Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
La Chinoise [1967], 22 Jun 2008
Among Godard's films, la Chinoise currently stands as my favourite. Very Brechtian in its form, it does not let the audience enter a state of complacency and let the plot flow: it demands attention.
The bare plot is simple enough, and I won't outline it here, but what is great about this film is its spirit. I daresay it captures the atmosphere of the times - of a contemporaneous flat of young political activists - perfectly. I stress the word 'atmosphere', as that is the first thing that draws you in. The little things, the note-writing on the walls, posters, paintings, books, the way the people in the flat sit, stand, study, listen to the radio, and relate to each other, all of these paint in successive strokes the atmosphere of the flat.
But then the camera moves and decides to show the crew and the equipments and so we are not even allowed to forget that this is a show. The characters come forward in an interview like monologue (we can't hear the interlocutor) and tell you about themselves, how they came to be in that flat, their political beliefs, etc. They may just be playing their parts and reciting dialogue but one gets the feeling that they are also speaking for themselves (a character (Guillaume) explicitly says that he is!)
Now for the most demanding part of the film, the actual 'text', shall I say? Apart from incessant quotes from the Red Book, the actual dialogues and talks in the film are quite intellectually demanding, and in fact quite enlightening at times. I do recommend a second view to get more out of the film. I was especially impressed by the talk between Véronique and the Professor-activist in the train. I shall not go into details (and raptures) about the intellectually stimulating bits of the film, but if you're not looking forward to an intellectual engagement with what is said (and shown) in the film, I definitely do not recommend this.
This film is not a slag-off of the maoist-student movement in France, as the bare plot may suggest, it is rather a constructive engagement with what was happening in the times. I think the end note is that of hope rather than pessimism, though with clauses: it is but a first step, as Véronique says. A naïve hope perhaps, and dangerous too in this naïvety, but a hope nevertheless. We see at the end each of the characters going out and trying to work towards their hopes. There is no closure. We are left to make up our own minds.
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3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Self-Mocking View of Ingenuity, 4 April 2006
The movie consist of a collage of a series of 'sketches'. Each offering an insightful, and somewhat 'second degrée', perspective of a group of näive bourgeois college students immersing themselves in the teachings of Chairman Mao, playing at plotting a communist coup, discussing politics in a college republic style, all the ideals that made the avant-garde at the time. Just before the romantic may 68 student riots.
Godard's style is crude in a radical (typical of the time) and contaminated by contemporary pop-art, visually and also in the soundtrack.
The most political of his works, it still doesn't say much about his own political beliefs.
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12 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
This film was made before 1968, 20 Nov 2005
...and it highlights with remarkable prescience the influence of Marxist-Leninist and Maoist political thought amongst the predominantly bourgeois students of the Sorbonne and Nanterre Universities which was to lead to "Les Evenements" of May 1968."La Chinoise" focuses on a series of political and philosophical dialogues and debates between a group of young Maoists during the summer of 1967. They discuss ways and means to organise a Marxist revolution in France,including the creation of a student/worker alliance and political violence. The Maoist Cultural Revolution in China serves as the students inspiration. The film is dated and of historical interest only, since the whole concept of a communist revolution has been effectively consigned to the dustin of history. "La Chinoise" is primarily Godard's audio-visual promotion of the left wing revolutionary agenda that was the inspiration behind the student protests and General Strike that almost overthrew De Gaulle's state in the spring of 1968. The film is about the exchange of ideas, not about human relationships and is a movie that informs but doesnt entertain. After watching "La Chinoise" it is easy to see why the May 1968 revolt and why Western communist movements in general failed. The student vanguard of the socialist movement ("We'll do the thinking for them") were obsessed with copying the methods of successful revolutionaries in backward, agrarian countries which were mostly irrelevant in the context of advanced capitalist societies with their greater industrialisation, wealth ,technology and democracy. Godard was clearly impressed by these bourgeois communists and clearly enough bourgois communists must have been inspired by this film to try to put the philosophies of Guillaume, Veronique et al into practice a year later.
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