Audience Member
Tedious. Dull plot development, characters that didn't draw me in at all.
Rated 2/5 Stars •
Rated 2 out of 5 stars
01/14/23
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Audience Member
Filmed shortly after 1960's Breathless- The debut that would that would prove to be Godard's International breakout success- Le petit soldat quickly establishes itself as a different thing entirely. The hindsight of history being our guide, such a pronounced shifting of gears should come as no surprise. Godard, still alive and active at the time of this writing, has had more distinct phases, shifts, and comebacks than most legacy pop singers. Even at the crux of his mind-bogglingly prolific 1960s heyday, the filmmaker clearly thrived on the notion of being impossible to pin down. The great film critic Manny Farber, infamously threw up his hands at the self-aggrandizing fluidity of it all, declaring Godard's zoo of "truculently formulated beasts… that includes a pink parakeet (A Woman Is a Woman), a diamond-black snake (Contempt), a whooping crane (Band of Outsiders)." What animal then, one is tempted to ask, would the overlooked Le petit soldat be…? For Farber, probably some kind of termite. Hidden in the wood, and beginning the attempted, instinctual process of devouring the superstructure…
Censored by the French government for being too much of a political hot potato, Le petit soldat didn't even see the light of day until after the release of Godard's fourth film, circa 1963. Dealing with, and at times, deeply questioning of France's actions and motivations in regard to the French-Algerian War of 1954 to 1962, it deals head-on with very contemporaneous issues of torture (depicted in the film), and goes as far as to have a character predict that France will lose the war, resulting in a decolonized Algeria. (Which was the eventual result).
Rated 3.5/5 Stars •
Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars
02/27/23
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Audience Member
Goddard's unmistakable energy keep the mediocre romance and abrupt conclusion from ruining the tone.
Rated 3/5 Stars •
Rated 3 out of 5 stars
01/20/23
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Audience Member
year s/b 1963 not 2013
Rated 2.5/5 Stars •
Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars
01/21/23
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Audience Member
Possibly the most political of Godard's films I've watched. The best parts were when Anna and Michel were talking philosophically and exploring their budding romance. I wasn't as interested in the political parts, but the movie itself is intended to be Godard's way of talking politics and the rest is inconsequential. As a result, I wasn't a huge fan. The ending was sudden and disappointing. I do believe that's the intention.
Rated 3/5 Stars •
Rated 3 out of 5 stars
01/26/23
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Audience Member
Filmed in 1960 but released until 1963, <i>Le Petit Soldat</i> is Godard's second feature film which sensitive political content caused the French censors to ban the film for three years.
The incredible Nouvelle Vague was kicking off with a bang, and Godard is maybe the filmmaker that best envisioned the movement's eccentricities perfectly with a trademark style of his own since his debut. He didn't give birth to the movement, but he made a massive international contribution to a successful dissemination of its uniqueness. <i>Le Petit Soldat</i> is no exception.
The film places a man against French involvement in the war in Algeria as a protagonist. He is given instructions to assassinate Polidova, who is pro-FLN (National Liberation Front of Algeria). He meets and falls in love, however, with a left-wing member of a terrorist group (which means meet the gorgeous Anna Karina in her first role with Godard!). Complications ensue when his constant hesitations and constant existential questionings prevent him from executing his job, rising suspicions that he might be a double agent.
The film's graphic content is notorious for its time. Mainly, the film is claimed to have been banned because of depiction of torture by both sides, but theory suggests that the fact that the French side was condoning torture as a means to obtain information about activists and the conflict itself resulted in a politically inconvenient representation of the French nation (heh). In the meantime, Godard does not waste one of his hundreds of future opportunities to transform his protagonist into a reflection of the auteur himself, which results in an explosive diarrhea of art, music, philosophy, photography, cinema, urban life and politics, sometimes with contradictory, most of them interesting, some of them random or tedious, like if Godard only understood the authorts/artists in his own anarchic way instead of spotting out the points of disagreement. This is an early proof of him being a cinematic genius and an intellectual self-centered egotist.
Extremely recommended because of its political statements and the notorious visual influences of the Nouvelle Vague, from Kitchen Sink Realism to Film Noir, this is an early effort that deserves attention, especially because of its censorship. Everything censored deserves attention as to the reasons behind.
84/100
Rated 4/5 Stars •
Rated 4 out of 5 stars
01/22/23
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