Jean-Luc Godard toys with Hollywood Film Noir narrative conventions: he includes rash jump cuts while retaining a linear dialogue pattern, and he moves his camera into the streets and the tiny apartments…most of all he transports the audience from voyeur to accomplice. DP Raoul Coutard's close-up photography imparts a certain cold impassionate distance between the characters, filling the frame with their beautiful visage, separating them from each other but creating intimacy with the audience. In one fantastic sequence, Michel visits his friend to receive a letter and Coutard films in one long three-minute (at least) tracking shot, moving the camera fluidly through the corridor of the bank and altering our point-of-view, as if we have fallen through the sprocket-hole and entered the world of our own Celluloid Hero. At times the editing is barely visible and others it’s meant to confuse and disorient our perceptions, such as the conversation between Michael's lover Patricia (Jean Seberg) and her boss in the restaurant. The bombastic score imbues the film with an overblown Hollywood veneer, giving some insight into Michel’s personality and view of his world: it balances precariously on farce while retaining the dignity of the plot.
Though Godard takes the film out of Michel’s world momentarily we basically experience his egocentrism, his puffed-up tiny life. But Michel is not surprised when his true love destroys him, and he only has contempt for her actions. Patricia mimes her lover’s subtle gesture and turns her back on his breathless corpse: has she paid her last respects, or is it cruel mockery? Or has she been infused with Michael's nihilism, a caustic attribute to be passed down to their progeny?
Final Grade: (A)
