La cinese

Godard's misunderstood film about a cell of Maoist students in 1967 France is not so much an endorsement of revolutionary politics as it is an exploration of it. Although the film clearly contributed to the revolt at Columbia uprising, and later the student May uprising of 1968, this is in fact a highly nuanced account of the variegated tendencies of radicalization among the French youth. We encounter an outdated renunciation of Marxism-Leninism, which sadly converted large swaths of radicalizing youths to Mao in the 1960's, and still has some resonance on the left today. This is a delightful mixture of politics and pop culture as only Godard can provide, that is, with passion and form.

Not an easy film to comment on, or even appreciate, given its overt political content - but also the fact that I watched it, without the benefit of English subtitles, on French TV (amusingly, the French ones which accompanied the screening could hardly keep up with Godard's typically loquacious script!); unfortunately, my reception of this cable channel - which has been showing some pretty good, even rare, titles for years - hasn't been perfect in recent times...but, in spite of all this, I still couldn't afford to miss out on one of Godard's most famous films, right?

Anyway, the director's best and worst qualities are well in evidence here: with an obvious emphasis on the color red, it's visually stimulating, indeed overwhelming (as, frustratingly, Godard often puts text in his images while the characters are speaking!), and filled with both sight and sound gags (the French song about Mao and the 'little red book' is hysterical), in-jokes (Godard's voice is often heard indistinctly interviewing the characters) and innumerable pop-culture references. However, it's undeniably exhausting to follow in detail, with the relentless spouting of Communist ideology and wordplay sometimes going over my head in the process...and, by the end, it all sort of runs out of steam anyway - what with most of the characters giving up on their enclosed life-style of theorizing and taking up menial jobs instead, apparently to put in practice what they had so far merely preached - or something similarly vague...er...vaguely similar (why, it's gotten me mouthing abstractions, now!). The young cast is headed by popular "Nouvelle Vague" (and, apparently, politically-involved) stars such as Jean-Pierre Leaud, Anne Wiazemsky - who, for a while, became Mrs. Godard - and Juliet Berto.

Still, the film's anarchic, anything-goes attitude provides a good deal of amusement throughout; especially enjoyable is Wiazemsky's naïve interview, aboard a train, of a noted literary figure who turned conservative (which rebounds on herself and exposes her own political confusion!) and her own botched assassination attempt towards the end. Despite its necessarily heavy-going and obviously dated nature, LA CHINOISE - which has been released on DVD, though not in R1 land - is not quite the embarrassment that was, say, WHAT STALIN DID TO WOMEN (1969; which I watched only a few days ago)...and it's unfortunate that, for the next decade or so, Godard renounced mainstream cinema for underground political film-making (from which period I still have a couple of titles, British SOUNDS [1969] and ICI ET AILLEURS [1975], lying in my "Unwatched Films On VHS" pile)!

La Chinoise, possibly Godard's most political work, is very much a film of its time. The mid-1960s was a period of great social change and political tension. America was at war with Vietnam, relations between Russia and the West were growing ever cooler, and the Far East was awakening to the hymn of the Chinese cultural revolution. Nearer to home, there was increasing tension between the French government, public-sector workers and the student population, which would come to a head in the following year with the student riots. It would have been more surprising if a French film director had not created a film like La Chinoise.

Here, Godard's method of film-making is at its most primitive and extreme. In a sense, it is hardly a film at all, but a series of sketches nailed crudely together, interspersed with some pretty wild pop-art like imagery. The end result is raggedy, colourful, a bit rough round the edges, but also quite witty.

It is not clear from this film where Godard's political allegiances lie. We can see that he is against the hypocrisy of the Amercain interventionalist policy, which he suggests are derived from imperialistic motives. However, it is less certain where he stands with regard to the Maoist communist ideal. The discussion between the students appears incredibly naïve, didactic, to the point of self-mockery. And the fact that the students are evidently from a middle class background seems to further underline the contradiction between their personal circumstances and their apparently deeply held beliefs.

It is probably safest to regard La Chinoise as Godard's view of how students consider the politics of the time rather than as a portrayal of his own political views. With that in mind, the film reads as a very perceptive study of the naivety of young adults. For these people, freed from the need to work for a living as they pursue their studies in comfortable surroundings, it is easy to contrive a woolly-minded simplistic picture of the world, and to believe that a few bombs in a few school classrooms will solve everything. As the film reveals in its final segment, the dream ends as soon as the degree course has ended. Godard seems consciously to be admitting that his film will change nothing but that it is nonetheless valuable to at least make his statement.

With Jean-Luc Godard's La Chinoise, I think I'm gonna have to play the historical ignorance card. My knowledge of communism/ Marxism/Leninism and most of the other "-isms" in this particular endeavor as well as my knowledge of the social revolution that occurred in France during the sixties is depressingly limited. Sorry, I'm a westerner victim to a public school education.

Godard's La Chinoise is, thus far, his most insufferable endeavor of all his French New Wave films. It's one of the lamest, squarest satires I have yet to see, insufferably telling the same joke (at least I think it's supposed to be funny) of young peoples' devotion to communism and such) over and over, and centering on characters telling having the same conversations over and over again.

The film details the relationship between a group of young revolutionaries (Jean-Pierre Léaud, Juliet Berto, and Anne Wiazemsky) in 1960 France that discuss their fondness for the teachings of Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, Mao Zedong, among other key figures that promoted their own ideas, as well as regarding communism with such fascination. Whether we're supposed to marvel at the vapidness of the characters or support them as they anxiously discover and embrace numerous different ways of thinking is beyond me. It seems with every scene Godard wants us to think differently of these characters, and by the end, I have no idea what to take away from the characters or their groggy conversations.

