The ‘new wave’ of French cinema during the 1960s was all about breaking conventions and rejecting traditional filmmaking, and Jean-Luc Godard was the most influential director in the movement. But his 1967 film ‘Week-End’ is so weird and so disturbing, why in the world is it being reviewed on on a motoring website 58 years after its release? Because of the famous ‘traffic jam‘ long take.
This tracking shot is almost 8 minutes long. The shot follows protagonists Corinne and Roland Durand as they try to navigate a gridlocked traffic jam. While the other motorists are resigned to their fate, Roland ignores the road rules and drives in the oncoming lane, unsuccessfully trying to cut back in front of other cars. Is car culture is turning the world into a violent disaster? Is that was Godard was trying to say?
Who knows! The movie is almost unwatchable. Long soliloquies about political ideologies are followed by scenes of fiery car crashes, with the heroine screeching ‘Oh no! My Hermes handbag!’ as she helplessly watches it burn. Godard seemed to have something against the bourgeoises people and their capitalist ways. Something about French bourgeois society collapsing under the weight of its consumerist preoccupations.
But the ‘traffic jam’ does include some really cool, vintage cars like the 1961 Alfa Romeo Giulietta Spider, 1967 Citroën 2CV, Fiat 850 Coupé, NSU Sport Prinz, and a glorius 1967 Volvo 1800 S.
Available to watch occasionally on Turner Classic Movies, the remainder of the film follows this lovely French couple’s idyllic weekend trip to the countryside to kill their parents and get their inheritance, which devolves into a never-ending nightmare of car crashes, revolution, and eventually cannibalism. Watch at your own peril!
The Missus and I once watched a French movie for a date night. Reputedly a romance. In the end, the couple threw themselves into the foundation of a building at a construction site, not because they were sad, but because they were … bored? Movie ended with an ‘x-ray’ view of them suspended in cement.
Last French movie we ever watched.
Yup… those French-ies make some weird movies. Especially the new wave stuff that was trying to be weird.
.
Any culture that could come up with a car as weird as the Citroen SM was boung to make strange films.
.
But I did like the assassin movie ‘Le Samourai’ from 1967.
.
https://demaras.com/2024/03/29/the-cars-of-le-samourai-1967/
And because of how I feel about French movies, I simply can’t ‘like’ this post. Now animated German surrealistic movies…that I could like.
Ha!