Product Details

• Actors: Alain Bastien-Thiry, Jacques Bonnaffé, Sacha Briquet, Pierre-Alain Chapuis, Laurent Dangalec
• Format: Color, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC
• Language: French (Unknown)
• Subtitles: English
• Region: All Regions
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Studio: Fox Lorber
• DVD Release Date: February 23, 1999
• Run Time: 85 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 1572524332
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #203,842 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
• For more information about "First Name - Carmen" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

After leaving his filmmaking base and home in France in 1978 for Switzerland, Jean-Luc Godard's films became more overtly introspective but less revolutionary in his middle age. The 1983 First Name: Carmen is a perfect example of the director's reconnection with his roots in the French New Wave while musing about his own role, life, and legacy in the movement. Essentially three films bundled into one (or, more accurately, three levels of the film's self-awareness), Carmen stars Godard himself as a languishing filmmaker hired by his niece to make a movie; what he doesn't know is that she wants the project to be a front for terrorism. That submerged sense of betrayal and final futility permeates Carmen as we see a string quartet struggle through a Beethoven soundtrack (rather than Bizet), a love story of Carmen and Don José that crumbles, and Godard himself as the creator tempted to end up the sum of all that has undone his greatest efforts. An amazing, confessional film, First Name: Carmen finds Godard, as he did in the early days, making an endless loop of his life in cinema and the cinema in his life. --Tom Keogh

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great movie but don't buy it., October 30, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: First Name - Carmen (DVD)

This is a very good Goddard movie that Fox Lorber treats badly. On both video and DVD it is advertised as letterbox but it is actually full frame on both. If that doesn't bother you then movie is worth seeing just to enjoy Goddard presenting himself as an institutionalized washed-up filmmaker determined to stay institutionalized..

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Regarding the aspect ratio, April 13, 2004

By 

Peter Henne (San Pedro, California United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: First Name - Carmen (DVD)

In response to one of the amazon reviewers, the correct aspect ratio for "First Name: Carmen" is 1.33:1. As proof, you can see the reel markers while watching the DVD. Thus, while the film might have been "window boxed" to absolutely contain all the edges, a full frame format is adequate and "normal" for films in this ratio. Almost all of Godard's feature films from "Passion" onward can be formatted correctly in the same ratio. "King Lear" and "For Ever Mozart" were soft-matted, meaning they could be projected at 1.85:1 and 1.66:1, respectively, in theatre screenings while matting part of the image in the projector gate. For example, the out-of-print, Cinematheque Collection VHS tape of "King Lear," which is full frame, contains more of the image at the top than a theatrical presentation does.

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An extraordinary film...Godard returns to his roots., April 3, 2000

By 

Scott D. Cudmore (Toronto, Ontario Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: First Name - Carmen (DVD)

It's certainly true what the other reviewers of this DVD have been saying: it -isn't- widescreen like it says it is. This is dissapointing, but it still looks and sounds somewhat better than the previous video release of the film. And it is a very good movie anyhow. His 1979 picture, "Slow Motion" is generally considered Godard's return to his New Wave roots, but I don't really agree. I think that it's found in this film, in which Godard once again plays with the construction of narrative form like he did in the 60's. The style of this film and those films is similar, whereas much of his later work is extremely dense and cerebral. I'm not disparaging those pictures; I love many of them. But I find that most people tend to love his older stuff and avoid his later stuff...so I'm saying that this film would probably make fans of the older films quite happy. It makes remarkable use of Beethoven's music as performed by a string quartet that we see rehearsing on camera (see, this is the kind of stuff you expect from Godard, right?) as well as a great Tom Waits song, "Ruby's Arms".