Godard Season: Bandé A Part (Dir Jean-Luc Godard, 1h30m, 1964)

Why Bande A Part? Why not one of the films in the intervening four years of Godard's career, from his first collaboration with his later wife (and subsequent muse), Anna Karina, Le Petit Soldat (The Little Solider, not eventually released till the bumper year of 1963 in which Godard released three films), or his sole film of 1962, again starring Karina, Vivre sa Vie (My Life to Live)? Why not the nearly plotless Une femme mariée (A Married Woman), or either of those other films from 1963, Les Carabiniers(The Carabiners), in which Godard's staunchly anti-war sensibilities rear to the service for the first time, or Contempt (Le Mépris), his most financially successful and most openly meta-textual film that dives into Godard's fascination with, and repulsion against, Hollywood.

Why are we talking about Bandé A Part, (Band of Outsiders), a film that took Godard, Karina (playing a language student named Odile), and the duo of Claude Brasseur and Sami Frey (Arthur and Franz, a duo of petty crooks, with a nigh elemental love of cinema and life), just 25 days to make? It is after all a deceptively simple film, its narrative hinging around this duo of petty criminals befriending the girl due to her connections to a villa full of money, their subsequent friendship, and the love affair between Odile and Arthur, and the subsequent heist; between these plot points though, is a film that at once adopts the visual language and narrative of a heist film whilst being largely uninterested in the heist.

By 1964, Godard, as we've already noted from that impressively varied list above, was one of the most famous directors in European Cinema; the French New Wave, with its "shoot" and run approach to film-making had already birthed, outside Godard and Truffaut's films themselves, Lola (1961), Adieu Philippine (1962), Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962) and The Fire Within (1963), to name just a few. Moreover, as Mickey On,  directed by  Arthur Penn, (1965) would prove, America was about to kick off its own New Wave, heavily influenced by European Cinema, with Mickey One practically retreading the existentialism and experimentation of the French New Wave. Godard's next film, though, would take the French New Wave in a whole new direction.

Nevertheless, much of Bandé A Part covers, at first glance, narratively familiar territory: Godard's heroes are huge fans of cinema, and petty criminals who live out larger than life lives that at once drift along in deep ennui and who live life to the full, their attraction to the largely passive Odile, who becomes a semi-willing participant in the robbery feels like a reflection of that of Breathless's duo. They also, undeniably, run off the same cinematic cool from Godard's debut that would make the film a major influence on 90s American independent cinema, and beyond. Where they differ is in tone; Breathless is a noirish story of violence and comeuppance, Bandé a Part is a caper, albeit a darkly comic one, through Parisian streets, regurgitating the language of the heist film in a film that feels like it takes more cues from Alice in Wonderland (as Godard himself put it), than The Lavender Hill Mob.

Nothing matters for either film's protagonists, but for Odile, Franz and Arthur, this is all the more reason to throw oneself into life, and it is this energy, this nervous sense of excitement, that permeates the film, its opening credits showing off just how much the master of the jump cut can now bend the rules of cinema to his will, as the film rapidly montages the trio over its opening credits, before introducing us to our two heroes and their target. The opening titles themselves do give a little away as to how puckishly Godard will act in this film, producing the titles out of order, and in the most knowing wink to the audience, crediting himself as "JeanLuc Cinema Godard", a billing that's as immodest as it is, by this point in the 1960s, entirely accurate

Matter-of-factly, the film suddenly launches into...narration. Godard himself is committing a heist in front of our very eyes, in which the very rules of cinema are being stolen, pilfered away, and a strange and at points magical upending of those very rules is taking place. Godard himself is speaking to us, in a stream of conscientiousness occasionally reminds us that we are watching a film, recapping the narrative about half way through, voicing our heroes' thoughts, and slyly intimates that there will be a sequel (in Technicolor, no less!) at the end of the film. Moreover, from the off, Bandé a Part is a film in which our cast seem aware that they are in a film, and where much of the on-screen narrative seems equally stream of conscience. Indeed, if there's one other major sensibility that pervades Bandé A Part, and which sharply juxtaposes it is in the simple fact that its heroes feel in control of their narrative, rather than victims of it; Michel, four years prior may have felt like a man imitating a movie star, here our heroes feel more like actors keenly aware of their artifice, and their make-believe.

The film settles into a good humoured and openly comic sensibility, in which Franz meets Odile, in an English classroom of people uninterested in the lesson and very interested in their fellow student, is barely held together by its tutor. A friendship is soon struck up and the duo quickly become a trio, and it is here, as the trio move to a local café, that Godard's heist, his daring raid against cinema's very fabric, begins. Our trio order drinks, and as their plans begin to come to a loose end, Franz calls for silence, for a real minute of silence, Odile counts us in and. And the film drops silent. Our trio continue to smoke, to fidget, as the silence wears on for nearly thirty seconds before Arthur breaks it, and the film's sound returns, and he goes to put a record on.

What happens next is simply put, Godard, the French New Wave, typified in one sequence-if Breathless's jump cut heralded the genre, so this encapsulates it. They get up and dance. Around them the restaurant continues, but for a glorious three minutes, they dance, inhibited by plot by narrative, by their predicament, by the conventions of cinema. They dance on film untethered from the vaguries of plot, even if Godard does sneak in, as the music cuts and their shoes click and stamp on the tiles, to express their inner condition, as if this baring of their innermost emotions is not writ large on the screen as Godard pays homage to the dance sequences of 30s Hollywood, and John Lee Hooker thunders along in peak 60s cool. The film will continue on, with its matter of fact heist and its central love story, but it is here that it makes its grand statement

It is the film in miniature, a film in which the rules of cinema feel more like suggestions, to be taken or left by its central trio, where the film is, in a daring sensibility that still feels remarkably fresh, and would be taken up by Woody Allen in Annie Hall (1977), honing what the Marx brothers had done for comedic effect in Horsefeathers (1932), for dramatic effect. The film is aware it is a film, its actors aware they are actors, the director aware he is directing, but that he is in essence, powerless to actually force a narrative onto his heroes. And yet, Bandé A Part never seems to gain the critical focus of Breathless; it has become, in all honesty, a French New Wave film for people who don't like French New Wave films.

Perhaps because it is more opaque, perhaps because in all honesty, it is far stranger with what it does with the rules of cinema, perhaps because, as Godard himself put it, "all a film needs is a girl and a gun", and Breathless simply gets on with the business of both, Bandé A Part seems a film little covered in cinematic critique. Perhaps it doesn't need it to; we, after all, the film obsessives, are in on the joke, and can simply admire Godard playing fast and loose with the very rules of the medium he helped define. Whatever the case, Bandé A Part, a film that focuses on the,thin veneer between narrative and free-form cinema, between genre and verité, may be Godard's sweetest, and most-atypical film, and undeniably, his most daring.

Rating: Must See (Personal Recommendation)

Next week, we're off to Alphaville, as Godard turns to his sole science-fiction movie, in which a noirish secret agent seeks to destroy a city controlled by computers, and finds something very different.

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