Belonging to that joyous efflorescence which was early Nouvelle Vague, Bande à Part gave cinema back to the kids as a trio of young moderns have bad attitudes and commit crimes around Paris to a hip score. Funny, utterly irreverent, very clever and perfectly cast.
This is the one Tarantino named his Pulp Fiction production outfit after and upon which Hal Hartley modelled that ensemble dance sequence in Simple Men. The playfu... more >
This is the one Tarantino named his Pulp Fiction production outfit after and upon which Hal Hartley modelled that ensemble dance sequence in Simple Men. The playful allusion is thoroughly understandable, for Bande a part remains one of the liveliest Parisian frolics in the French New Wave since Zazie dans le Metro. For Godard, reality was a movie and movies were real. At one point in Bande a part, the director represents silence not by making Karina, Frey and Brasseur be quiet, but by not putting any sound in the finished mix. Bande a part is a joyful celebration of the world Godard loved. And he revelled in the possibilities of the cinematic mix – genre movie, cinema verite, direct address, intertitles – which symbolize film’s ‘assembled’ take on the real, as well as its allegiance to a wider society and its cultures. Indeed, the anti-Establishment, anti-‘official cinema’ stance of early Godard is epitomized by this title’s tribute to the cheeky iconoclast. Its stylistic impulsiveness is echoed in Karina, arch-siren of the Nouvelle Vague, who tags along with a couple of small-time hoods from the suburbs for a series of adventures – miming Billy the Kid, running around the Louvre, trying to learn English – in a film, true to Godard’s philosophy, whose picaresque trajectory mirrors the process of making reality into a movie. Godard married Karina in 1961 and they divorced in 1964. From 1966, Godard’s work takes a sharply political turn… < less
