Special Screening

We have a rare opportunity to see Godard's Made in U.S.A. this Friday. It's perfect timing for introducing us to the full power and influence of genre. Here's what the Village Voice had to say about the film:

"Jean-Luc Godard's Made in U.S.A. is not the celluloid holygrail, but it's close enough. Four decades after its local premiere atthe 1967 New York Film Festival, the least-seen, most quintessentialmovie of Godard's great period gets an American distributor and even alimited run. Made in U.S.A. is, at least nominally, a political noir ... it's a thriller about people acting as if they're living in a movie. "You can fool the movie audience, but not me," the star, AnnaKarina, tells someone. Made in U.S.A. is self-reflexive as well as self-conscious: When characters—more than a few named for Godard's pet movie personalities—speak, it's often to speculate on the nature of language or note the time passing."

Landmark theaters, which is showing the film here at the Nuart, says:

Writer/director Jean-Luc Godard's mod film noir, first intended as a reworking of Raymond Chandler's classic The Big Sleep, but essentially based on Donald Westlake's novel The Jugger, is a Pop Art mixture of loving homage to the films of Nicholas Ray and Samuel Fuller and the realism favored by Godard. It is one of the filmmaker's pivotal features, and the last he made with his wife/star Anna Karina (Alphaville, Band of Outsiders, Pierrot le fou), who plays a young woman caught up in a mysterious, convoluted Cold War conspiracy. Due to legal difficulties, Made in U.S.A. never received an 'official' U.S release, but can now be seen in a new 35mm widescreen print (from the original camera negative) with a new translation and new subtitles. Co-starring Jean-Pierre Léaud, László Szabó and Marianne Faithfull as herself, singing "As Tears Go By." Cinematography by the legendary Raoul Coutard. (Fully subtitled) Official Website

The NY Times A.O. Scott just did a review here. It's a smart piece and worth reading.