Bando à Parte

I must admit I have a bit of a problem with Jean Luc Godard. As he is a major influence on many film makers I love, I'm always curious to watch his movies to see where thay learned their chops. But I usually find Godard's movies a chore to get through and generally disappointing overall. Even his most famous and influential movie 'Breathless' took me a few viewings before I "got" it, and recently rewatching it for the first time on DVD I found it to be a lot less entertaining than I'd remembered. 'Band Of Outsiders' is for many Godard buffs even better than 'Breathless', but I really cannot share their enthusiasm. While in many ways the two movies are similar in approach and subject matter, the major difference for me is that 'Band Of Outsiders' lacks the infectious energy of 'Breathless'. Making a movie about characters who are bored with life there is a great risk that the movie will be boring to watch, and this is too often the case with this film. There are a few inspired sequences I can't deny that, especially the influential dancing scene, the minute of silence, and the race around the Louvre, but these are few and far between. The other main difference is in the actors themselves. Anna Karina is by far the best thing about this movie, but Claude Brasseur and Sami Frey lack the charisma and presence of Jean-Paul Belmondo, and drag the movie to a standstill every time they have a "bit". I'm sorry I just couldn't get into their characters or care for their fate, in the way I could about Belmondo and Seberg in Godard's earlier movie. So there you have it, a movie that buffs will probably want to check out for historical reasons, but apart from that there isn't much reason to sit through it. And yeah, I know it gets a big thumbs up from Quentin Tarantino, but so does 'Days Of Thunder'!

Band of Outsiders, from the novel by Dolores Hitchens, is a jazzy and poetic take on the modern crime film, with more successful sequences than I could have expected. Unlike in his debut, Breathless, here the characters - two young men Arthur (Claude Brasseur) & Franz (Sami Frey) and the young woman Odile (the beautiful Anna Karina) - are quite accessible (at the least watchable) to those who aren't used to Godard's treatments of his main players.

That, along with a style including artful but elegant and, in opposition, gritty and 'cool' cinematography by Raoul Coutard and a striking, upbeat musical score by Michel Legrand, gives Jean-Luc Godard the edge in creating one of the most influential films of the new-wave. Arthur and Franz are different personalities- you can notice the differences in the little moments- but they have a shared idea as being would-be petty criminals. Franz meets Odile in a writing class, and after much talk they hatch a plan to steal all the money that Odile's father has stolen from the government and kept inside her house. The film takes its time leading up to the robbery, which is like a two punch knockout that at first is astonishing and then following it by devastating.

What makes Band of Outsiders a great film is not just the last act, but that the lead up to it, the filler, is rather extraordinary in its good grace to keep the audience entertained even as they know they're watching an art film (a good analogy is that Godard narrates much like Cocteau narrated over Blood of a Poet, except that here it's over a crime instead of a series of surrealistic events). Such moments of note are the minute of silence (like in Week End's traffic scene the audience feels much like the characters amid the duration of the scene), the subtly light-hearted feel of the classroom scene, and most notably the Madison dance.

The Dance sequence, in which our three anti-heroes turn on the jukebox and give a dance number that immediately calls to mind as inspiration for Travolta and Thruman's number to Chuck Berry in Pulp Fiction. However, after seeing this number, I'm inclined to argue that the Madison is the better of the two. There are also little moments that are funny and/or fascinating, and they go to show there's more emotion in this triangle than would usually be found in any kind of conventional film-noir.

After now seeing four of his films (Breathless, Contempt, Week End, and Band of Outsiders), this is my favorite. A+ (on my first viewing)

Odile has made new friends at English lessons, after making a faux pas, an indiscretion, telling them about a stash, of a great big pile of cash, it's become Arthur's and Franz's new obsession. Now they're conjuring a plan to grab the dough, it's unsecured, and in a place Odile can show, but she's having some concerns, struggling to come to terms, so she voices her unease, to let them know. Alas the plans for burglary do not run well, as barriers unknown block and repel, it's a comical affair, leads the combo to despair, the execution was quite poor, I think that's fair.

It still views well, but you need to digest it with the era in mind, alongside the other material the director produced around then, taking into account the unique style of his presentations.

Style over substance. It's an interesting approach to filmmaking, but it also stops the viewer from really caring about the characters. Director Jean-Luc Godard shows his talent for visuals and there are a number of scenes in the film that really stay in your mind. The story itself is not much engaging and there are no real thrills. What you will get is, perhaps, more of a reflection upon existence.

With this film Godard returned to the (petty) crime genre and his fascination with American pop culture. Odile (Karina), Arthur (Brasseur) and Franz (Frey) meet in an English language class and become friends. When naive Odile tells them she lives in a house where a large amount of money is cached, their imagination runs wild. Fantasizing and discussing Hollywood B-movies and pulp literature, they decide to rob the house with the help of Odile.

Godard goes to even further extremes in "violating" traditional storytelling with his voice-over narration, giving the viewer information during the action and letting his characters talk to the camera. It might not be Godard's most innovative release, compared to let's say BREATHLESS, CONTEMPT and TWO OR THREE THINGS I KNOW ABOUT HER, but is probably more entertaining and accessible to modern audiences than almost any other pre-1970 film he made (his later work is difficult to grasp for any audience). In the case of CONTEMPT audiences might have flocked to the cinemas because of Brigitte Bardot's presence, but besides BB-devotees, that's hardly a recommendation now. But this one generally is an entertaining and insightful film, with the dancing sequence in the bar justly memorable, as is the 9-minute tour of the Louvre.

Still, essential for movie buffs. Godard even credited himself as Jean-Luc "Cinema" Godard. Quentin Tarantino paid tribute to this film naming his production company A Band Apart.