Jean Luc Godard: The Essential Blu Ray Collection

Jean Luc Godard, that enfant terrible of French cinema, remains an enigmatic, and often frustrating, filmmaker long after most of his New Wave co-conspirators have fallen under the merciless wheels of time - most recently of course Jaques Rivette.

This blu ray boxset, which is released before a BFI retrospective, catapults us back to the beginnings of Godard, containing five of his first ten films, made during that prodigious run between Breathless in 1960 and Week End in 1967. Godard during this period made on average two films per year, with the uneven quality that such an endeavour produces.

Yet his films are always interesting, even if they can be infuriating. The films included in this selection in that sense are a fair cross-section, even if it doesn’t include three of his better films from the period (Vivre sa vie, Bande à parte and Two or Three Things I know About Her), it does include arguably his greatest film, the wonderful Alphaville. More of which in a minute.

First up is Breathless (À bout de souffle), the film which perhaps drew the world’s attention most forcefully to the rumblings of a New Wave of cinema in France, even if it isn’t as successful as its predecessor, Francois Truffaut’s The 400 Blows. Jean Paul Belmondo plays a Bogart wannabe, whose criminal behaviour and skirt chasing find him blotted on a pavement by the picture’s end. Included alongside the film are a host of extras, the best of which are Room 12. Hotel de suede, a beguiling documentary on the making of the film, and Godard, Made in the USA., which includes a description of Godard taking offence at a producer’s suggestion he shoot in summer instead of winter: “You are talking meteorology. I am talking cinema. Goodbye.”

Each film is introduced by academic Colin McCabe and the next film in the set, Une femme est une femme also features a new interview with Godard’s muse (and ex-wife) Anna Karina. She discusses the film, in which she plays a stripper living in Paris who becomes embroiled in a love triangle in pursuit of a child.

Next up is Godard’s Modernist masterpiece, Le Mépris (Contempt). Adapted from Alberto Moravia’s novel, Le Mépris is a biting and inventive satire on the film business. Sumptuously filmed in colour, the picture looks at the process of adaptation as a luddite American film producer tries to reign in Fritz Lang (played by himself) on the set of an adaptation of Homer’s The Odyssey. There are three accompanying documentaries examining the film, as well as an interview with Fritz Lang. It’s a film that truly benefits from this blu ray restoration, one which revels in the scenery of Capri, as well as its leading lady.

Pierrot Le Fou follows, Godard’s rather empty take on Warholian postmodernism. Back with Belmondo and Karina, this pop art, garishly coloured film noir (if that’s not too much of a contradiction in terms) follows a pair of doomed lovers as they take a crime fuelled spin across France. In addition to McCabe’s introduction there is another interview with Anna Karina and the enthralling documentary Godard: Love and Poetry, which examines Karina and Godard’s relationship, and its cinematic life.

Saving the best for last, Alphaville is a wonderfully subversive sci-fi noir which remains as thought provoking and thrilling as it must have been 50 years ago. Private Eye Lemmy Caution is sent on a mission to an emotionless planet, ruled by Von Braun, the planet’s evil overlord, and the disembodied voice of the computer he’s created Alpha 60. The film fizzes with Orwellian ideas, on the nature of surveillance, free thought, logic, love and poetry. Godard makes Paris look like a hellish, alien future dystopia without so much as a special effect or a painted set. There’s another interview with Karina as well as McCabe’s introduction.

A welcome addition to any Godard fan’s collection, and a terrific introduction for those yet to fall under the director’s intoxicating and often frustrating spell.