Band of Outsiders - Criterion Collection (1964)

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.

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.