La Chinoise (1967)

Wednesday, September 19th at 7:15pm

Sunday, September 23rd at 9:00pm

DIRECTOR:

Jean-Luc Godard

CAST:

Jean-Pierre Leaud, Juliet Berto, Anne Wiazemsky

A group of ideologically infatuated French philosophy students spend a summer converting a luxurious Parisian apartment into a revolutionary hot-bed in this clever and colorfully intoxicating cine-essay from Godard's early years. The bold mise-en-scene provides a stylish backdrop for the starry-eyed students' passionate, if theoretical, experimentations with violence and brutality: they casually assassinate government officials, but passionately perform daily workouts to the rhythms of the communist manifesto. Made less than a year after Mao Tse-Tung declared the "Cultural Revolution" and a few months before the student uprisings in France, the film is a prescient portrait of a turbulent era. Though Godard is clearly mocking the students who cry for revolution while rarely leaving their fabulous flat, he tenderly films the central love affair (the actress playing Veronique would soon become his wife), and inventively stages the students' playful debates and struggles. The film is both deeply complex and willfully inane: a mix that Godard perfects here, in this dazzling example of his engagement with 60's student culture.