I hope not :-)
I fucking hope so!
I hope so. Ah Weekend, my favorite film adrift in the Cosmos, the best film I’ve found on a garbage heap.
well said mark. brilliant.
Weekend remains Godard’s greatest achievement; where he was best able to blend his politics and cinematic experimentalism into a cohesive vision. It’s great that it is still able to infuriate people since that is what Godard was trying to do.
I wasn’t infuriated. I really liked the tone and humor for the first 30 minutes, and then I was bored out of my mind. I don’t remember much else, and I watched it a few months ago. Whenever a Godard film lets me down, I just rewatch Alphaville, and my faith in the guy is restored.
I never said you were, and if it bored you it’s more a reflection of the person than the film itself.
Wow! I am glad there are a few other people who like “Weekend”. I posted this a while ago, and NO ONE had replied.
The traffic tracking shot is nothing short of pure brilliance. In my opinion Godard’s greatest scene shot. You know there is a master at work behind the camera. As being added to the library I don’t think so since New Yorker Video holds the rights to the film. The dvd that was released about three years ago isn’t bad at all.
I have the vhs.
i love it. the end of cinema. new york video has had the rights for a while. i dont see this ever being a criterion any time soon either. this is one of my favourite godard films. wow. it really packs a punch. a giant f*uck you to mainstream cinema and the bourgeoisie where everything will revert to back to everything tribal… drums and cannibalism. the commentary is insightful also.
We all can hope…
“Weekend” is boring. I’ don’t know how people last through it by any other means than sheer willpower. At least, that’s how I made it, along with a perhaps too-high respect for Pauline Kael’s opinion. It’s been 20 years since I’ve seen it, but there was this one simply excruciating long take where a guy was sitting on a garbage truck eating bread while we listen to this sermon on the soundtrack about African nationalism. I thought the whole movie was just painful. It’s more interesting to read about than it is to watch. Kael’s essay is one of many that are actually better than the movie.
its an important film in godard’s canon, historically and creatively. but i wont go so far as to call it one of his best. i agree that its one of those films more fun to read and write about than to watch.
Yes! Bickering couple, highway car crashes, cannibalism, annoying bloke talking about African politics… what more can you ask for? I’ve had this on vhs and Japanese bootleg, so I can’t wait for a new release. Definitely not Band of Outsiders or Pierrot le Fou, but equally important. I’ve read P. Kael’s essays and writings on films, but who gives a flying f***k? It’s sad when a critics’ works are deemed more important than a filmmaker’s. Critics, they’re just as biased as anyone else… necessary evil? Sorry!
Oh, I wouldn’t say it’s sad, just kind of a fact of life. A lot of critics are either better at what they do than the people they write about are, or in Kael’s case, more interesting.
I heard that Weekend was the result of a competition between Godard and Bunuel as to who could best mock the bourgeoisie. I would say that Bunuel won. Weekend is still an interesting movie, and one worth having in your film vernacular, but for me that’s about it.
Bunuel knew the difference between surreal and incoherent.
I guess I can agree with you Rodney, you’re quite right it’s a fact of life. What a profession. Bakers bake, soldiers fight, artists, writers and musicians create. Ballplayers perform (as much as sports is considered pedestrian by some), and though some are overrated, eventually the paying public will find out sooner or later. Suddenly I just remembered Woody’s line about numbers in Annie Hall. With critics, where’s the bar? Some of ‘em film critics should try their hands at filmmaking sometimes – any aspect whether it’s cinematography, editing, …casting! I’d love to see their creation. Weekend may not be among Godard’s better work I agree. Also Bunuel mocks the bourgeoisie better than anybody without the stinkin’ commie stuff. But with all due respect P.Kael ain’t better or more interesting than Godard. Sorry, I guess this rant belongs to a different topic. I love this forum!
Well, let me put it this way: I. personally, as stated, think her essay was superior to “Weekend.” I don’t necessarily think that’s true film for film. I like a lot of Godard, with or without what the critical community thinks. “Breathless,” “Band of Outsiders,” “My Life to Live,” “First Name: Carmen,” for example, are all terrific films. A lot of people absolutely hated “Hail, Mary,” but I liked that too.
