Weekend starring Mireille Darc, Jean
Yanne, Jean-Pierre Kalfon, Yves
Afonso, Yves Beneyton
Godard's Weekend: A Treasure "Found On A Scrap Heap."
Jean-Luc Godard and Luis Buñuel enjoyed an ardent misanthropic duel in
the 60s and 70s, but who won is anyones call. Godards Weekend lays
down the trump in a harrowing and darkly funny allegory in which social
mores fray along political lines. Played out in a metafilm in which
characters question their own reality, a morally bankrupt Parisian couple
tries to leave the city on a much-loathed country holiday with the wifes
parents. Along the way, endless traffic jams, sudden violence, and vistas
of gory car crashes underscore their corrupted values. Their lethal
encounter with the in-laws and kidnap by an anarchic band of radical
cannibals finds the couple--and presumably decent society with them--
reverting to a nasty primitivism. The idea is of course that the bored,
apathetic heart of the bourgeoisie is never far from acting out its most
homicidal fantasies. --Alan E. Rapp

Personal Review: Weekend starring Mireille Darc, Jean Yanne,
Jean-Pierre Kalfon, Yves Afonso, Yves Beneyton
Influential French filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard was at his cinematic best
during the early '60s (during which time he made Breathless (1960), Band
of Outsiders (1964), Pierrot le Fou (1965), among other great films), a
creative period ending with his equally colorful and political film, Weekend
(1967), which marked the "End of Cinema" for Godard. He called
Weekend "a film adrift in the cosmos," and "a film found on a scrap heap."
It tells the story of a Parisian married couple, Roland and Corrine (played
by French television stars, Mireille Darc and Jean Yanne), who leave on a
weekend journey across the French countryside to collect an inheritance.
After a memorable 10-minute scene in which they are stuck in a traffic jam
littered with violent car crashes as they leave the city--(this scene is reason
enough to experience this film, in that it conveys Godard's sense of
boredom, disorientation, and frustration with the times)--Roland and
Corrine are confronted by the French bourgeoisie, along with a bizarre cast
of characters including Emily Brontë, Saint-Just, Alexandre Dumas,
hippies, and a pianist playing Mozart in a farmyard. Weekend is a black
comedy in the form of a social allegory. Godard compared his 60s' work
to rattling his metal cup against the bars of his cell, and Weekend may be
considered his one last attempt to wake up his audience from its
contemptuous bourgeois lifestyle.
G. Merritt
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