If there are any films that offer a wonderful sense of love for the cinema, they are the films of Jean-Luc Godard. But, as he explains in a brief interview from 1964 that is included with this fine DVD, he was also against film; that is, against the conventions and rules that predominated French cinema. So he introduced unconventional methods of telling stories and making movies and decided to include elements that films typically left out. "Band of Outsiders" is a playful, unconventional, mesmerizing tale of small-time gangsters and young love set in 1960s Paris. Its source material runs the gamut from the pulp crime novel on which it is based to the American B-movies and film noir that inspired its look. It's Godard's best love letter to Paris since "Breathless," and also one of the last of his true New Wave films.The story might be simple enough: Arthur and Franz enlist the help of the young, beautiful Odile to stage a robbery. But if the story is simple, everything else around it is not. Here we find allusions and homages to Arthur Rimbaud (the poet whom one of the characters is named after), Franz Kafka, film composer Michel Legrand, "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg," T.S. Eliot, Shakespeare, American cartoons, Jack London, Charlie Chaplin, Andre Breton, Andre Malraux, and numerous others. That's Godard doing his thing, and even if we miss those allusions, there's so much more to be cherished: the famous minute of silence, the running visit through the Louvre, the dance scene, the glorious closeups of Anna Karina, riding on the underground metro, the trio driving through the streets of Paris.
"Band of Outsiders" is playful, wondrous, hilarious, breezy, but at the same time melancholic, dark in its undertones. Raoul Coutard's photography gives it a stark look, but its playfulness is its most alluring aspect, along with Godard's wonderfully appealing, inventive visual language. It might not be the finest example of the French New Wave, nor is it as perfect as a work of art as "Breathless" and "My Life to Live," but in its flaunting of cinematic invention, its richness, and its embodiment of pure cinema, it's in a class by itself and certainly a film that should be seen, if not owned, by lovers of cinema. Its most memorable moments will remain in your mind forever.
Many Godard fans, myself included, have been waiting eagerly for this Criterion edition of "Band of Outsiders." It's a remarkable digital transfer; the images and contrasts are crisp; the mono soundtrack is as clear as possible. The additional features are worth the price of the DVD alone, including a visual glossary that explains many of the film's allusions and a brief interview in which Godard explains the philosophy behind the New Wave. Criterion has really outdone itself with this disc, and that's saying something.
I recommend that, even if you do not know French, you should watch this film at least once with the subtitles off since they sometimes obscure the closeups that make this film so memorable. When the camera is on Anna Karina's face, believe me when I say you don't want anything to stand in its way.
As with all early Godard, the joy of 'Band' is in the bouyant playfulness of his style the high, long shots looking down on bustling activity; the long car-journeys through Paris streets; the intense close-ups on Anna Karina (Godard's wife), eluding all meaning, or the sheer rapture in watching her running along pavements, or crossing a river; the messing around disused yards; the lengthy quotes and allusions that stall the action and give resonance to the silly goings-on and the turmoil of the characters in them; the unwavering long takes with exciting real sound; the playful homages to old Hollywood; the narrator's bumptious intrusions, equating events with 'bad B-movies'.
More than Louis Malle's 'Zazie dans le metro', 'Band' is the ultimate Raymond Queneau film Karina's character is named after the heroine of Queneau's roman a clef 'Odile', a book about the writer's break with the Surrealists, just as 'Band' signals Godard's outpacing the New Wave with its deadpan marginal heroes, its elusive heroine who doesn't want to be elusive; its romanticising Paris, especially its margins and its pull to the embankments; the attractions like circuses and funfairs intruding on the everyday. Godard finds a cinematic equivalent for Queneau's narrative voice its flip melancholy; its casual intellectualism; its move from messing about to the philosophical to slapstick to dreams to the tragic and back again; in the self-consciousness of the characters; in the narrative mix of whim, genre and destiny.
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Clearly Godard's camera is in love with Anna Karina and this instructs the entire film. That face: Those big almond shaped eyes; innocent, curious, mysterious, mischievous. Odele caught in the prison of her budding sexuality. Oscar and Alex stuck in a web with her, each trapped for different reasons, but all three caught in a struggle manipulated by the puppet master, Godard. "Three weeks earlier, a pile of money. An English class. A house by the river. A romantic girl." A story as improbable as the "legend" of Billy the Kid! This film is derived out of a mixture of boredom, desire and desperation from a filmmaker at odds between love and revulsion of Americana and the cinematic experience in general. One often wonders if making movies is Godard's guilty pleasure. Rather than construct a story, he often seems more interested in deconstruction. His Paris is visually stark and cold, but there is also much beauty. Sadness and beauty: "it all depends upon how you frame the picture." Again I fall back to Odele/Karina. Odele is constantly reinventing herself, bouncing from sensation to sensation and Oscar, Alex and even the director himself are trying to grab hold, but she's far too illusive even for the puppet master! Godard is in love with Odele/Karina and this is infectious. He is also in love with Paris and American movies and cannot help it. An intellectual trying desperately to reign in his emotions but failing brilliantly. This is why "Band of Outsiders" succeeds so well. There is much more at work in this film than Godard merely trying to be clever; the moment of silence, the "Madison" dance sequence, the Louvre world record. There is a welcome spontaneity fused together with impeccable technique. A scene in the film that is particularly instructive takes place with all three characters in an English class. As the teacher reads the death scene from Romeo and Juliet, the three star crossed lovers seem oblivious to the words, and yet the emotion behind the words seem to color their actions. They are creating their own love story of sorts but it is a story that lives and breathes inside a movie, where even tragedy is tempered by that good old American "happy ending".Read Best Reviews of Band of Outsiders (Criterion Collection) (1964) Here
The reviews here are overwrought and overwritten. This is a movie about three lonely people. It's character-driven, charming at times, sad at others. The best scenes are when they are bonding. It is wonderfully shot and acted. Watch it. Done.Want Band of Outsiders (Criterion Collection) (1964) Discount?
An ultra-low-budget, cliche-slaying tribute to the expressive possibilities of cinema by the gonzo New-Wave master who influenced a thousand and one directors now all much richer than him. Godard practically invented the 'intellectual B-movie' with "My Life to Live," and made "Band of Outsiders" after his nauseating experiences with big-time producers Ponti and Levine on "Contempt," just to prove, once again, that a man bursting with ideas doesn't need too much to express himself magnificently (he later continued in this direction with "Alphaville," another cheaper than cheap masterpiece, this time in "Science Fiction," without any special effects or 'futuristic sets' to speak of).Don't be fooled by the cheesy production values (that in itself is a calculated joke mocking big-time Hollywood films with million dollar budgets and nothing to say). You have to give this film a little time to reveal its poetry. It's subtle and relaxed yet crazy, and that's good. People usually take a while longer to warm to this one than "Alphaville," or "My Life to Live," but it's just as brilliant. It took me 3 viewings back when I first saw it some 6 years ago, but now I know very well why it's considered a great poetic film: every time I watch it I get a unique, almost ecstatic emotion from it no other film provides, like reading a great humorous romantic poem full of Bukowski-like eccentricities.
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