Customer Reviews

Band of Outsiders (The Criterion Collection)

5 star:		(25)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

If there are any films that offer a wonderful sense of love for the cinema, they are the films of Jean-Luc Godard. But, as he explains in a brief interview from 1964 that is included with this fine DVD, he was also against film; that is, against the conventions and rules that predominated French cinema. So he introduced unconventional methods of telling stories and making movies and decided to include elements that films typically left out. "Band of Outsiders" is a playful, unconventional, mesmerizing tale of small-time gangsters and young love set in 1960s Paris. Its source material runs the gamut from the pulp crime novel on which it is based to the American B-movies and film noir that inspired its look. It's Godard's best love letter to Paris since "Breathless," and also one of the last of his true New Wave films.

The story might be simple enough: Arthur and Franz enlist the help of the young, beautiful Odile to stage a robbery. But if the story is simple, everything else around it is not. Here we find allusions and homages to Arthur Rimbaud (the poet whom one of the characters is named after), Franz Kafka, film composer Michel Legrand, "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg," T.S. Eliot, Shakespeare, American cartoons, Jack London, Charlie Chaplin, Andre Breton, Andre Malraux, and numerous others. That's Godard doing his thing, and even if we miss those allusions, there's so much more to be cherished: the famous minute of silence, the running visit through the Louvre, the dance scene, the glorious closeups of Anna Karina, riding on the underground metro, the trio driving through the streets of Paris.

"Band of Outsiders" is playful, wondrous, hilarious, breezy, but at the same time melancholic, dark in its undertones. Raoul Coutard's photography gives it a stark look, but its playfulness is its most alluring aspect, along with Godard's wonderfully appealing, inventive visual language. It might not be the finest example of the French New Wave, nor is it as perfect as a work of art as "Breathless" and "My Life to Live," but in its flaunting of cinematic invention, its richness, and its embodiment of pure cinema, it's in a class by itself and certainly a film that should be seen, if not owned, by lovers of cinema. Its most memorable moments will remain in your mind forever.

Many Godard fans, myself included, have been waiting eagerly for this Criterion edition of "Band of Outsiders." It's a remarkable digital transfer; the images and contrasts are crisp; the mono soundtrack is as clear as possible. The additional features are worth the price of the DVD alone, including a visual glossary that explains many of the film's allusions and a brief interview in which Godard explains the philosophy behind the New Wave. Criterion has really outdone itself with this disc, and that's saying something.

I recommend that, even if you do not know French, you should watch this film at least once with the subtitles off since they sometimes obscure the closeups that make this film so memorable. When the camera is on Anna Karina's face, believe me when I say you don't want anything to stand in its way.

'Band of outsiders' is Jean-Luc Cinema Godard's most endearing film - a teen movie played by adults, a love story, a heist movie, a serial, a slapstick comedy, an anthology of New Wave magic. As with previous films, Hollywood genre is made a complete nonsense, continually deflated by extended bits of business, my favourite being the attempt to beat the record for racing down the Louvre's corridors just before the heist.

As with all early Godard, the joy of 'Band' is in the bouyant playfulness of his style - the high, long shots looking down on bustling activity; the long car-journeys through Paris streets; the intense close-ups on Anna Karina (Godard's wife), eluding all meaning, or the sheer rapture in watching her running along pavements, or crossing a river; the messing around disused yards; the lengthy quotes and allusions that stall the action and give resonance to the silly goings-on and the turmoil of the characters in them; the unwavering long takes with exciting real sound; the playful homages to old Hollywood; the narrator's bumptious intrusions, equating events with 'bad B-movies'.

More than Louis Malle's 'Zazie dans le metro', 'Band' is the ultimate Raymond Queneau film - Karina's character is named after the heroine of Queneau's roman a clef 'Odile', a book about the writer's break with the Surrealists, just as 'Band' signals Godard's outpacing the New Wave - with its deadpan marginal heroes, its elusive heroine who doesn't want to be elusive; its romanticising Paris, especially its margins and its pull to the embankments; the attractions like circuses and funfairs intruding on the everyday. Godard finds a cinematic equivalent for Queneau's narrative voice - its flip melancholy; its casual intellectualism; its move from messing about to the philosophical to slapstick to dreams to the tragic and back again; in the self-consciousness of the characters; in the narrative mix of whim, genre and destiny.