Thankfully, we have the use of Raoul Coutard's inimitable cinematography and Godard's fascinating pop-art style to marvel at, making La Chinoise a stimulating visual experience. In a Godard film that often feels repetitive and muddled, the visuals take prominence, and Godard shows his appreciation for bold color as well as pop-art once more with this effort. The whole thing is attractive if, like its characters, feels superficial in the long-run.

Having said all that, I can still see how La Chinoise was a daring work for 1967 France. I've already spoke quite a bit about how Godard defied popular cinematic convention, but with La Chinoise and his later, ore political works, he challenged majority viewpoints it seems and became a voice for a generation in many regards. What went from bourgeois, coffee shop/film club banter found a home inside a film, one that defied norms of cinema up until this point. The bright colors, the enthusiastic use of title-cards, and characters showing their appreciation for complex political theory all seemed to connect with mainstream audiences.

However, what about people with no background as to this time period? Did Godard think this film would go on to be an oddity for French cinema? What about for those with no idea as to Leftist thinking or the figures the film name-drops so frequently? This is where I play the ignorance card; La Chinoise doesn't provide us with any kind of backstory or precedent to those unsure of the time period. Because of this, it's difficult to catch on if you're just a stray viewer.

The only idea I can bring to La Chinoise is it's a clever joke on Godard's behalf to try and gain access to the minds of these Leftist thinkers and get on their side by communicating to them, using "-isms" they'll surely know how to use, while ultimately making fun of them. These are characters that have no idea how political empires or divisions operate, so they stew in their own blissful ignorance (kind of like me in this case), acting as if they have the answers to society's problems by proposing ideology and not thinking twice if it sticks or not.

If I'm completely off, excuse my ignorance. Again, just a public school-educated westerner passing by.

Starring: Jean-Pierre Léaud, Juliet Berto, and Anne Wiazemsky. Directed by: Jean-Luc Godard.

In 1966, Jean-Luc Godard made the acquaintance of some young members of the French Left who felt a strong pull towards Maoism. By looking to China, they sought to escape the traditional division of the French Left into supporters of the Soviet Union, which had lost its revolutionary fervour, and Trotskyist parties, which were impotent. (Of course, at the time the West was still generally unaware of the horrific toll of Mao's policies.) Godard, whose sociological curiosity and political engagement was strong in these years, decided to study this phenomenon, and the result is LA CHINOISE. While Godard would eventually go on to make a few films that were so didactically political that one felt bludgeoned by the message and watching was no fun, this one surprised me in how entertainingly its plot played out and how astute its observations were.

In a Parisian flat borrowed for the summer while one member's parents are away, a group of young radicals lodge together and fancy themselves a revolutionary cell. Chief among them are Guillaume (Jean-Pierre Léaud), Véronique (Anne Wiazemsky) and Yvonne (Juliet Berto). They read daily from Mao, decrying the Soviet Union and French society, and practicing their demagoguery for their occasional attempts to bring their message into the streets. Gradually, they come to decide that terrorism is necessary to achieve their goals, and they gang up on the sole dissenter from violence and kick him out of the flat. Francis Jeanson, a French academic and opponent of the war in Algeria, as well as Wiazemsky's actual thesis adviser, appears as himself in a scene where he attempts to dissuade Véronique from violence, asking just how much support from the oppressed masses does this sheltered girl think she has.

As desperate as he was for a cause to uphold, I don't believe that Godard really committed himself deep down to Maoism or revolutionary socialism in general. His bitterness against the staid French status quo is palpable, and he likes how the French Maoists at least recognized a need for change, but LA CHINOISE affectionately criticizes its subjects more than it celebrates them. Rather than presenting Maoism convincingly as a way forward, LA CHINOISE ultimately suggests it was only the most recent expression of the drive to rebellion that appears afresh in every young generation. While these characters are Maoists, he borrowed the basic outlines of the plot from Dostoyevsky, who described a set of young radicals well before Marxism-Lenin. The filmmaker underscores how such idealistic young people takes themselves too seriously, he shows their adoption of Maoist art as a sort of fashion statement, their use of Maoist terminology as the latest hip slang.

There are some fun touches here, the acerbic humour and amusing dialogue that Godard brought to his storytelling. The occasional use of Brechtian distancing techniques, like when Guillaume suddenly breaks character and talks to cinematographer Raoul Coutard, lead the viewer to reflect more on what is happening. And in spite of Godard's revolutionary sentiments, LA CHINOISE maintains a dialogue with the film tradition (cinephiles will chuckle at the avant-garde snippet that occasionally pops up in the soundtrack, a clear nod to Ingmar Bergman's film PERSONA).

Like Godard's early colour films, this is also a visual pleasure. Much of the first half of the film seems to me a study of faces: Léaud's famous expressiveness, Wiazemsky's quirky overbite and distinct way of moving her mouth to the left when talking, and Berto's sad eyes. The set design is clever, full of little details. (It's great that the film has been re-released in Blu-Ray, so viewers can appreciate all those touches in high-definition.) I wouldn't recommend LA CHINOISE to someone who had not seen Godard's earlier films, but I rate this pretty highly among his body of work and believe that it will impress anyone who has developed a love for this auteur's style.