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This movie is said to have been filmed by Godard on commission from producer Alain Sarde, but it's by no means your ordinary "commissioned movie":it does boast a cast with well-known stars (at least in France) and it retains all the crime movie's stereotypes ( as gangsters, guns, boxers, girls, moneys changing hands...), but all of them are put together in a unique and mesmerizing way. Think of those exploded views you sometimes find in technical magazines: more often than not you can hardly tell what the represented object is supposed to be, nevertheless you always lose yourself gazing at those craftily drawn little pieces, until the object itself is deprived of any functional meaning and become only a sheer, pure sign. Though it's still possible to keep track of the plot and to draw something like a sequential chain going through the scenes, doing so is the best way to miss what this movie have really to offer: a collection of beautifully shot "vignettes", varying from amusing (Jean-Pierre Léaud freaking out in various disguises) to sublime (the "breast boxing" scene), each one to be tasted as a separate entity. There are plenty of quotes from books and other movies too, to the entertainment of the most encyclopedic among the audience (not that these quotes are introduced in the most subtle way: often the characters reads them from the actual books and you can easy spot the titles on screen! ) . Let's face it: it may be not a masterpiece, since sometimes the screenplay seems to have been conceived with the only aim of pushing you away from the screen, but the persevering viewer will be rewarded with some endearing little gems.

The films in Godard's late (and not yet over) period present some of the greatest challenges to cineasts. Detective is no exception. It is extraordinarily complex in narrative (or, more precisely, anti-narrative), visual composition, and editing structure. Unfortunately, I don't think it's worth it. It's kind of a parody of a detective film (the one in this film is a hotel dick), but it's nearly impossible to figure out what's going on. It can be quite beautiful in its visuals and editing patterns, but never beautiful enough to make it worth seeing. It's not terrible, but, then again, it's not good, either. 6/10

P.S. First off, yes, the little girl IS Julie Delpy, in case you were wondering.

P.P.S. Remember when Martin Scorsese made his version of Cape Fear for MGM because they allowed him to make the highly personal The Last Temptation of Jesus Christ? Well, he may have gotten that idea from Godard. Detective was made as a straight commercial offering to the studio that produced his highly controversial Hail Mary. It's strange to think of Detective as a commercial venture, though!

Wow, this is difficult. Why did I like this late middle period Godard!? I think what it is, is that at the start I was struggling with what seemed a complicated narrative and gradually became captivated by the performers (or stars as Godard clearly describes them in the opening credits). The plot, or plots, involve the solving of a motiveless murder two years previously and two people trying to get money back from a boxing promoter who owes the mafia. Except that although vaguely setting up these 'narratives', Godard seems to have no intention of developing them; instead we find ourselves interacting with the 'stars'. It does not work well all the time, to someone who is not French anyway, but there are many super sequences, much charm, lots of humour and even some eroticism. Always well shot, this has a super cool look to it and occasionally the dialogue truly sparkles. Don't seek the story, just the people and enjoy.

This film demonstrates editing, structure and mis-en-scene perfectly. It's clear that with every scene, Godard has thought carefully about positioning and in a few shots, has cleverly manipulated the use of mirrors or glass. The camera never moves in the film – it stays still in every sequence, and so the positioning of the characters is paramount. Instead of the camera moving to capture all the characters on screen, many scenes involve the characters moving themselves after an entrance of a another person to ensure that facial expressions can be seen. Music also plays a huge part in this film, as it indicates moments of tension, or importance, such as when the audience sees 'la famille' for the first time in the film. Background noise is also evident, with many layers of sound to the film, such as background traffic noise from the open window, as well as the piano player in the café. The scenes themselves and the cleverness from behind the camera make this film worth watching. However, the plot itself is weak, with many superfluous characters, and bizarre situations (such as the boxer and 'Mister Jim' with the two girls). The many different characters and their individual situations are closely linked, through their interaction with each other, but the ending is immensely unsatisfactory.

Like zetes stated, this was supposed to be Godard's "commercial" movie. However, it actually feels like his least commercial film of the ones released since 1980. Ever the prankster, Godard stocks the film to the brim with pratfalls, movie quotes and other allusions.

It's hard to imagine how it is watching this in the theater. The film is so multi-layered that it's impossible to take in at one time.

I'm not sure what his stance is on the home video vs. theater debate. A movie so dense with quotes is almost destined to be better viewed at home. There are multiple scenes where if you pay attention to one thing, you wind up missing some other detail. Even after multiple viewings. I had to watch this more times than any of the other Godard film currently in print just to make sure I caught enough of the details.

