MADE IN USA (Jean-Luc Godard) Rating: NNNN
After decades of legal tangles preventing a proper North American release, Jean-Luc Godard’s 1966 pulp fiction gets a limited Toronto run – in a new 35mm print, no less – as part of Cinematheque Ontario’s ongoing salute to the French New Wave.
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A sprightly Technicolor cousin to the monochrome Alphaville, Made In USA presents itself as a detective movie, following Anna Karina’s fashion-forward investigator through Atlantic City (or a French facsimile thereof) in search of her lover’s killer. But the premise – taken from The Jugger, one of Donald E. Westlake’s Richard Stark novels, with chunks from The Big Sleep and half a dozen other mysteries folded in – isn’t as important as the ideas Godard clutters around it.
Made In USA marks the point where Godard morphed from inventive rule-breaker to political provocateur, using his films as delivery systems for social commentary and rhetorical monologuing. (The director still cared about engaging his audience this was still a few years before Godard disappeared into the increasingly impenetrable collages of the 1970s and 80s.)
A dispute between Westlake and the film’s producers sent the movie into legal limbo on this side of the pond. The author’s death last year opened the path to reconciliation, and here we are.
Incidentally, though the Criterion Collection released an excellent special-edition DVD of Made In USA just last week, it’s only available in Canada as an import, at inflated prices. You should probably make time for one of these screenings.
At Cinematheque Ontario tonight (Thursday, July 30), Saturday (August 1) and August 6.
