Sunday, August 16, 2009

Kiss Me I’m Polish

Made in U.S.A. (1966)
directed by Jean-Luc Godard
rating: 4 out of 5 cravats
seen on the screen at the Melwood Screening Room

You would want Godard to really love movies enough not to break off his marriage to Anna Karina by embarrassing her in their last collaboration. He seems like a man capable of true cheapness with women, and what better homage than a Big Sleep plotline to kill his wife off with a whimper? But of course Godard loves movies, so it’s to his credit that even at the moment of his separation from my favorite of movie muses, Godard loved Anna Karina more. Give me any one of the half-serious eyeliner close-ups in Made in U. S. A. over anything else in Paris, from brie to Eric Rohmer. Not that it isn’t tedious, too, but Made in U. S. A. is the goodbye that everyone always wishes he’d said, more poignant for existing at all than the content of its words, and nothing if not for the girl it belongs to.