As far as critics becoming filmmakers — well, that’s certainly what Godard, Truffaut, Claude Chabrol, Eric Rohmer, and Jacques Rivette all did. In this country, there was a guy named Frank S. Nugent, who was a New York Times film critic before he turned to writing scripts for John Ford, among others. James Agee, who wrote for Time and The Nation, wrote the scripts for “The African Queen” and “Night of the Hunter.” Paul Schraeder was a critic before he became a screenwriter and later a writer-director. Through the 1970s, the main critic at Time was Jay Cocks, who went on to write some terrific screenplays for Martin Scorsese and others. Susan Sontag made some films. Roger Ebert famously wrote the script for Russ Meyer’s “Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.” So, it’s not an unusual long or short-term career progression. At the same time, I respect those critics who know that their talent is for expressing their opinion, and have no desire to get into the biz at all.
As for, where’s the bar — well, as in any kind of critical writing, some are simply better than others; smarter, wittier, more interesting, more penetrating. Some can write very well and have a broad background not just in film but in the arts in general, and some have none of those virtues: idiot fan-boys, copycats, fulltime composers of blurbs.
I didn’t mean to pick on Pauline Kael here. I’m no film student nor I pretended to be, but as I mentioned, I’ve read essays on films and other film literatures including P. Kael’s. In general I’m referring mostly to two-bit critical hacks we see in the papers and online nowadays, who unfortunately have a lot of influence on the movie going public, and critical to the success or failure of a film, whether it’s big Hollywood or an indie. You’re correct it’s a fact of life. I’m also aware that the lads from Cahiers Du Cinema who started the French New Wave, and Paul Schraeder were former critics themselves, and of course, of Ebert’s famous screenplay for Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. And Night of the Hunter is one of my all-time picks, so not knowing that James Agee is a former critic wouldn’t make any difference. Hey, that’s what I like about this forum – I learn something new everytime! Thanks. I’m still waiting for The African Queen DVD though…
there is no difference between surreal and incoherent. at least, there shouldn’t be. true surrealism should be incoherent.
and on film criticism, it’s an art form in its own right. a branch of literature.
No, that’s not correct at all. Surrealism does NOT mean incoherent; it means following a dream logic. Dreams are not incoherent. They draw in a lot of disparate elements to form a narrative.
was surrealism not created to abolish coherent narrative logic, and logic of images? the surrealists did not make films and write poetry with the aim of being coherent in mind. dreams have an interior logic, true. but not all dreams follow a coherent narrative structure, and those weren’t the dreams that the surrealists were interested in capturing the spirit of anyway.
I liked it because it was so weird. I haven’t seen a film more strange than Weekend. It’s really similar to Pierrot le Fou (aren’t all Godard movies the same plot? Ah well, they’re great anyways!) but Pierrot le Fou is much better.
The surrealists wanted to make a different kind of sense, and there was a definite method to their madness. The artistic process was both random and selective. It was a matter of juxtaposing not just any contrasting objects, but the right ones. Not just any umbrella, not just any sewing machine. They weren’t just trying to confuse people. They were trying to liberate the mind and the heart. Godard was no doubt influenced by Surrealism, but my point was that what he came up with was not — in the case of “Weekend” — consistently dream-like or interesting so much as it was confusing. I’m not real sure he knew what he was trying to say.
I think WEEKEND is a great and wonderful film, but I always contend it would never work without the surreal humor. That is what makes it.
The first time i watched it i lost interest after the first ten minutes. I turned it off and sent it back and then i couldn’t stop thinking about it so i rented it again and loved it but had to watch it in segments to take it all in. I think if i movie is truly great it should be somewhat unpleasant. It needs to be raw and cause the viewer to be bored, irritated or even queasy. I would say it is flawless and i can only say that about a few films.
a truly great movie should make the viewer unpleasant, bored, irritated, and queasy?? please, tell me more about this theory of yours. i gotta see where you’re going with it.
cnorrisjr
Will “Weekend” be added to the library of films?
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062480/
http://www.amazon.com/Weekend-Mireille-Darc/dp/B0009NZ6RA/ref=sr_1_20?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1228173507&sr=1-20