But If You Go Carrying Pictures of Chairman Mao...

My first exposure to Jean-Luc Godard's La Chinoise was a badly damaged and virtually colorless 16mm print that I saw when I was seventeen. I knew little of Marx, Lenin, or Mao at the time (let alone the cultural revolution), but the film, with its cute collegiate Maoists plotting revolution from the safety of a fancy Parisian apartment, had a profound effect on me, and it wasn't long before I had a dog-eared Little Red Book of my own. Seeing it again after all these years, it's almost impossible not to find it more than a bit dated politically, yet at the same time realizing how important a film it is in JLG's oeuvre. As the screen shots on the left reveal, the recently released Optimum DVD (Region 2) comes from a new print, which restores the film to its proper state, bringing out the rich, almost saturated primary colors that Godard favored at that time. (The DVD can be ordered from Benson's World for a mere £8.99.) Through a series of interconnected vignettes, La Chinoise follows the activities of a group of students who spend the summer of 1967 quoting Mao, denouncing American imperialism, and thinking how they can start their own revolution in France. (The film eerily foreshadows the tumultuous events of May '68.) They set up headquarters in a bourgeois apartment owned by one of the revolutionary's parents — think The Dreamers, but replace sex and cinema with Marx and Mao. The core quartet of revolutionaries, which includes Truffaut staple Jean-Pierre Léaud, Juliet Berto, and the soon-to-be Mrs. Godard, Anne Wiazemsky (who resembles wife #1), spend their days listening to Radio Peking, while decorating the walls with Mao quotes, and holding lectures on everything from Lyndon Johnson to Viet Nam to Louis Lumière. The harmony of the group is shattered when several members choose violence (via political assassination) as their method. As supportive as Godard was towards Marxist-Leninist and Maoist sympathies, French Maoist students (among others) denounced the film for its pro-terrorist stance, which conflicted with their own beliefs. (It's interesting to note that France never had an equivalent of The Weathermen or Baader-Meinhof Group.) Though La Chinoise is as overtly political as any of the films Godard made with Jean-Pierre Gorin, it's still infused with the kind of playfulness found in Bande à Part or Masculin, Féminin. The film draws attention to its artifice through its exaggerated use of color, deliberate camera movements (some nice tracking shots), and its many moments of self-reflexivity. In between the lengthy monologues are the kind of scenes that are quintessentially Godard, including one that finds Veronique (Wiazemsky) telling a pouty Guillaume (Léaud) she no longer loves him ("I hate your sweaters. I hate your face".) It's something right out of Une Femme est Une Femme, and shows that for all his intellectual and political posturing, Guillaume is deep down just another moody, heartbroken youngster. Then of course there is the music and dance scene, and though it's not quite Anna K and the boys doing the Madison, it does have Léaud twisting to the deliciously infectious Mao Mao, by Claudes Channes, which includes lyrics such as "Johnson giggles and me I wiggle Mao Mao / Napalm runs and me I gun Mao Mao". (The song is too good not to share — download and dance along with your favorite comrade: Claudes Channes - Mao Mao.mp3) Unlike the purely academic Marxism that informs Godard's films made with the Dziga Vertov Group, La Chinoise is equally as interested in the then-burgeoning youth culture movement that was on the brink of exploding worldwide. Some have claimed that this interest stemmed out of his relationship with Wiazemsky, who was almost twenty years his junior. Regardless, the film can be seen as a bridge between the old Godard and the new, with equal parts dialectic and dramatic. In other words, it's a leftist film that even your right-wing friends can enjoy. Well....maybe.

Comments

[HarryTuttle]

These screen caps are lovely! The print I saw was really old I guess...
The first cap, when she proves him it's impossible to listen to music and do something else at the same time by telling she hates him is excellent.
Another interesting feature of the film is to intercut the fiction with documentary-like interviews of the group members individually, to get their opinion on what is going on (like the exclusion of one of them).
A trick that emphasizes the realism of the fiction (if a documentarian investigates), and on the other hand mocks its filmmaking with obvious pretense of the staged fiction. Something reminding Peter Watkins.
I've never read the Little Red Book, and didn't get much of the political content of this film. So you're right it almost looks like a parody of communist movements that rightist could find funny.

[HarryTuttle]

Oh by the way, there was one communist terrorist group raging in France, "Action Directe", but that was after the film, between 1979 and 1987.

[shihlun]

Thanks for sharing the "Mao Mao" song.

[Urbaniak]

I'm going to start a blog called Like Anne Wiazemsky's Jumper.

[Ian W. Hill]

Thanks for reminding me why I loved this film I've just seen once, about 15 years ago (in a good 35mm print, thankfully). I've been wondering if I'm looking back at it through rose-colored glasses and if it was as unpleasant and boring as the non-Rolling Stones sections of ONE PLUS ONE. You made me remember the "equal parts dramatic and dialectic" qualities that had been fading.
And I've got a use for "Mao Mao" in a theatre piece I'm working on, too. Thanks again!

