Three Things … * focuses on the lengths individuals will go to obtain a high standard of living and achieve the American dream. Janson has “no hesitation between the wish and its fulfillment.”
- By Greta Hagen-Richardson