Clearly Godard's camera is in love with Anna Karina and this instructs the entire film. That face: Those big almond shaped eyes; innocent, curious, mysterious, mischievous. Odele caught in the prison of her budding sexuality. Oscar and Alex stuck in a web with her, each trapped for different reasons, but all three caught in a struggle manipulated by the puppet master, Godard. "Three weeks earlier, a pile of money. An English class. A house by the river. A romantic girl." A story as improbable as the "legend" of Billy the Kid! This film is derived out of a mixture of boredom, desire and desperation from a filmmaker at odds between love and revulsion of Americana and the cinematic experience in general. One often wonders if making movies is Godard's guilty pleasure. Rather than construct a story, he often seems more interested in deconstruction. His Paris is visually stark and cold, but there is also much beauty. Sadness and beauty: "it all depends upon how you frame the picture." Again I fall back to Odele/Karina. Odele is constantly reinventing herself, bouncing from sensation to sensation and Oscar, Alex and even the director himself are trying to grab hold, but she's far too illusive - even for the puppet master! Godard is in love with Odele/Karina and this is infectious. He is also in love with Paris and American movies and cannot help it. An intellectual trying desperately to reign in his emotions but failing brilliantly. This is why "Band of Outsiders" succeeds so well. There is much more at work in this film than Godard merely trying to be clever; the moment of silence, the "Madison" dance sequence, the Louvre world record. There is a welcome spontaneity fused together with impeccable technique. A scene in the film that is particularly instructive takes place with all three characters in an English class. As the teacher reads the death scene from Romeo and Juliet, the three star crossed lovers seem oblivious to the words, and yet the emotion behind the words seem to color their actions. They are creating their own love story of sorts - but it is a story that lives and breathes inside a movie, where even tragedy is tempered by that good old American "happy ending".

An ultra-low-budget, cliche-slaying tribute to the expressive possibilities of cinema by the gonzo New-Wave master who influenced a thousand and one directors now all much richer than him. Godard practically invented the 'intellectual B-movie' with "My Life to Live," and made "Band of Outsiders" after his nauseating experiences with big-time producers Ponti and Levine on "Contempt," just to prove, once again, that a man bursting with ideas doesn't need too much to express himself magnificently (he later continued in this direction with "Alphaville," another cheaper than cheap masterpiece, this time in "Science Fiction," without any special effects or 'futuristic sets' to speak of).

Don't be fooled by the cheesy production values (that in itself is a calculated joke mocking big-time Hollywood films with million dollar budgets and nothing to say). You have to give this film a little time to reveal its poetry. It's subtle and relaxed yet crazy, and that's good. People usually take a while longer to warm to this one than "Alphaville," or "My Life to Live," but it's just as brilliant. It took me 3 viewings back when I first saw it some 6 years ago, but now I know very well why it's considered a great poetic film: every time I watch it I get a unique, almost ecstatic emotion from it no other film provides, like reading a great humorous romantic poem full of Bukowski-like eccentricities.

"Band of Outsiders" is the epitome of a great film and embodies, for me, exactly what a film should be. The film has inspired, at least partly, a large number of films over the year. Most famously a few scenes in "Pulp Fiction." It is also the film that Quentin Tarantino named his production company after (A Band Apart). If you've seen Pulp Fiction, as many times as I have, you'll notice a lot more inspiration than the casual viewer will. "Band of Outsiders" was released in 1964 and doesn't follow the typical movie formula. It's completely spontaneous, strung together, and fresh after all these years. The film is about two budding criminals named Franz (Sami Frey) and Arthur (Claude Brasseur), who conspire to rob the aunt of the beautiful Odile (Anna Karina, "My Life to Live"). Both men are in love with Odile, but much more preoccupied with getting the money. In a review I read for the film it called the script "incoherent" while another review said the film felt "strung together quickly and without much thought." Both of these reviews are incredibly inaccurate. The plot does feel strung together, but that's what is so great about it. We meet Franz and Arthur as they're driving a car, they talk about Odile, they reenact the death of Billy the Kid, they take a stab at learning English before meeting up with Odile and putting their plan into motion. In one scene (at a coffee shop) the three stand up and dance in one continuous take. A movie does not have to have a coherent plot to be great. A great movie was once defined by Howard Hawks as being "three great scenes, no bad scenes." This film has no bad scenes and more than three great ones. Jean-Luc Godard, a director whose work I've only recently discovered (the other Godard films I've seen are "Weekend" and "My Life to Live"), directed films that have a timeless quality to them. Movies that still feel new today and will continue to do so until the world looks like an episode of "The Jetsons." This film (and his others) have aged better than films like "Citizen Kane" (which isn't to say this is better). His movies feel so fun and spontaneous; it's hard not to be sucked in. The Criterion Collection has, once again, done a magnificent job with the DVD. The sound and picture quality is superb and the bonus features are good, although one wishes for more, but they're still interesting. Any person who likes unique films or liked "Pulp Fiction" and wants to see a film that inspired it should check this out. It's one of the great movies.

