Band of Outsiders

After the Cinemascope and Technicolor of Contempt, Jean-Luc Godard made the much more gritty and black and white Band of Outsiders in 1964. Like his debut film, Breathless, it's something of an homage to American B-pictures, with numerous references to pop culture, both high and lowbrow, from T.S. Eliot to Loopy de Loop.

Based on an American crime novel, the story, what little of it there is, concerns two criminals, Arthur and Franz (Claude Brasseur and Sami Frey). They are in an English class with Odile (Anna Karina), and she tells them that a man staying in the house with her and her aunt has a large stack of money. The two men get the idea to steal it, but before they do they each try to romance Karina.

Band of Outsiders is considered by many to be Godard's best film; or at least his most accessible. It's the only one of his films to be on Time's list of best 100 films. It has a certain cache among filmmakers--Quentin Tarantino named his production company after the French title, A Band Apart. One can certainly see the influence the film had on subsequent movies like Pulp Fiction.

The first time I saw Band of Outsiders I was charmed, but this second viewing left me a little bored. Maybe it was the cold medication I'm on, but I got frustrated with the way Godard dithered. The plot moves in herks and jerks, filling in the space with little moments that are fine unto themselves but don't really add up to much. There's a long scene in which the teacher of the English class reads from Romeo and Juliet, and there's a funny moment when Franz suggests they have a moment of silence, and the entire soundtrack goes silent for a while.

The two most famous scenes are probably the dance number, pictured above, when the three do an improvisational "Madison," which certainly influenced Tarantino, and a scene in which the three of them attempt to set the record for running through the Louvre.

When Godard finally gets around to the robbery, it's comic, as these are two inept bandits. Watching them move around in their fedoras, black stockings over their faces, kind of upends the notion of "cool," and one suspects that Godard is having himself a laugh at this characters' expense.

Still, Band of Outsiders is an iconic film, one that has a breezy kind of charm and insouciance.