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Bande A Part
on DVD (1964)
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Brief synopsis of Bande A Part
Jean-Luc Godard continues his fascination with dime store novels and American crime films with BAND OF OUTSIDERS, a free-spirited romp in the same vein as the director's breakthrough smash, BREATHLESS. The story follows two friends, Arthur (Claude Brasseur) and Franz (Sami Frey), who are searching for a way to make a big score. When Franz meets the beautiful Odile (Anna Karina) and she informs him of a large chunk of cash her aunt keeps hidden in her house, the duo are convinced that this is their lucky break. Odile is a sensitive young woman who, out of fear and guilt, opposes their plan, Arthur and Franz coax her to go along with the idea. When the time comes to pull of the heist, a miscalculation delays the seemingly perfect plan, resulting in a confrontation that has dire consequences. More traditional than BREATHLESS in its technical execution, Godard's film nonetheless sparkles with freshness and originality by using a comical, poetic narration (by Godard himself), as well as Michel Legrand's bouncy score. As the ambiguous threesome, Karina, Brasseur, and Frey each give performances that combine satirical melodrama, overflowing hipness, and moving sincerity, providing the film with its heart, and making it much more than a mere genre reworking.
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Critics Reviews
Radio Times
A playful effort from Jean-Luc Godard in which his then wife, the radiant Anna Karina, teams up with a couple of petty crooks — Sami Frey and Claude Brasseur — in a hair-brained scheme to rob her aunt. In characteristic fashion, Godard drops the plot at every opportunity to indulge in homages to various Hollywood genres — the thriller, the musical and so on — and to allow his camera to idolise Karina's beauty. Some may find this film irritating beyond endurance, but in its day its freshness was greeted like rain in a drought. Thirty years later, a certain Quentin Tarantino rediscovered the film and liked it so much he named his production company “A Band Apart”.
Los Angeles Times
"...The wonderful thing about BAND OF OUTSIDERS is that the daring elements that jazzed audiences then have the same power to intoxicate all these years later..."
Time Out
Godard at his most off-the-cuff takes a 'Série Noire' thriller (Fool's Gold by Dolores Hitchens) and spins a fast...
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