As awesome technically as the film is, it somehow feels like a rehash of what he already did with First Name Carmen, Passion and Hail Mary. The fact that this was a commission may mean his heart wasn't quite in it. You could never accuse him of that with most of his other films.

Détective follows two parallel stories happening in the same hotel in Paris. One tells the story of a detective who sleeps in a room where a mysterious character named 'the Prince' was killed and he is positive on solving the case; meanwhile a wrestling trainer tries to pay his debts to the mafia. The film is deliberately incomprehensible though very entertaining for film noir lovers and occasionally funny.

What is best in the film is the marvelous direction from Godard, who returns to a filmmaking that is more reminiscent of his 60's work than anything that came after this film, paying a homage to film noir as he did twenty years before to B-movies with Alphaville, although less successfully here. The camera doesn't move in this film and the shots are all very nicely done.

As for what the story regards, the script offers an engaging story that starts off a bit too slowly and an interesting character (a shame it's only one) who has to deal with some more compelling relationships as Nathalie Baye's character is caught between two men. The film has some of those Godardian undescriptible scenes to which you laugh or have feelings to without quite knowing how do they fit into a whole.

On the downhill, we have a film that actually gives no depth to their characters (except for Baye's) and whose satirical tones aren't as strong as you would expect. It has that pretentiousness that Godard usually manages to hide in his other movies and the whole film at the end feels as a mere direction exercise from his part, but if it was just a direction exercise, it is a great one.

Détective is a satirical film-noir with a fantastic direction, cinematography and editing, some witty scenes and a refreshing unresolved mystery.

Rating: 3/5.

Jean-Luc Godard really should have retired long before 1985, basking in the glory of his early triumphs such as BREATHLESS (À BOUT DE Soufflé, 1960). For later on he became a sad caricature of himself as a filmmaker. Here he artificially tries to revive the corpse of his youthful abilities and fails abysmally. This film is revoltingly pretentious, phoney, false, arrogant, clumsy, stupid, empty, vacuous, - what other adjectives can I think of? None of them are sufficient to damn the film enough. I recently obtained the DVD for the simple reason that I wanted to see what Julie Delpy was like when she was 14. This was her first film role. I shouldn't have bothered. She has few lines and merely flits around meaninglessly, like most of the other characters in this ridiculous excuse for a film. Godard makes most of the women, and one of the men, engage in pointless nudity, and we see lots of tits, especially those of Emmanuelle Seignier, whose second film it was (she was then 19), but mercifully Godard did not inflict this duty on the child Delpy, who keeps her nightie on (but why she is always in her nightie is never explained, just as nothing is ever explained, because geniuses like Godard do not need to explain). The power of Godard's name and reputation made many famous people agree to be in this empty vehicle, and waste their talents. I would say it would have damaged the talented Nathalie Baye's reputation to accept such a drear lead role as Francoise in this film, as it made her look so down-at-heel and washed-up (if, that is, one can be both down and up at the same time, and I have not committed some grammatical atrocity to match Godard's cinematic one). Some women may be excited to know that we get to see Claude Brasseur's willy, for what it is worth, though there is no reason for this. This happens in between him looking ghastly, desperate, and sad, which is just about all he is required to do for 95 minutes. (Can being married to Baye be that bad?) This film is a real 'downer', and there I go again with one of those directional adjectives, although how one can go down any further than rock bottom I have not yet determined. In this film we have the sight of the famous Johnny Hallyday, who for decades was the universal heartthrob not only of every French woman but of many French men as well, and if there were ever anything that really puzzled me about the French even more than boudin (blood sausage) and tête de veau (calf's head), it is Johnny Hallyday and his inexplicable appeal to a whole nations of Gauls. He does nothing in this film of note but sleep with Baye in a melancholy fashion. Baye looks so pained by this that maybe she discovered that Hallyday really had bad breath. The one bright spot in this film is the equally meaningless appearance of the old veteran Alain Cuny in a few mysterious scenes as 'the Prince'. Who the Prince is and why he is there is only roughly sketched. But the crusty old queen is always interesting to watch. Incredible that he lived to be 86, with all that romping around with boys. And my question is this: what ever happened to Alain Cuny's trunk in the entrance hall, covered by a cloth, after the Nazis left Paris? Only D. D. could tell us that, presumably. A mystery worthy of ENGRENAGES. Those who have ears to hear, let them hear. But I fear there are no ears left acute enough to take my meaning.