GRADE: A

I'm not usually a foreign-film type of guy, but this movie really stuck to me in strange ways that didn't seem obvious when I had finished watching it.

The plot seems mostly simple, with a couple of twists that aren't completely brilliant. I wasn't shocked when the heist didn't go well, and I wasn't shocked when Odile and Franz become lovers.

I think what makes this movie stand out is, as I think another reviewer put it, the way that it seizes your attention and runs with it. It's like going to a community theatre production or a school play and seeing someone with real talent burst into genius. It's always a struggle to read the dialogue from the screen and enjoy and appreciate the movie, but this is a movie that was good even through subtitles.

I suppose there are a few things that I would also say about this movie that make it unusually good:

- It seems to surprise you with unsurprising things. It's more than just good acting and careful scripting.

- It bundles emotions in interesting ways - humor and tragedy, naked greed and pity, lust and tenderness - that push you in strange directions. After thousands of hours of Hollywood crap, it's nice to get a thoughtful work of art.

I'm bumbling through this a little, partly because I wasn't expecting so many people to have something to say about what seemed to me to be such an obscure movie. But I was wrong. This is a great movie, and I'm going to be watching everything Godard did.

Even though I haven't gotten around to finish watching Jean-Luc Godard's celebrated Breathless (1960) despite trying a couple of times, I'm pretty sure I like Band of Outsiders better. Main reason: Anna Karina. I have little doubt that most women would prefer Breathless since it stars Jean-Paul Belmondo who, as cinematic history has it, anticipated Richard Gere's performance in Truffaut's American Breathless (1983).

What I love about Karina's Odile is her incredible naivete. Although 20-years-old playing perhaps an 18-year-old, Karina, then Godard's wife, manages the complete and total personality of someone say 12-years-old. It is her naivete that makes the film work as two petty, would-be criminals, Arthur (Claude Brasseur) and Franz (Sami Frey) seduce her into helping them rob a surprisingly large number of francs from her Aunt's house. At least they think they're going to score. We'll see how the fates feel about that.

They meet in a beginning English language class. Obviously it is not just Godard who admires American culture, our three beginners in life do as well. Appropriately enough the film is adapted from Fools' Gold, an American novel by Dolores Hitchins. In a sense this is a French film imitating not an American film but an American attitude toward life, a free and easy world in which riches are liable to just fall into your lap, where it's chic to be young and run with the wind and drive your convertible onto the sidewalk when you feel like it and in crazy circles for no reason at all, and it is especially fun to jump into the vehicle without opening the doors while it is moving. It is an existence in which you feel spontaneous and uninhibited and can dance the Madison without looking at your feet.

Well, Odile and Franz can. Arthur watches his continuously. And this tells us something about Arthur, who is a bit mean and a bit shallow, but intent on getting his and getting it right. It is he with whom Odile falls into puppy love. She is attracted to his confidence and his crude masculinity, and his interest in her, nothing more. She is further seduced by the joy of finding friends and something exciting to do. She hasn't a clue about who they are or who she is, and that in part is the charm of the film.

She has lovely limbs that we do not see. She runs gracefully, stretching her legs out like a colt. She delights in sitting in the front seat of the Simca, the men on either side of her. Steal the money she has spotted in her uncle's closet, money that she herself would never think of stealing? Okay. And then we go to England or better yet, South America like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

Childish, very childish and charming because Odile is so pretty, just that, pretty as every young girl should be. But surely something tragic is going to happen. Surely this is a cautionary tale about how innocence is lost.

There are gray day shots of Paris and the suburbs now covered with concrete and asphalt. There's a nine-minute run through the Louvre, young people just having fun; and then the denouement and tragedy. Of some sort. And then the fantasy life returns as the film ends.

Godard's story, his plot, isn't to be taken seriously, but his characters are. Arthur is the bad guy, the primitive, just an animal acting out his animal life. But Franz is sly, reflective, reads books, is well-mannered, is finding himself. Odile is a child who will be a woman soon.

The Criterion Collection DVD is nicely presented with some of the usual extras, including excerpts from interviews with Godard and Anna Karina. The subtitles are excellent. There's a booklet with a review by Joshua Clover and part of an interview by Jean Collet from 1964 entitled, "No Questions Asked: Conversations with Jean-Luc Godard."

Jean-Luc Godard has long been the darling of the French New Wave, beginning with the 'stereotypical' nouvelle vague film, "Breathless." While "Breathless" is the film that everyone regards as 'the one,' the true beauty in Godard's filmmaking is expressed with "Band of Outsiders." Once again featuring Godard's beautiful wife Anna Karina, "Band of Outsiders" is the kind of crime film that you're not entirely sure if you like or not. You know it's good, and you understand the mocking nature of it, but you're not sure if you like it.

