Détective (1985) - film review

In a Parisian hotel, two detectives are investigating a murder which took place two years ago. Meanwhile, a married couple, Emile and Francoise Chenal, are trying to extort money from a boxer manager, Jim Fix Warner.  But Warner is also hounded by the Mafia and, despite fixing the boxing match, it looks unlikely that he can pay off all his debts.  The two stories become inextricably linked.

In this film, Jean-Luc Godard takes a conventional detective thriller and manages to produce something quite original – although the end result is far from accessible.

The film is loaded with Godard’s cinematographic devices – such as rapid inter-cutting of apparently unconnected scenes, dialogue interrupted by unexpected musical intrusions, and some blatant allegorical imagery.  However, whilst such techniques were fresh and exciting in Godard’s early career, the same approach now looks rather tired and distinctly depassé in this 1980s thriller-drama.  Instead of adding depth to the film, this cinematographic artistry seems merely to render an already complicated story virtually incomprehensible.

This is a shame because the film could have succeeded as a conventional drama – it does have a very strong cast (which includes the (in)famous singer Johnny Hallyday) and the plot (if you have the patience to follow it) is not without merit.  In the search for originality in his art, Godard is apparently hampered by his own past achievements.  Nowhere is this more apparent than in this film.

© James Travers 2000

Détéctive analyzes the changed role of humanistic intellectuals in Western societies (a trend that started around the last quarter of the 20th century and, as we can see today, has intensified in the new century), and how this change has influenced everyone’s behavior and world view.  From around the 18th century, Western intellectuals had a leading role in European historical and cultural development.  They were people who tried to root spirituality in socio-political realities.  They were carriers of a democratic sensibility and tried to create a unity between culture and the masses of people. They risked their comforts and sometimes lives for the sake of existential truth. According to Détéctive, this is no longer true - intellectuals today are transformed into technical specialists hired by social powers.  

Godard represents such intellectuals in the film.  One of them is a private investigator with the air of a philosopher and poet (Laurent Terzieff, with his charm of other-worldliness), but his thinking about life is reduced and flattened.  His nephew Isidore (Jean-Pierre Léaud, in his top performance as a comic actor) is the personification of today’s liberal sensibility (gentle and conformist) and the main focus of Godard’s tragic vision of today’s advanced societies where intellectuals betray their traditional historic-moral mission.

In Détéctive, Godard offers his classification of the human groups which today’s post-industrial societies consist of.  One group is those who live by investing money - they are personified by an intelligent and educated married couple (Natalie Baye and Claude Brasseur, both masters of gentle characterization). The other group is those who grow money invested into their entrepreneurial adventures - they are personified by sports events businessman (Johnny Halliday, who proved to be a very sophisticated actor).  But the main clan (which Godard metaphorically names Mafia) is people who live and make their fortunes by extorting money. (Godard’s Mafiosi take money from people with the matter-of-factness of tax collectors and the righteousness users of taxpayers’ funds for their personal self-enrichment through government contracts).

The film is dedicated to the analysis of relationships between these clans and to the depiction of the private love lives of the people belonging to them. The emotional and intellectual condition of the young people is characterized by Godard through several protagonists, including the Wise Young Girl (Julie Delpy’s first, irresistible performance).  This point of the film is especially important for American viewers today to contemplate and better understand the future of the US and Europe.

Read articles dedicated to films by Godard, Resnais, Bergman, Pasolini, Cavani, Bunuel, Kurosawa and Bertolucci at: www.actingoutpolitics.com.

© Victor (Seattle USA) 2011

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