[phyrephox]

This is one I've been dying to see because of its place on the cusp of the DV Group films (none of which I've seen). I take it this is English subtitled?

Funny that you mention that Wiazemsky looks like Karina, because from the posters of this film that I kept seeing in the lobby for the MoMA theatres (and what a great poster!) I thought the film did indeed star Karina.

[Michael]

Oh, man, now I really have to go out and get myself a region-free DVD player!

Stellar post, Filmbrain.

[Filmbrain]

Phyrephox - yes, there are English subs. Not much in the way of extras, but there is a nice intro by Colin MacCabe.

[Eric]

You know, I might have to pick up the R2 version. I downloaded it off of emule and found myself reading horrible Engrish subtitles.

[Susan]

I love that Mao Mao song! That was fun to dance to on a Saturday morning with my boyfriend.

I really want to see this movie, but it looks like the only way is to order it from the UK, but it won't play on my DVD player here anyway. :-(

[Susan]

This website sells a DVDR version of La Chinoise for $13.
http://superhappyfun.com

[tlrhb]

I am having a massive nostalgia attack for that record player, with the album sitting up on the spindle, in the background of that first picture.

[Cullen]

I saw this movie many years ago, but I remember being especially compelled because the politics seemed to stem from the characters themselves. The politics were more a part of the story rather than the story being a vechicle for politics. It was great reading about the movie...it's time to revisit it!

[DEF]

Thanks so much for sharing the Mao Mao song! I've been in search of it for a while...

I keep meaning to pick up the region 2 disc from Kim's. This has just renewed the desire. I find this movie to be one of Godard's richest. He is really on a razor with this one because I don't believe he believes any of the politics, not for a second, but then we have the whole Jean-Pierre Gorin, well, eccentricity. But the movie is formally profound, perhaps JLG's most substantive experiment with his self-reflexivity and manipulations of spatio-temporal articulations. Manny Farber has a great essay about it in Negative Space.

[la_depressionada]

this is how we learned how to be, n'est-ce pas? i had a record player almost exactly like that, my father threw it down a flight of stairs after one too many re-plays of blonde on blonde.

[Britney]

Sounds like a great film, I will try and get s copy.. I am always interested in learning more about different thgouts, and I enjoy small groups getting revolutionary! Have you seen the loose change 911 yet?
It's funny what a few college kids can get accomplished when they are in a luxury aprtment, not working 80 hours a week trying to feed kids, and working another 80 hours week taking care of them...

check it if you haven't seen it -
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8260059923762628848&q=911&pl=true

[craig]

The girl on the poster is not Anne Wiazemsky -- it's Juliet Berto. Who I guess does resemble Anna Karina a bit in that image, but seen unobscured by Mao books or machine-guns would come off as exuding her own distinct, slopey-doe-eyed pouty-lips'd look. (See screen capture 3 above, although it's a long-shot.)

Of course, we should also note that Juliet Berto is the greatest actress in the history of cinema, and we love her first for her appearance in the café in '2 or 3 Things I Know About Her,' and then 'La Chinoise,' and THEN as the para-guerrilla cannibal with the headband in 'Weekend.' After that she would star opposite Léaud in 'Le Gai savoir,' show up in 'Vladimir et Rosa,' etc. But her greatest work, the stuff that puts her at the summit for all time, are the films she made with Jacques Rivette in the early- to mid-'70s -- beginning with the thirteen-hour 'Out 1' (and its five-hour alternate version), continuing on in 'Céline and Julie Go Boating' and 'Duelle'.

I'd also make the suggestion that you avoid buying a DVD-R copy from Superhappyfun. The prints from which they bootleg the films are often so sub-par that they are unwatchable, and when that's not the case, they tend to just rip and copy the transfer from an official release (say, the UK edition) and call it their own -- until the rights-holder finds out and contacts them, asking what the fuck they think they're doing. At which point SHF obliges and takes down the item. Point being, just buy the UK edition for now, dudes. It's like $13, and if you can't spend that for 'La Chinoise' (and a perfect transfer, no less) then...?

[Ian]

...then your not a true capitalist?

[MrSteve]

It was my first Godard many moons ago, and things I remembered about it were the pile of little red books and 'Mao Mao'!

[J. Owen]

Yes! Juliet Berto IS the greatest actress in the history of the cinema. Though her career was cut short by her tragically early death from cancer at the age of 42, she had one of the coolest careers in movies, making her debut in '2 or 3 Things...' and becoming Jacques Rivette's muse in the 1970s. (I was lucky enough to see the 12 and a half hour version of 'Out 1' recently, in which she is brilliant and hilarious as a sexy hustler who appears to stumble on a bohemian conspiracy). She is the glamorous face of 68-era cinematic radical modernism, a Louise Brooks for Lefties.

Oh, and I love 'La Chinoise' too - 'Art is not the reflection of reality, but the reality of reflection' vies with 'It is necessary to confront vague ideas with clear images' as the greatest movie line of all time, though inexplicably neither appeared on the AFI's recent list of greatest movie quotes.