Customer Reviews

Le Petit Soldat [VHS]

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

It's somewhat of a pity that "Le Petit Soldat" is typically not seen as one of Godard's best films, just as it is a pity that both critical and popular reception have largely been lukewarm ever since its release. The French government in 1960 certainly didn't like it. They censured Godard because of the film's political ambivalence about the Algerian war for independence, as well as its depiction of torture, a technique that was accepted and used by both the Algerians and the French. As a result, "Le Petit Soldat" was not released until 1963. By that time, the war had been over and the political furor over the film had died down.

Viewers have been far more kind to the film, but not always by much. Perhaps it is the way in which Godard combines film genres only to exploit and discard them. Is it a war film, a pulp crime saga, an incomplete drama, or all three? (Or none of the above?) Perhaps it is the fact that the film's protagonist, Bruno Forestier (played by Michel Subor) is completely confused and uncomitted in his political views. That, of course, was Godard's whole point about his character and the issues of the day, but many viewers wanted a protagonist who actually had a specific world view. Or, perhaps it is the film's overall lack of narrative coherence and the way in which the film's ending is oddly abrupt. Reactions such as these are valid, to be sure, mainly because they are the very type reactions most of Godard's films inspire. He took the familiar, time-worn conventions of the cinema and turned them upside down.

Stylistically, "Le Petit Soldat" picks up where "Breathless," Godard's first film, left off. The photography is stunningly beautiful (kudos to Godard's cinematographer, Raoul Coutard). The jump cuts are present, although they aren't as extreme as they are in "Breathless." There are also wonderful Godard trademarks: location shooting, as opposed to set pieces (Geneva is the background this time), a cinematic love affair with the automobile (all everyone seems to do in this film is drive), and numerous literary and cultural references.

In terms of its cinematic style, "Le Petit Soldat" is a triumph. It is also notable, on this account, because it is Anna Karina's first appearance in a Godard film. He hired her for her looks and then married her. Like his later films with her, though not to the same extent, "Soldat" is a study of Karina. She is beautifully lit, and the camera lingers on her in several key scenes. Fortunately for Godard, Karina also turned out to be a wonderful actress.

"Le Petit Soldat" simply follows Bruno as he is forced to assassinate a political enemy while, in the process, he meets and falls in love with Veronica (Karin's character). Aside from that, there isn't much plot; it is at the service of dialogue and images. Bruno's capture and torture are not easy to watch, even though there is no blood or grim violence; but that should not deter one from viewing or admiring this film. Godard, better than anyone, knew how to elevate the B-movie to art, and he does it with "Le Petit Soldat." Sure, the story doesn't cohere, but that's the entire point. And whether it does or not is, in a sense, beside the point; this film is worth seeing simply for its photography, for seeing Geneva in the early 60s, and for a fine example of Godard's early New Wave style. Cinephiles should own it.

Finally, a few words about the DVD: in wholly uncharacteristic fashion, Fox Lorber's print of this film is actually quite good. That's because the BBC remastered an acrhival print for the DVD release. Generally, the transfer is commendable. Some night scenes are unclear, but that could be due to Godard's own intent or to the small budget he was working with. The audio track is decent as well.

One can't expect many DVD extras for Fox Lorber, but there is a fairly informative 15 minute commentary from scholar David Skerritt, who provides some background information and a general analysis of the film.

Jean-Luc Godard should be applauded for trying to pull off films such as 'Le Petit Soldat', for in such films he really goes his own way in using film as an artistic medium. His storytelling here is very French 'Noir', with some 'chilling' night street shots and tenuous close-ups of complex visages. Also Michel Subor does a fine job in speaking very specifically about his impressionistic/esoteric thoughts on life, death, and love. All of these aspects are to be appreciated in a French film, for very few filmmakers outside of France have a good handle on the existentialist/'stark' artistic aspects of filmmaking.

What bogs this particular classic down is the first half hour or so with shot after shot of people getting into and out of cars and pulling up/whizzing off down the road. No amount of imagination can give this protracted pattern artistic value. It's just plain boring- and I have a pretty tolerant attention span. But what does all this do to move the story forward? Rien. The other problems with this film are the plot and realism. Firstly the plot- what could have been a gripping story weaved around this striking subject matter of allegiances and covert activity (torture, double agenting, etc.) during the French-Algerian War, is very watered down here and too simplistic. It rarely gets out of Marseillaise (or wherever 'Le Petit Soldat' purports to take place), and we see very little, if nothing of the Arabs, Algeria, or places or characters outside of a small, insular spy-vs-spy world. That would be OK if the story was carried along realistically, but it is not, which brings me to point number 2. The torture scenes are just not realistic in the sense of being convincing. If this is torture, then the torturers must have taken their lessons from a day care center, because they do very little to the main character to convince us he is actually in a great deal of pain. He comes out of his torture "with a little burn" on his wrist, and does not seem to be psychologically effected at all. For comparison, read Frederick Forysth's "The Day of the Jackal" for what was really going on with these interrogations. I am not saying we need to see brutal torture to make this film work, just better acting in the aftermath perhaps.