I run hot and cold on Jean-Luc Godard's body of work on the whole after the mid 1970s. It may be snobbish to say this, or maybe I just don't "get" films like Hail Mary or Nouvelle Vague or In Praise of Love (though the last one does have its moments), but after the 1960s, going slowly at first into the 70s and then finally becoming all too apparent in the 80s, Godard lost something that made his films so special beforehand. He could put so much of his experimentation and poetry and quotations and little tics and oddities that made him such an iconoclast *and* make them entertaining and even sometimes, when warranted, have an actual story somewhere in the inspired chaos of his direction. But in looking at something like Hail Mary or King Lear or even Passion it's all a lot of less-than-half baked ideas, overlong shots of beaches, and generally boring semantics. This, sadly, is a chunk of what happened to a Godard running on steam from his glory years as an auteur.

This ranting and castigating said, Godard does have some moments in this period that are striking and memorable and solid cinema; the best being First Name: Carmen and, most recently as what is at the moment his final feature film, Notre Musique. Detective, also, is one of them, if also sometimes a little shaky and awkward going between the rigorous attention to having characters real out of books and looking or acting unrealistic or in one-note tones as well as a solid B-movie plot. The latter concerns a detective (I believe played by Jean-Pierre Leaud, who does a great job going between serious and comedy in his first Godard film since La Gai Savoir) snooping around a hotel trying to find out about the death of "The Price", while at the same time a boxing promoter is getting into some heat with some over-paid debts, and at the same time sleeping with the mafioso's wife (I think this last part, hopefully I'm clear on this point).

Luckily, Godard, working under a "Commercial" framework- ironic considering that this is commercial when compared to everything else Godard was doing at the time and made this in order to make the "controversial" Hail Mary- is able to slip in some funny and cool and actually engaging bits of dialog and quotes and ruminations by characters, and he's able to tag a hold of the plot a bit too. He also understands the jokey-ness of doing an homage to gangster and boxing pictures of the noir era in full color, without a clear narrative thread all of the time, and plays around with it, successfully. This doesn't make it automatically a great picture or as daring precisely as his earlier work. But it is a good sign; sometimes, perhaps, a director like Godard needs an Alain Sarde to reel him in just a tad and then the collaboration works out better as opposed to... King Lear.

Détective (1985), directed by Jean-Luc Godard, is a mess from beginning to end. How could a gifted director like Godard waste the talents of Jean-Pierre Léaud, Nathalie Baye, Claude Brasseur and Alain Cuny? It couldn't have been easy. It's a bad miracle.

The plot is ridiculous. (Well, I think it's ridiculous--it didn't make any sense so it's hard to judge.) The actors' skills are lost in inane dialog, so, for want of anything better to do, they smoke cigarettes. (All but one young woman, who spends the time uncovering and covering her breasts.)

I've reviewed almost 400 films for IMDb, and this is the first one for which I gave a rating of 1. I didn't even bother to rewind the cassette--I just threw it away. Fair warning--you really don't want to see this movie.

It's a comedic take-off on film noir set in a Paris hotel in the 1980s. It follows the intersecting activities of guests located in four different rooms. Throughout, there are literary references to a multitude of French- and English-language novels.

One room contains Émile Chenal (Claude Brasseur), a pilot and failing small airplane-business operator, and his wife, Françoise (Nathalie Baye). They are in serious need of money. A second room includes Detective William Propero (Laurent Terzieff), his nephew, Isadore (Jean-Pierre Léaud), and Isadore's girlfriend, Arielle (Aurelle Doazan). William is trying to solve a two-year-old murder at the hotel where a "prince" was murdered. A third room contains Jim Fox Warner (Johnny Hallyday), a boxing promoter, his fighter, Tiger Jones (Stéphane Ferrara), and Tiger's girlfriend, Princesse (Emmanuelle Seigner). Jim owes money to Émile and Françoise but is also having an affair with Françoise, who is considering leaving Émile. Finally, the fourth room contains a Mafia don (Alain Cuny) and his granddaughter (Julie Delpy). There are sundry additional characters.

The film provides rambling interactions among the various characters, some of which are absurd. Similarly, the many film and literary references often make little sense. There is a climax of sorts at the end that answers some of the questions.

The New York Times reviewer appropriately labeled "Détective" a shaggy dog story. This term implies a meandering, long-winded story that includes multiple irrelevant incidents. One watches "Détective" simply for the ride and the cleverness of Jean-Luc Godard. It's not a film of meaning but skilled entertainment spoofing a certain kind of noir film.

