Word: laing
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...La Chinoise. If Godard's current films--reportedly staged cinema-verite, interview-oriented, documentary political essays--represent a completely new development in his work, then we can consider Made in USA, Deux ou Trois Choses que Je Sais D'Elle, La Chinoise, and Weekend transition pieces between the narrative power of Pierrot le Fou and the films to come. The first two are easily dismissable as films which fail to solve problems finally turned into assets in La Chinoise: audience alienation through revelations of the camera itself and of actors as actors; a growing feeling that truth must extend into...
...La Chinoise reduces style to static set-ups and simple tracks ("The tracking snot is a political act," says Jean-Luc mystically); color is stripped largely to the primary range. Both decisions complement the didacticism of the young Parisian Maoists by omitting all but the starkest and most basic cinematic devices, also by reminding us constantly that we're watching a movie. Perversely, the lean movements and bright colors give La Chinoise charm and humor (not, I suspect, two of Godard's favorite critical adjectives) and make its polemicism entertaining...
...apartment-house assassination sequences make the real world a complex support of Francis Jeanson's assertion that the students are drasticalliy oversimplifying. But the ending replaces conclusive directorial statement with irony, and signifies that Godard didn't know what kind of statement he wanted to make. I saw La Chinoise in Paris when it opened, and report regrettably that the color of the American prints (I've seen three) doesn't come remotely close to the sharp clear tones of the original...
...Despite cloth rationing, some Habaneras manage to look surprisingly chic, sewing their own miniskirts and making their own net stockings. Eating out is expensive and popular, and when a restaurant adds a new dish to the standard menu of fish and rice, the news spreads quickly. Cubans call Havana La Parásita, the parasite living off the land. Each year the city dies a little more but, for the regime, Havana is not where the fate of Communism on the island will be decided...
...judged on merit alone." Not enough Cubans share his enthusiasm, however, to usher in Castro's Utopia any time soon. How else can a social order be explained in which fully 2,400,000 of Cuba's 8,000,000 people belong to Comites para la defensa de la revolución, charged mainly with watching their neighbors...