Introducing the Miracle
Le Petit soldat (1963)
directed by Jean-Luc Godard
rating: 3 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix
The novelty of the first collaboration between two people I love as much as Jean-Luc Godard and Anna Karina can overcome a lot of lackadaisical plotting, half-baked political apathy, and too little background noise in the dubbed soundtrack. When Bruno (Michel Subor) asks what color her eyes are, and finally settles on "Velázquez-gray" because of the shadows that line them, I couldn't remember if Anna Karina's eyes were blue, or brown, or what. In the movie, they're gray; or, as Godard once said, "It's not blood, it's red."
Bruno's first goodbye is shot almost like a salute, a comparison I didn't make until the cut that follows, when Veronica brings a cigarette to her lips and it looks just like she's blowing a kiss. "They love to play games like little girls," Bruno says about women. "So you suggest playing children's games." But it's Bruno who falls in love, after he bets his friend Hugh that he won't.
"Veronica, shake your hair loose," he asks. She does.
Then, to Bruno: "Here's your fifty dollars."
There's more to it - something about the Algerian war and the loyalties of the disenchanted - but after Veronica dances around her apartment to Mozart (or earlier, when we see her for the very first time), politics are a sad shuffle.
directed by Jean-Luc Godard
rating: 3 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix
The novelty of the first collaboration between two people I love as much as Jean-Luc Godard and Anna Karina can overcome a lot of lackadaisical plotting, half-baked political apathy, and too little background noise in the dubbed soundtrack. When Bruno (Michel Subor) asks what color her eyes are, and finally settles on "Velázquez-gray" because of the shadows that line them, I couldn't remember if Anna Karina's eyes were blue, or brown, or what. In the movie, they're gray; or, as Godard once said, "It's not blood, it's red."
Bruno's first goodbye is shot almost like a salute, a comparison I didn't make until the cut that follows, when Veronica brings a cigarette to her lips and it looks just like she's blowing a kiss. "They love to play games like little girls," Bruno says about women. "So you suggest playing children's games." But it's Bruno who falls in love, after he bets his friend Hugh that he won't.
"Veronica, shake your hair loose," he asks. She does.
Then, to Bruno: "Here's your fifty dollars."
There's more to it - something about the Algerian war and the loyalties of the disenchanted - but after Veronica dances around her apartment to Mozart (or earlier, when we see her for the very first time), politics are a sad shuffle.
posted by NPK at 7:09 AM
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