...of all the Godard films I've seen, and I've seen practically all of them. I don't care much about the plot: who Jim Fox Warner is, and why he takes such a casual approach to what must be a big fight, who Tiger Jones is either, and why the two girls are hanging around the hotel suite; I don't care much about the old Mafioso who seems to have his finger in every pie (played marvelously by Alain Cuny, with that splendidly seamed face). The 40 million Francs that Chenal owes are just a detail; the cheating that his wife Francoise is doing doesn't move me much... no, all these details are but a backdrop for the wonderful lesson in cinema that Godard gives us here. I've never seen him take such care over rooms and corridors, kitchens and storerooms as he does here. It's lovely--what he does with this Parisian hotel makes this a great experience. Narrative has never interested him much, but it doesn't matter: visuals and music are used very well throughout.

Nathalie Baye has never been more beautiful on screen: Godard's camera is in love with her. Claude Brasseur gives a good performance as the pilot whose airline is coming apart.

Typical for its director, this overpopulated crime puzzle is made with brilliant style and has its moments of miniature intellectual insights and wit and is never boring, but on this occasion doesn't quite add up.

THEME: A murder in a hotel room. Who was killed and why? And by who? Is it past or present? And does it even matter? Three characters are detectives watching the story unfold and interacting with it, much like we, the audience. They piece together the clues to a story that eventually becomes their own; folding between the facts of a crime committed two years ago that repeats itself within the film and eventually leads both us and them towards the actions of the film's final act. It's subtle, but presented in Godard's typical style that many seem to have a problem with. DECONSTRUCTION #1: Here we have a detective film about detective films and about the relationship in such films between the characters and the audience. So we have ourselves represented by Laurent Terzieff, Aurelle Doazan and Jean-Pierre Léaud, who hide out in a cramped hotel room and observe the entrance of the building with the aid of small video camera which presents the image back again on a TV monitor.

CINEMA: If you're familiar with Godard's work then such devises should be recognisable, with the film using the clichés of detective cinema as window-dressing to express greater themes on the notions of relationships, as well as the role of cinema itself. We also have the self-referential aspect suggested by the opening shot, in which the scene that we are looking at and hear commentary on turns out to be something that has already happened, played back from the detective's surveillance video. We also have the notion of film as a background cacophony, with a number of scenes taking place in rooms where television sets conspire to distract us from the action at hand. DECONSTRUCTION #2: Three characters caught up in the clichés of a post-war crime picture, with a secondary plot about money and a farcical plan from both sides to double-cross the Mafia and each other. Does it matter? Yes and no. I disagree with the first reviewer who claims that this film is something of a throwaway in Godard's career; one that puts formal experimentation over content and theme. The plot is silly, but it's silly for a reason and goes back to Godard's earliest film, À bout de soufflé (1960), in which he played with the codes and conventions of American gangster cinema in a way that was progressive and entirely deconstructive.

ACTEURS: The film works as a result of the perfect casting. In fact, I'd say that the acting in this film is far better than any other film of Godard's that I have seen, and I've seen 25 of them. Léaud is obviously something of a regular in the films of Godard and his manic energy and uncomplicated air of boyish precociousness as this mysterious detective - trying to piece together a murder that may have happened or may be about to happen - is as bright as it was in films like Masculin, féminin (1966) and La Chinoise (1967). Likewise, Nathalie Baye, familiar from the director's earlier, more experimental feature Sauve qui peut (la vie) (1980) gives one of her best performances as a despondent housewife caught between two men as she tries to retrieve money to start a new life, but remains unsure of which man to draw allegiance to. The two men are boxing promoter and American cinema construct Johnny Hallyday, who breezes through the film chain-smoking and shooting pool as gangsters and cops threaten his plans from both sides, and Claude Brasseur, a pilot and the husband of Baye's character, once again, desperate to play both sides off against one another for the benefit of financial gain.

DECONSTRUCTION #3: Once again, we have Godard reducing the characters to meagre iconographic constructs that are placed in a knowingly cinematic environment that is continually challenged by the director's experimentations with content and form. Despite this however, the characters remain likable, intelligent and recognisable, with the convincing performances from the incredibly talented cast managing to compete with the cold, deconstructive formality that Godard strives for in his presentation. L'ARGENT: A film made for financial gain about financial gain, or at least, the promise of such. According to film critic Colin McCabe, Détective (1985) was produced as a favour to Alain Sarde so as to secure the funding for the director's dream project - the subsequent 'Je vous salue, Marie' (1985) - and this notion of desperation, and the wanton pursuit of money is almost self-referential in design. CRITIQUE: I honestly can't understand why so many admirers of Godard's work found this film disengaging. If you're already familiar with Godard's characteristic approach to cinema, then half of the work is already done. For me, the film was rich in character and ideas, and intelligently put together in a way that made the viewing of the film interesting and unique.