Overall, the film is watchabale, but barely. What halfway redeems it is some of Subor's expostulations on love, death, beauty, and the oblique.

This film is shot in black and white and is spoken in French with English subtiltes. The DVD is of good pictorial quality and comes with a few nice extras- which help.

I kept waiting for this film to take off but, being that it's only 84 minutes long, I eventually realized that it wasn't going to happen. There are scenes in the movie that do delve into some cerebral concepts that are, at times, interesting. Unfortunately, they are offset by other scenes and situations that seem to demean what they appear to profile. For example, there is a scene involving torture. I was not looking to see any disturbing shots of excessive brutality. However, after a series of supposedly serious tortures, our "hero" escapes and goes on, physically and mentally, as if nothing had happened. There is also an overnight relationship that supposedly turns into love. If that relationship is "love" then something must have gotten lost in the translation. What we're left with is a lot of existential soul-searching with a minor dose of politics mixed in. In fact, given the apparent plot of the film, the amount of politics we encounter is absurdly minor. The director may have erred in thinking the whole world knew the intricacies of the Algerian revolt.

To those who are devotees of the Existential Philosophy, this movie is probably a minor masterpiece. I must confess that a negative characterization of Albert Camus in the movie left me thinking it was either an inside joke or an inside squabble. After all of the endless driving, the constant smoking and the often pointless dialogue, I am less apt to watch another movie by Goodard

Another beautiful pan and scan hack job by Fox Lorber studios. I wish these folks would go out of business.

After making the whole sum of the filmography of this original film maker with great peaks and lows, I think this is and I emphasize, is my personal criterion, this is Godard's masterpiece.

There are several aspects to remark, because you have to agree the film runs in a very peaceful rhthym. Absolutely agree. But consider the hard times. The existentialism with the hard loss of Camus in 1958 and Sartre leading this movement. And the Argelian conflict that it meant a hard schock for the French people.

I mean this complex web of facts surround the film, that's why forty five years later may be considered dated for many people who ignores all the political, sociological and economic atmosphere that surrounded this country in the early sixties.

Who could deny the use of the torture far beyond the battlefield?

But Godard faced this serious and painful reality, ensambling a powerful with much deeper implications. Our petit soldier is a single man who makes his job until he gets convinced by himself the no sense of this War and decides to get around certain politically correct attitudes, and his dual behavior with Anna Karina shows his profound hopeless and trust in a better tomorrow, He has renounced to the ancient youth idealism. His grow up process has become from him a tragic symbol.

Go for this jewel and powerful film, and remember. Godard's bitter gaze has been somehow his personal trademark all along his career.

Fascinating!

This is a movie that is heady, but that's what makes it great. You have to think, and that's at least one thing the French do well ;) Any person who is open to cinematic experience should see this film. I love Goddard, which might make me biased, but this is a film that grapples with issues that we all deal with, on some level. The universality of the work is what drew me to the New Wave period in the first place; it's about our coexistance in the universe, what that means, and how we cannot take it for granted.

Enjoy!

When watching any film by Godard, you'll immediately understand why he was called the enfant terrible of the French New Wave, his sharp attacks and recriminations on the film world and political world are by now world famous. Yet to see the films now, close to forty years on, is a treat to the discriminating film viewer, who is immensely tired of the banal color-by-numbers storytelling that Hollywood has been churning out with more and more frequency, should no douobt be enthralled by what Godard has to show and tell.

In looking at Le Petite Soldat, one can immediately notice how Godard's once-revolutionary irreverent style was usurped piecemeal by the filmmakers who followed, but the unique voice that is Godard has yet to be duplicated and his commentary on loyalty and obligation to a potentially unethical cause/affliation is just as applicable today as it was when this film was new.

Le Petit Soldat represents Godard in the heart of his genius creative spurt that included such films as A Band Apart, Les Carabiniers, Alphaville, Vivre Sa Vie.

It's hard, if not impossible to say which Godard film is most accessible, because that label usually applies to standard filmmaking, something that Godard never quite did - even with his hugely popular Breathless. Le Petit Soldat is a good introduction to Godard, with a good dose of violence and suspence to carry one through the philosophical parts.

With each passing year, Godard seems even less important, even as a historical footnote. Always the least interesting and most self-aggrandizing of the nouvelle vague directors, seen four decades on, his more acclaimed early films show just how little he had to say - no matter how loudly he says it - once you strip away the now-tired presentation. While Bertolt Brecht's highly stylised plays have survived the theatrical and the political movements that inspired them because at heart there's something there that matters, crucially, nothing about any of this minor film seems deeply or passionately felt: it's all just attention seeking from someone who's tolerable company in small doses but a shallow coffeehouse bore the more time you spend with him.

