Les carabiniers

Similar to Ingmar Bergman's 'Shame' is Godard's powerful parable of war, 'The Riflemen.'

Godard has stated that 'In dealing with war, I followed a very simple rule. I assumed I had to explain to children not only what war is, but what all wars have been from the barbarian invasions to Korean and Algeria, by way of Fontenoy, Trafalgar, and Gettysburg.'

Michelange and Ulysse leave the women when the king's officers come enlist them... They are offered everything... 'Can we loot, burn, rape etc. etc… 'Yes. You can do anything you want,' they are assured... So with rifles on their backs they are off to war...

Like Bergman's film there is no enemy... Both sides wear the same uniform, talk the same language and have the same objectives... Nothing is left out of the film, the hate, the humiliation, the rape, but above all we are impressed by the unending and unrelieved scenery of destruction... There is nothing that is natural or alive in the world of rubble...

If you have an inclination to inflict, pain and misery and chaos in conflict, then the army is for you, you can do what you want to, although the outcomes are quite tricky to predict. In victory, however, you can take, as many women you can catch and beat and break, looting other peoples treasure, such reward and so much pleasure, overwhelmed just by the difference you can make. Don't forget all of the sites you'll get to see, as citizens attempt to run and flee, infrastructure now in rubble, as you march through at the double, razing places, to their bases, with such glee.

Will we ever learn!!!

1963) Les Carabiniers (In French with English subtitles) WAR

Adapted from a play by Beniamino Joppolo which is a low budget, but still effective anti-war movie co-written and directed by "Breathless" director Jean Luc Godard. Aforementioned the film is low budget and uses actual war footage very effectively backing it up with quotations/ quotes and expressions to generalize the film throughout. But what I really like is the film portraying the main characters to be gullible but loyal soldiers but are far deemed to be moral characters anyway but eventually get their comeuppance even though the film does drag in some parts for a film that's an hour and a half.

I don't understand how or why this movie was so much criticized. I just saw it on DVD and found it excellent. It's completely different of what Godard usually does : I tend to be a little disturbed by his systematic use of quotations (a good example is the recent "Eloge de l'amour"), and there is no such thing in "Les Carabiniers". The dialogs are completely pure, and there is a very clever use of enumerations, which seldom happens in a movie. Great scenes, like when the girl demands to tell a poem before she's executed, when Michel-Ange discovers the cinema, when Ulysse and Michel-Ange show Cléopâtre and Vénus the treasures they brought back from war... It's simple and beautiful.

While this is certainly not Godard's most enjoyable work some of the negative comments here are world-class examples of point-missing.

Godard had already shown with "A Bout de Soufflé" and "Vivre Sa Vie" that he knew how to make a film with style, romance and flair. Therefore it's clear that the crude editing and sound dubbing, continuity lapses, bad acting and overall cheapness on display here were deliberate.

What we seem to have here is "War for Dummies". Godard spells things out as if talking to backward children and absolutely refuses to invest his subject and his protagonists with any sort of spectacle or dignity, both by giving us moronic and unsympathetic characters and by refusing the audience any catharsis or vicarious pleasure.

Francois Truffaut once said that no war movie can be truly anti-war, since the camera automatically aestheticizes its subject. Godard here goes all-out to disprove that thesis.This does of course make the film hard to watch but it's a deliberate slap in the face, not the result of incompetence.

Incidents from many wars are parodied - for example scenes of the women having their hair cut off refer to the treatment of French women who had consorted with Germans during the Occupation. "America" is represented by a car with tail fins and some French tower blocks, in a prefiguring of "Alphaville"s approach to location. Apparently the letters used as intertitles are genuine letters home from French troops in various conflicts, although this does not seem to be made clear in the film.

I tend to agree that this is a film for Godard completists only and certainly not the best place to start with his work. The best comparison to make would be with Alfred Jarry's "Ubu Roi" which takes the same crude approach, and apparently the project started life as a stage play.

See "Weekend" for a similar approach to 'peace', only with a lot more fun and games.