Jean-Luc Godard’s Weekend (1967/aka Week
End/Criterion Blu-ray)
Picture:
B Sound: B- Extras: B Film: B
Jean-Luc
Godard had made his mark on the French New Wave over a dozen feature films
(plus several shorts and even documentaries) starting with Breathless (1960) deconstructing cinema, Hollywood, Capitalism and quickly becoming
part of the several counterculture movements.
By the time he made his classic Weekend
(1967), few knew he was about to abandon his cinematic identity and trash his
Auteur image and approach to make a series of group-driven Maoist films that
confused and lost most of his fans, followed by a series of complex video
programs that few saw at all. The Godard
of this film did not rise again until the 1980s.
Here, Godard makes his final train-of-thought with rich visual political film
portraying a consumerist hell as starting with a simple-but-deadly variant of
what we now call “road rage” to what is still the longest traffic jam in cinema
history to many other memorable and odd moments that have won it fans worldwide
and it was a hit. We originally reviewed
the film in its long out-of-print DVD edition at this link:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/2931/Weekend+(1967)
I like
the film very much, but not as much as my fellow writer. Still, the humor is pure Godard, subversive,
Leftist, edgy, bold, amusing, filled with energy and colorful in all kinds of
ways. Even after he abandoned this
approach, many others would continue it, even if they were not being as
political. Alone, it is as strong as
ever, though makes interesting counterpoints to later Jacques Tati films like PlayTime and Trafic (both issued by Criterion, the former reviewed twice on
Blu-ray elsewhere on this site; the latter only appeared on DVD and was sadly
discontinued) but Godard said everything he could on these subjects and seemed
at the end of his rope, making it and “End”
Godard may seem well aware of himself.
Guess the Maoist films were supposed to lead to action (which led to
conflicts with Jane Fonda and The Rolling Stones, so this did not work out as
planned), so this film represents a series of conclusions.
Yet, the
film survives, endures and its finest points are as relevant as ever. Even when you don’t agree with him, there is
no doubt he became one of the world’s greatest filmmakers and after all that
critical and sometimes commercial success, maybe he just could not go on the same
way or really was finished saying what he had to say at the time but I think he
quit while he was ahead now that we see how the Maoist projects have become so
much more dated, more antiquated and fell behind the actual counterculture and
worldwide Leftist movements that resulted from Vietnam. Weekend remains his final
vintage classic and is very much worth revisiting, especially in this great new
upgrade from Gaumont and Criterion.
For
starters, the 1080p 1.66 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer is a new 2K
scan of the original 35mm negative resulting in the color quality, depth,
richness, warmth and overall definition looking as great as any stills or
footage of the film I have ever seen.
Grain can be heavy at times, but the print rarely shows the age of the
film and anything we felt was lacking on the long out-of-print New Yorker DVD
is more that corrected here. Godard’s
longtime Director of Photography Raoul Coutard helped make his films so
distinctive and pushed the vibrant EastmanColor as much as both were pushing
the naturalism of the color at the time.
Thanks to Blu-ray, you can see the kind of color and image density
intended and only the best film prints will be able to compete.
The PCM
1.0 Mono may have a little harshness, but that comes from the original audio
source and has to do with the way it was recorded, an issue that would plague
Godard’s Maoist films in far more severe ways.
This was mastered at 24 bits from a 35mm film print according to the
notes, so that implies an optical soundmaster and is as good as it is ever
going to sound down to the original music by Antoine Duhamel.
Extras include
a thick, well illustrated booklet on the film including informative technical
text on the film plus a 1969 interview with Godard and two essays (The Last Weekend by Gary Indiana and Notes On Weekend by Alain Bergala), while the Blu-ray adds Kent Jones long, rich, detail video
essay on Godard including this film, Original French and U.S. Theatrical
Trailers, full color film excerpt from French TV coverage of the making of the film
on location by filmmaking Phillippe Garrel and vintage on-camera interviews
with DP Coutard, Actor Mireille Darc, Actor Jean Yanne and Assistant Director
Claude Miller.
That’s a
great and long-overdue set of extras for such an important film, but Criterion
delivers again making this Blu-ray of Weekend
definitive.
- Nicholas Sheffo