La Chinoise (1967)
Directed by Jean-Luc Godard

Film Review

True fans of the director Jean-Luc Godard broadly divide into two categories: those who say that his career ended with La Chinoise; and those who insist (with an evil glint in their eyes) that this film marked the start of his career. Admittedly, there are those who rate all of Godard's work as being consistently brilliant, but these tend to be in the minority.  One thing is clear: La Chinoise marked a decisive shift in Godard's approach to filmmaking.  The romanticism and gentle quirkiness of the early Godard, which had contributed to his popularity, were gone, or at least downgraded, and in their place was a truculence and frenetic tendency for abstraction which gave the director much more freedom of expression, whilst making him far less accessible to a mainstream audience.   Whilst some regard La Chinoise as an ill-conceived cinematic joke, others would argue passionately that it is the most important film of the Twentieth Century.

La Chinoise is a film that was deemed radical even for the French New Wave, who since the late 1950s had been redefining and reinvigorating cinema by various leaps and bounds.  Yet it is also a film that was remarkably timely when it was first seen in 1967.   The mid-1960s was a period of great social change and political tension.  America was at war with Vietnam, relations between Russia and the West were growing ever cooler, and the Far East was awakening to the hymn of the Chinese cultural revolution.  Nearer to home, there was increasing tension between the French government, public-sector workers and the student population (plus ça change), which would come to a head the following year in a series of national demonstrations and riots.  With its depiction of a group of students, all deeply disillusioned with the political situation in France, planning direct action to achieve social change, La Chinoise is extraordinarily prophetic.  Many of those who saw the film in 1967 dismissed it as fanciful: this could never happen in France!  How wrong they were.  Godard may not have instigated the events of May '68 (at least there is no evidence that he did), but he definitely felt the Zeitgeist.

As would be increasingly the case in much of Godard's subsequent work, La Chinoise is a film that is both stylistically uninhibited and textually ambiguous.  Godard makes absolutely no concessions to the expectations, ignorance or patience of his audience and, like any truly great artist, lets rip his creative drive without fear of the consequences.  The result is a startling montage of ideas, images and sounds that propels the art of cinema into not just a new direction but an entirely new universe.  Whether through genius, insanity or the onset of midlife crisis, Godard has seized the rulebook by which filmmakers have abided for decades and blown it to atoms, probably with a hearty maniacal laugh.

The startling way in which La Chinoise is shot and constructed is perfect for its subject: it emphasises the rebellious nature and moral confusion of the five protagonists and also adds to the film's inherent ambiguity (which has doubtless inspired many a doctoral thesis).  The simplest interpretation of the film is that it is a satire on the naivety of young intellectuals, who believe that a simplistic appropriation of a political ideology will solve all of society's ills.  The failure of the five students to achieve anything as a result of their summer-long excursion into Marxist-Leninist thinking, other than a suicide and the killing of two casual bystanders, would suggest that slavish adherence to political theory is at best a waste of time, at worst dangerous when applied to the real world.

Perhaps what the film is really saying is that no political system can ever achieve any lasting good in the world.  As the film points out, there are two kinds of Communism - the Russian kind and the Chinese kind.  The former is acceptable to that force for moral good that goes by the name America, the other is an evil that must be eradicated from the face of the Earth.  (Or is it the other way round?)  The fact that the same political ideology has engendered two political systems, one of which (we can't be sure which) is bad, would suggest that political ideology is inherently a bad thing.  In his later films, Godard would be just as scathing on the failings of capitalism and consumerism - other ideologies that have got above themselves and which merely add to the sum total of human misery.  And, as if that wasn't enough, he would also have a go at religion and science.  The only hope that Godard appears to offer mankind is art - pure art, intelligent art, art that is untainted by narrow self-interest and shallow commercial expediency.  Now available on DVD at a very reasonable price.

Film Synopsis

One summer, whilst living together in an apartment lent to them by a wealthy friend, five students discuss how they can apply the teachings of Mao Tse-tung to their own lives.  They are: Guillaume, an actor, Véronique, a future teacher, Henri, a scientist, Kirilov, a painter, and Yvonne, who is the group's unpaid domestic help.  To achieve their political aims - a society governed along Marxist-Leninist lines - they agree to carry out a political assassination.  Only Henri objects, and he ends up being excluded from the group.  Véronique botches the operation and kills two innocent people by mistake.  Meanwhile, Kirilov has decided to commit suicide, based on the argument that because Marxist-Leninist exists, everything is permitted.  The holiday over, the surviving four students go their separate ways, having made the first tentative steps in a long march...