Band of Outsiders 1964

This is a film about three characters: Odile (Ana Karina), a rather naïve young girl, lives with her aunt in a house on the outskirts of Paris and attends a course to learn English, there she meets his two companions: Arthur (Claude Brasseur) and Franz (Sami Frey). Actually the two men are full-fledged criminals who will take advantage of Odile's confidence and convince her to steal from her old aunt's house.

With Band of Outsiders we could write several pages about the avant-garde and the cinematographic aspects found in one of the most important films of the French New Wave (Nouvelle Vague)  of which Godard is one of the main players. Conceived as a very personal review of American film noir, Band of Outsiders (Bande à part 1964) is surely his freest film and the one that contains the most moments of authentic "film joy" of Godard's entire filmography. In fact, it seems that the director had the need to radically change the record after the tough film Contempt ( Le Mépris 1963) when addressing this story of cops and thieves (the script part of the pulp novel  "Fools' Gold" by Dolores Hitchens ). This film is a cinematic game full of scenes, dialogues and images that run in the form of digressions to the police plot and focus on the triangle formed by  its three protagonists: the candid Odile, the opportunist Arthur and the introverted Franz. These relations whose evolution Godard is allowed to preview in the vertiginous assembly in parallel to the visuals of the initial credits (something practically impossible to perceive in a first viewing), this is the first of the many games within the film.

For the spectators who are getting involved in the film, we can mention some phrases chosen at random that could frame the film: 3 weeks ago. A lot of money. English classes. A house by the river. A romantic girl.  Through the voice-over, Godard continues playing with the idea of chance and the banality of the plot, the story of the relationship between the three characters. Arthur, sure of himself, starts his strategy of seduction towards the "romantic Odile", before the helpless look of Franz (who discovers with disappointed how Odile refuses again and again his cigarettes and immediately will accept those from Arthur). As Godard tells us: "Now we could digress and talk about the feelings of Odile, Franz and Arthur, however everything is already clear enough. So let the images speak and close the parentheses. "

And the images certainly speak, show, suggest and play; Arthur caressing Odile's cheek, Odile putting on Franz's hat, Franz and Arthur reading news of robberies and crimes in the press, the three characters successively exchanging their position (and the relationship between them) around the coffee table. And, of course, the already legendary sequence with Arthur, Franz and Odile dancing in synchronized choreography one of the wonderful musical themes of Michel Legrand (sequence quoted by Tarantino, fervent admirer of this film, in Pulp Fiction). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1MKUJN7vUk  Also American director Hal Hartley uses this scene as reference for his film” Surviving desire https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7y4ATS5RTeg

After the sequence in the cafe, Franz and Arthur play flipping a coin up in the air and bet who will stay with Odile: "Arthur chose face. Odile screamed "heads" when she picks up the coin that had come out tails. Franz drives away sad and lonely, with feverish eyes "while Arthur continues his game of seduction. In the subway ("Arthur and Odile descended to the center of the earth"), Odile sings J'entends, j'entends, a song by Jean Ferrat from a poem by Louis Aragon, in one of the most beautiful sequences of the film: the images of the metro and the streets of Paris, its travelers, passers-by and beggars, dialogue with the poem of Aragon to take us to the plane of Franz, sleeping alone, which Godard sets against the plane of Arthur and Odile in bed.

Once Arthur, impelled by his sinister family (plotting to betray Franz), decides to put his plan into action, Franz begins to open up with Odile: asking her to decide between him and Franz to flee after the robbery (they would go north, to "the land of Jack London: a new digression, with Franz telling the story on camera), giving her the book of the novel that makes him think about her as well as reading to her a fragment of the novel. On her way to the house, Odile looks at the Louvre, Franz explains that he once read that an American had taken 9 minutes 45 seconds to visit the museum. So, while they wait for the night to fall and be able to commit the robbery (all according to Arthur, and referring to the tradition of bad B movies, they decide to do the same). The brief but magnificent sequence of Franz, Arthur and Odile running through the galleries of the Louvre is another of the playfully magical moments of the film. This memorable scene was directly referenced by Bernardo Bertolucci in his film “The Dreamers” 2003, the story of another love triangle.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4MV1NLejQ0

The scene lasts less than 40 seconds but has become an icon of world cinema. In fact, the whole movie is full of poetry made. This is mentioned in the special DVD launched by the the criterion collection, it has references of Paris in Cinq jours (Pierre Colombier-Nicolas Rimsky); in it Godard invented a character named Jimmie Johnson, an American from California who toured the entire museum in 9 minutes with 45 seconds. At the end of the scene, Godard's voice reports that Arthur, Franz and Odile broke the record by two seconds.

The scene can be interpreted in different ways. There will be some critics who commented that Godard simply presents the shots, without establishing any logical relationship with the whole film.. Jean Luc Godard, being an important figure of the transgressive avant-garde group "The French New Wave" (Nouvelle Vague), expressed his ideology and the conception of his time in an open manner. In the scene, the friends run in the opposite direction to the circulation of the assistants, and they mock the security guard when he tries to stop them in their run. The image could have all the burden of freedom young people dismissed in those years, a desire for a different world.

This will be the last moment of play between the three characters: the plan must be executed and, after a failed first attempt, in which Odile begins to be aware of the true feelings of Franz and Arthur towards her, the theft is consummated and Arthur finally exposes his treason pretending to hide most of the loot. When Franz and Odile return to the house (like the hero of a legendary novel, Franz has a dark premonition), they witness the shooting between Arthur and his uncle, in which both of them die, Arthur's last thought before dying was Odile's face.

The game is over. The shy Franz has finally gotten the love of the candid Odile and both flee "to the warm countries" on board a ship (in a wonderful tribute to Chaplin’s The Immigrant) in search of new adventures. Godard makes an ironic promise, he will see it in one of his next films, this time in Cinemascope and Tecnicolor called “Pierrot Le Fout”

Director: Jean-Luc Godard

Original Title: Bande à part /

Year: 1964 / Country: France / Production Company: Columbia Films / Duration: 95 min. / Format: B / N - 1.37: 1

Screenplay: Jean-Luc Godard / Photography: Raoul Coutard / Music: Michel Legrand

Cast: Anna Karina, Claude Brasseur, Sami Frey, Louisa Colpeyn, Chantal Darget, Ernest Menzer

Release date: 07/29/1964 (Locarno Film Festival)