Summary
In a comfortable apartment in France, a small group of students are studying the teachings
of Chairman Mao of China. They discuss how they intend to convert the world to a
Maoist community, using terrorism if necessary.
Review
La Chinoise, possibly Godard’s most overtly political work, is very much a film
of its time. The mid-1960s was a period of great social change and political tension.
America was at war with Vietnam, relations between Russia and the West were growing ever
cooler, and the Far East was awakening to the hymn of the Chinese cultural revolution.
Nearer to home, there was increasing tension between the French government, public-sector
workers and the student population, which would come to a head in the following year with
the student riots. In a way, it would have been more surprising if a French film
director had not created a film like La Chinoise. Godard just happened to
be around at the time when the film needed to be made.
Here, Godard’s method of film-making is at its most primitive and extreme.
In a sense, it is hardly a film at all, but a series of sketches nailed crudely together,
interspersed with some pretty wild pop-art like imagery. The end result is raggedy,
colourful, a bit rough round the edges, but also quite witty. Jean-Pierre Léaud
and Anne Wiazemsky are both delightful as Guillaume and Veronique, a perfect portrayal
of the naivety of university students from bourgeois backgrounds.
It is not clear from this film where Godard’s political allegiances lie. We
can see that he is against the hypocrasy of the Amercain interventionalist policy, which
he suggests are derived from imperialistic motives. However, it is less certain
where he stands with regard to the Maoist communist ideal. The discussion between
the students appears incredibly naïve, didactic, almost to the point of self-mockery.
And the fact that the students are evidently from a middle class background, living in
a comfortable apartment, seems to further underline the contradiction between their personal
circumstances and their apparently deeply held beliefs.
It is plausible to regard La Chinoise as Godard’s view of how students consider
the politics of the time rather than as a portrayal of his own political views.
With that in mind, the film reads as a very perceptive, almost affectionate, study
of the naivety of young adults. For these people, freed from the need to work for
a living as they pursue their studies in comfortable surroundings, it is easy to contrive
a woolly-minded simplistic picture of the world, and to believe that a few bombs in one
or two school classrooms will solve everything.
As the film reveals in its final segment, the dream ends as soon as the degree course
has ended and its architects step outside into the real world. Godard seems consciously
to be admitting that his film will change nothing but that it is nonetheless valuable
to at least make his statement.
© James Travers 2000
For more on Jean-Luc Godard see:
The life of Jean-Luc Godard
Best of the French New Wave
A bout de souffle
Vivre sa vie
Alphaville
Masculin, féminin
Le Mépris
Pierrot le fou
Eloge de l'amour
Buy films by Jean-Luc Godard
More about the French New Wave
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