Every Man for Himself [Blu-ray]

This is just a fantastic release from The Criterion Collection! It's no surprise here that it looks and sounds great. It's also nice to have more post-70s Godard on blu-ray. This film, referred by Godard himself as his "second first film", is just as challenging, innovative, funny and rich as any of his 60s films. This release from Criterion is also stacked with supplements. It took me a couple of days to just watch those. There is great value here and if you're already a Godard fan, you know what you're getting yourself into already. Buy it.

Jean-Luc Goddard provided social commentary and star-driven work after returning from a hiatus from film-making. The sexual and professional lives of three people are followed to display the human viewpoints and changes are dealt with in an ever-changing social milieu. He created a thinking person's story about work, relationships, and the ideas and thoughts that freedom can foist on them. After having made films for over 20 years, Goddard called this particular film, his "second first film." I believe this film must be watched and studied more than once to grasp its true depth.

One of the essential, artistically defining films of the great French director, Jean-Luc Godard. A must-see for anyone with a sincere interest in the art and language of cinema.

i tell you this movie i dont know. there is a lot of talk about anal sex. the ginger actress is very beautiful.

At the center of this film is a scene that seems a kind of allegory that implicates film-making itself (or maybe art more generally) in the structures of domination and commerce that have led the film's protagonists into dead-ends of ennui and acedia. A businessman (Roland Amstutz), while doing business on the telephone, stages a bizarre sexual scene for himself, an employee, and two prostitutes that seems to be more about giving orders and having them obeyed than about sexual pleasure per se. In fact, during the scene, everyone (including the prostitute Isabelle [Isabelle Huppert]) seems just business-like and disaffected. This is the businessman as director or director as businessman, and it perhaps suggests Godard's own discomfiture with what his art, if it is to be seen at all, requires of him in this day and age (the film was made in 1980). The actual film director in the movie, Paul Godard (Jacques Dutronc), is as messed-up, petulant, and narcissistic a character as I have seen in many a day, and one can understand why his girlfriend Denise (Nathalie Baye) is ready to call it quits and make a curiously ambiguous gesture toward freedom. Off she bicycles into the country, but it becomes clear that she wants to hold on to the apartment in the city that she shared with Paul -- so even her effort to find some kind of new life seems compromised by a financial consideration. Even so, she is the movie's most likeable character, though Isabelle might be likeable too, if we had a clue about what she was aiming for with the income that she makes from providing sexual services. And Paul, who has a child and an ex-wife, cannot relate to them except self-pityingly and crudely. All in all, the movie comes across as a dark satire, with Paul's final comeuppance totally appropriate in a movie in which the wish to make others dance to our tunes seems, on the part of men, at least, to be all that life is about. The women are nicer -- but it's not clear what is available to them in the way of satisfying lives when the other half lives as it does.I had seen "Day for Night" quite recently -- Truffaut's movie about movie-making that angered Godard to the point of calling Truffaut a "liar." A liar about what? Perhaps about the complicity of the movie business in an economic system that is both demoralizing and unavoidable. Truffaut's director in HIS movie (and the part is played by Truffaut himself) has plenty of problems, heaven knows, but they are the problems that come with dealing with some people who are difficult in different ways for different reasons and circumstances. In other words, there's an acceptance of distinct "characters" as interesting in "Day for Night," and you have none of the rather flattening effect of Godard's satire. Truffaut is not without satire, but it's much gentler, and his treatment of his actors is tolerant, within limits, of the problems that their temperaments cause for his project. It's easy to see, I think, how, from a firm anti-capitalist viewpoint, Truffaut's movie could be seen as sentimental and maybe even an illusion.Both movies are obviously self-referential about the process of movie-making, but the self-referentiality is made manifest in different ways. In Truffaut, there's the contrast between the basically straightforward narrative about getting a movie made and the completely non-chronological way in which the movie that is being made is filmed and put together. In "Every Man for Himself," the self-referentiality is in the "baring of the device" that Godard employs -- the quick cutting, the slo-mo and jerky effects, the odd framings of figure and face that call attention to themselves, often strikingly. These are two smart movie makers. Do I have to choose?

I love movies but find the idea of film study a haven for narcissists..Anything goes, but often badly..Most entertaining on this DVD is the special segment of two clips from Dick Cavett shows where Cavettstretches himself silly to try valiantly to provide his audience with just a glimmer of penetration insidethe mind of Mr. G for something that might shed light on his films. He fails miserably, as have I in watchingas many as I can take..The Cavett segments end with Cavett finally asking Mr. G to respond to the many viewers who like me have invested heavily in looking for why the French, aside from national pride, seehim as a darling of the cinema..His final response was that film is just imagery..OK..Fine with me..So where do we go from there? Apparently, nowhere..My first exposure was "Breathless" which was bothdisjointed and I now learn launched the star status of Jean Paul Belmondo..But why?? Film historianstell me that technique and content introduced there by Mr. G marked him for icon status..Maybe so..So to prove myself wrong I have purchased a number of DVDs, with this one most certainly the last..SoI take a stab at humor to muse that since the French are nuts about Jerry Lewis movies, Mr. G works..Granted, we Americans are believers that movies are story telling with some structure and coherence,Mr. G admits to no such boundaries and seems to relish that his art is purely visual, beyond a story.OK. Let' s go with that..What is this film about, visually or blindly? We have an array of couples who arein the usual French film stages of discontent and resignation, who spew dialogue which at first hearingsounds unique, but upon reflection is nonsensical. Give Mr. G his due..This guy can shoot up a visualstorm..In this regard, his response to Cavett is right on the mark..His craft is surely imagery, regardlessof what else he is about..or if he is about anything else..He explains this film to Cavett as revealing thedifficulty faced by all people who work. So he chooses a prostitute as the vehicle for making his point.Comically, the most coherent dialogue in the film emerges from a wealthy John who orchestrates twoprostitutes and a lackey through their paces in a choreography of connected sex acts with the John having orange lipstick applied to him in this chain of events..Yes. This scene is visually compelling..Notthat there is anything wrong with adults spending their time so..But this takes me back to where I beganwith Breathless..What is all the fuss about? Maybe I am missing something about wearing orange lipstick. But I doubt it..Cavett spent time with nothing to show for it..So have I.OK..Fine with me.

This movie is an excellent example of Godard's SonImage trademark. It's a perfect collection for film student.

Three people in France, 1980. Paul, a mediocre filmmaker, Denise, who wants a change of job and scene, and Isabelle, a prostitute getting weary of that life. Some striking scenes, the most impressive has Isabelle and three other people in a hotel room getting up to some strange activities indeed.

Terrific presentation of DVD with very useful extras.