Godard puts the viewer in a state of euphoria by spinning a tale of intrigue involving two 'criminals' and their female counterpart. This part of the story is the crime drama that we know and love. But at the same time, Godard is letting his imagination run wild, filling our minds with life's little pleasantries and random absurdities.

While Truffault's films as a whole are more widely recognized around the world, Godard truly is the grandfather of the French New Wave. Truffault's films are easy for average film viewers to watch, as he spoon feeds us one situation after another. Truffault is the Zemeckis of the French New Wave. Not a bad director, in fact a very competent one, just not one who is on the cutting edge, as is Godard. To begin to appreciate Godard, one must watch the master at work. And the best place to start is right here, with the relatively unknown and certainly underappreciated "Band of Outsiders."

If one has the slightest interest in art cinema one is bound to know the name Jean-Luc Godard, and if has an interest in French Cinema or has taken a class on the French New Wave one has certainly heard of his films and have probably watched many of his films which have received so many accolades, or comments of disdain, over the years. I fall into the former category myself and have heard of Godard's name for several years after first being introduced to it in Murakami Ryu's novel 69, but for some reason or another I just never got around to actually watching one of his film. Therefore on this weekend, after finishing a big research paper, I decided to finally watch a Godard film: Band of Outsiders.

Band of Outsiders tells the story of Franz and Arthur two young men who are out to make a quick buck so they can live the easy life. Tall and brooding, Franz is not as outspoken as Arthur and keeps many of his thoughts to himself. Arthur on the other hand is much more forceful than Franz and is much more willing to do whatever it takes to get what he wants. Our story opens with Franz and Arthur discussing a robbery they will soon commit with the intended victim being a man who has stolen a lot of money from the government. How do they know about the money? Well, luckily for them they know someone living inside the home itself the young and beautiful Odile who Franz met in an English class and who he obviously holds amorous feelings for. However, Odile instantly falls for Arthur because of his more up front ways and this is what truly makes up the real conflict in the film: the love triangle of Franz, Arthur, and Odile. Yet, can Odile to choose between the two men who intend to rob her home and might only be using her to do so?

Narrated by Godard himself, Band of Outsiders is almost like a novel on film when Godard delves into the minds of the characters and reveals their thoughts. One of the most spectacular scenes in the film is when the trio dance to a sprightly dance number during which the music is stopped for a few moments for the narrator to reveal each character's thoughts. There is also the one minute of silence in which the soundtrack is muted. This can be quite jarring to the viewer because it makes one even more aware of the fact that one is watching a film. The film also sports a very cool soundtrack that keeps up the tempo with the films fast pace. Quite an enjoyable film overall.

Jean-Luc Godard = Cinema

Not very original, I know (even the credits read "Jean-Luc Cinema Godard"), but it's true. Godard is the one man who constantly searches for cinema, expanding and questioning its limits. In a Godard film you find what's missing from many contemporary films: intelligence. I'm not saying there aren't any intelligent contemporary filmmakers (Robert Zemeckis spends hours contemplating Heraclitus, Michael Bay is notorious for his post-structuralist views, Roland Emmerich is reputed to be the true mastermind behind the Quantity Theory of Insanity) , but Godard's films also possess an inventiveness,exuberance and love for the medium that is lacking in the contemporary scene.

"Band Of Outsiders" is a willfully ebullient film, using the plot of a second rate thriller as an excuse for naturalistic scenes. Odile (Anna Karina) says something like, "I hate cinema. I hate theatre. I love nature." There is no denying the naturalistic nature of the scenes, but Godard is the omniscient narrator, inserting rhetoric after key moments, as if to say the camera is powerless to capture the subtle poetry contained within the images.

The film's structure is novelistic. The scenes are filmed/told objectively, then Godard comes in and comments upon them with poetic language. Somehow, this novelistic structure translates into dynamic cinema. Most modern novels tend to shy away from omniscient narration, but good, intermittent commentary never hurts, and it helps Band Of Outsiders in a way that could be discussed further by someone with plenty of free time.

All the mumbo jumbo aside, the film is just a joy to watch. It's very low budget (it probably cost a fraction of N'Sync's "POP"), and I know a ton of people who'd rather watch "Pearl Harbour" instead, but if you love cinema and the possibilities the medium provides, I definitely recommend the film.

If you're new to Godard, it's a good place to start (as is "Breathless"). Then move on to "Weekend," "Pierrot Le Fou" and "Masculine Feminine." If you're feeling masochistic, try the rather hard to find Dziga Vertov films, then see what you make of Godard's eighties work. After that, read James Monaco's "French New Wave" and Godard's "Godard On Godard," which you should be able to find elsewhere on this site.