For all its contemporary controversy, Le Petit Soldat is just another example of how trite Godard can be when he tries to be profound, opting for his usual formula of taking a standard-issue pulp plot, dressing it up in student politics and throwing a slew of disjointed cultural references at it (Jean Cocteau, Paul Klass) in the hope that people will think it has substance of its own. No wonder he was such an influence on Tarantino, who simply exchanged Godard's philosophers and poets for grind-house schlock merchants and Asian auteurs. Yet for all the posturing, it simply shows up Godard's political naivete: beyond noting that both left and right are as bad as each other, he seems completely ignorant of his subject matter, leaving the impression that to him the Algerian War was just a trendy T-shirt that he thinks looks good on him. If anything, rather than the self-proclaimed Marxist of later years, this is more the unashamedly right-wing racist he favored before his political reinvention, even if he does clumsily equate French Nationalists with Hitler in one image of a hit-man hiding his face behind a magazine cover of Adolf.

Then there's the recurring problem of his misogyny and his inability or refusal to create female characters that are anything more than one-dimensional objects to confuse or destroy his male antiheroes inbetween passively listening to their stream-of-consciousness lecturing (women are rarely allowed ideas of their own in Godard: they exist as an audience for male mental self-abuse). Strangely enough, the once notorious matter-of-fact torture sequence just brings up even more unwelcome comparisons with Tarantino in what is little more than a grab-bag of newspaper headlines and bullet points from the Cliffs Notes version of Chairman Mao's Little Red Book - and dull with it, too. The truly beautiful Cocteau quote about death only shows up how little Godard has to offer by comparison.

Le Petit Soldat (The Little Soldier) was the second film written and directed by Jean-Luc Godard, pioneer of the French New Wave of filmmaking, and after the unexpected success of his first film, Breathless- a banal, poorly acted, and dull attempt at (or satire of?) film noir, this second film was greeted with a swift banning in France- for its portrayal of the similar way Right and Left Wing terror groups behave, and the fact that it had an implicitly anti-war message at a time when the French were trying to hold on to their colonial power in Africa during the Algerian War. Because it took so long to be screened around the world it has generally has been critically either wholly ignored or bitterly dissed. Yet- surprise, surprise- it's a significantly better film in all aspects than the much more lauded Breathless. That said, it's merely a solid film, not even particularly good, but it does display that Godard was not merely out to ape his earlier success the way that many young artists do.

The tale is not particularly complex, as it involves espionage and torture- things that would soon become glamorized in the filmic world of James Bond just a few years hence, but it has a far more naturalistic feel than Breathless does- which was filled with artistic preening and posing, simply because there is no self-conscious effort to `be natural' in this film. The tale follows Bruno Forestier (Michel Subor- who looks remarkably like a young Harvey Keitel), a young Frenchman who deserted the army, and is living in exile in Geneva, Switzerland. He is narrating the tale from an indeterminate point in the future, so we know he will likely survive the film's ordeal- it's the how and why of the film that will thus be its determining factor in success or failure. Ostensibly he's a reporter, yet he has nebulous ties to some Right Wing terror groups. Because he deserted the army he is blackmailed by them to do criminal `jobs' for them. They distrust him, suspect him of being a sellout, and order him to kill a man to prove his loyalty. He refuses- as he seems to have a conversion just seconds before doing the deed, and falls out with his comrades. Yet, he is also feared and disdained by Left Wing terrorists from Algeria, who treat him with equal disgust. The sign of a movie with impact is how relevant it can feel to audiences at any give time, and, in this regard, Le Petit Soldat also surpasses Breathless in every way, for the relevance to today's situations in the Middle East is not that much different.... Overall, this film has a similar feel to John Cassavetes' work in America at the same time. While Godard's films have often been compared to what came before them- the pulp detective novels of the 1940s and 1950s, I see them as having more in line with what has come later- the graphic novels of the last twenty or so years, for often his deliberately ill composed frames are like comic book characters who convey kinetic energy by reaching out of the frames. Similarly, all of his characters tend to speak in highly stylized ways. We also get many ellipses in the action, with jump cuts. The most effective one is when Bruno escapes from his Left Wing torturers and crashes through a window. In true comic book fashion, he explains it all simply to Monica as if it were just another thing to do between smoking a cigarette and picking up a pound of ham at the corner delicatessen.

Moments like that, and the other pluses of the film, are enough to recommend this film as the work of someone with boldness and talent, who does fail as often as he succeeds, but which augured a brighter future. Only time would reveal which side of Godard would win- the banal noirist obsessive or the inventive and insistent innovator. Le Petit Soldat answers few questions within its frames, and that most important one, too, remains unanswered without its frames.