le petit soldat (w&d godard)

More Godard. In the highly appropriate surroundings of Cine Universitario, a cinema that feels as though it continues to exist in a mid 70’s timewarp. (20 pesos for a cup of tea, something that reminded me of pre-Picture House carrot cake at the Ritzy in Brixton.) 

Le Petit Soldat is a strange, frenetic film. People are always running everywhere. They run to their cars, they run away from their cars, they’re constantly in a hurry, never getting anywhere. The camera indulges in sudden, swinging pans, from one character to another, or up the side of a building. The restless energy suggests a director chasing something down, without knowing exactly what. All the classic Godard tropes are there: moody boys, pretty girls, metaphysical conversation, outlandish US automobiles, slapstick gun-play, pretension, misogyny, but all of this is allied to an unwieldy political consciousness. It’s a bit like watching the natural history footage of a butterfly emerging from its cocoon, that frantic struggle which ends in a brilliant fluttering of wings, only in reverse. This is a film that gets dirtier, less funny, uglier, as it unfolds. The torture scenes in the last fifteen minutes, whilst perhaps soft fare compared to what we are permitted to see now, nevertheless still pack a punch, especially the waterboarding. The film documents techniques of cruelty which will be repeated ad nauseam over the coming decades. Images which had never been shown before with such vivid, manic clarity. A man with a wet T-shirt over his head, explaining how the air is being sucked out of his lungs, an image of grotesque beauty, stuff to make a CIA or KGB agent weep with joy, whilst the resistance screams with anger.

There’s nothing new about torture, but there was something new in presenting it so pornographically, like a Bataille novel brought to life. The director himself seems caught in the paradox of the seductive power of his camera to create images beyond the pale. How does he react? He pans, he cuts, he runs, he desperately seeks the seriousness that might be permitted in his crazy world of make-believe.