Here we find directors Jean Luc Godard and Francois Truffaut at their most playful and frivolous; taking a loose and two-dimensional concept and creating something that exists for no other reason than to encapsulate the excitement and imagination of real film-making. As a result, the story is meaningless; something about a couple trying to make their journey home by car before torrential rain floods the neighbouring towns. The idea is really as simple as it sounds; something that was no doubt hashed out over a quick luncheon conversation between Godard and Truffaut, both of whom were at the time preparing for more meaningful feature-length debuts.
The images here hold a great debt to the films they made prior to this experiment, with clear nods to both The 400 Blows and Breathless; though we can already see Godard's obsession with post-apocalyptic, possibly religious imagery, creeping slowly to the forefront of his work.
The film signals the way forward for both filmmakers... though whether or not it holds anything in the way of cinematic interest for the viewer is debatable. Short films mainly work towards satisfying the curious. Here we can see how youthful exuberance once lead a generation of young people to believe that they could do anything, as long as they had access to a camera. On a semi-related note, I'm currently enjoying a mini-short-film festival to satisfy my own interest in the auteur theory; largely to discover if certain filmmaker's have the same visual and narrative trademarks at the beginning of their careers, as they do when they come to the end.
Godard does. I believe he has a handful of concerns when approaching a film, and these concerns have remained the same from the 1960's on. Whether this constitutes as a great film under that criteria is unimportant. This is a simple romp for those who see the joy that is prevalent in the art of making films, and not something that is meant to be taken that entirely seriously.
