LES CARABINIERS Movie Review

The Soldiers

Two young jerks decide that it makes sense to enlist in the army and fight for their king, thanks to the irresistible lure of looting, rape, torture and killing without justification. Calling Jean-Luc Godard's Les Carabiniers controversial would be an understatement. It appeared in 1963 as France was getting over its Indochinese “adventure” and America's was just beginning. The film's purposely “tasteless” frontal assault on knee-jerk patriotism rewarded those who sat through it (there weren't a lot), with a final sequence that makes you rethink everything that's gone before. What doesn't work dramatically does work allegorically, and vice versa. Only Godard would have dared to make this picture, which was generally reviled yet remains an indispensable, fascinating artifact of its era. (Kenneth Tynan wrote upon seeing it: “If this is not a masterpiece, it will do until one comes along.”) Suppressed and difficult to see for years, Les Carabiniers finally surfaced in the U.S. at the 1967 New York Film Festival, and went into limited commercial release the following year. Screenplay by Godard, Jean Grualt, and Roberto Rossellini.

NEXT STOP … La Chinoise, Weekend, Grand Illusion

1963 80m/B GB IT FR Anna Karina, Genevieva Galea, Marino Mase; D: Jean-Luc Godard. VHS FCT