GODARD: Many would have you believe that Godard peaked in 1967, but this simply isn't the case. He's produced many fine films - Détective included - that require patience and perception on the part of the audience, and all released post-1980. This particular film might be considered a throwaway work by many Godard fans, but I would politely disagree. Like his best work, Détective is filled with ideas and a sharp commentary on the nature of cinema and the relationship between the director, the film, the characters and the audience. It does take work, but I feel that the work is worth it when we're dealing with something as interesting and progressive as this; with Godard throwing in all sorts of little jokes and observations (the detective as Prospero, aided by a character named Ariel, and with Léaud as the comic personification of Caliban, who eventually overcomes his master), whilst simultaneously turning in one of his most radical and well-rounded deconstructions on the nature of film and film viewing.

In a palace of Paris. Two detectives are investigating a two-year-old murder. Emile and Francoise Chenal are putting pressure on Jim Fox Warner, a boxing manager, who owes them a huge amount of money. But Jim also owes money to the Mafia, and it seems the boxing match he is counting on to bail out will not be sufficient...

As far as Godard's "second wave" goes, this is not one of the more celebrated. It has some of his strange flourishes, such as the intense piano drowning out conversations (a very Godard thing to do). And it is interesting that the film takes place essentially inside of a hotel, a fine place to put a mystery.

For American audiences, the two actresses who may be most familiar are Emmanuelle Seigner as Princess of the Bahamas and Julie Delpy as the "wise young girl". In the case of Delpy, this is ahead of her big American break through Richard Linklater.

My first foray into 80s Godard - haven't even seen any early stuff for years - benefits from the old showdown between Godard's European attenuation and the outrageous vulgarity he mines from his Yankee progenitors. All gangster-film elements are here, and all are brutally alienated from their original contexts. Noir-style orchestral punctuation marks blurt and disappear incongruously; frequently topless femmes fatales occasion some pretty smart-to-funny gender commentary, especially the pugilist's boob-boxing scene; the big massacre at the climax seems to fall right out of the sky. Best of all is Jean-Pierre Leaud's lurking schmuck detective, a great goof of a performance that gives a big boost to the film's sense of rhythm. Because the pleasures are largely on the surface, I'll have to run it again before I can tell you much about the plot, and about an hour in the working-through of the themes gets a little too talky. But the arm's length treatment of the source material distills rather than diffuses their entertainment value: good arty fun.

This is why I love Godard. He turned a 'commercial' project he did in order to get financing for "Hail Mary" into one of his most enthralling late works, a sleeker, leaner, funnier, lighter version of the sort of film Godard made after the 60's. The film follows four different 'stories' in the Hotel Concorde Saint-Lazare in Paris, where the entire film is set. Something of a deconstruction of the detective film or film-noir on paper, but the film is more formally interesting than it is story-wise (though its 'narrative' is often very amusing and overall very entertaining). Although critical reviews of "Detective" seem to be positive (all the ones I can find anyway, including Variety and the New York Times among others), the film is overall not too popular, and from my experience not too well-liked by Godard fans either. Shame as well because the fact that "Detective" combines some of the zip and light humor of Godard's early work with the more experimental sensibilities of later Godard films doesn't mean this is in any way lacking as a filmic experiment. It's gorgeously-shot with superb, intricate mise-en-scène, and features some of the most interesting and complex editing in any Godard film, but what really steals the show is the sound, which is an entire world all on its own. The visual splendor of the film is not only complimented, but overshadowed by the creative sound editing and mixing, genius use of music, and aural gags and puns. Dedicated to Edgar G. Ulmer, Clint Eastwood, and John Cassavetes, "Detective" is one of Godard's best, and likely his most criminally under-appreciated. It does ask for a patient, observant audience willing to listen carefully, but rewards that patience with great comic energy and some fascinating and beautiful aural experimentation. One of the best casts Godard ever worked with as well.

Half an hour in, I was thinking of leaving. An hour in, I was completely taken. Godard breaks all the rules the way a child breaks birthday toys, to see how they work. Sometimes utterly pointless, and sloppy, sometimes brilliant. The ending is laughable, not funny.