Review of La Chinoise (1967) by Ian R — 08 Jun 2010

By this stage, Godard was really doing away with conventional narrative and was in transition to his post-1968 work with the Dziga Vertov group. Drawing heavily on the ideas Brecht brought to the theatre, this isn't a film for everyone. We see the camera crew, hear the director asking questions of the characters, scenes are interrupted by slogans and still images from sources as varied as Chinese Communist art and Marvel comics.

The film is a loose adaptation of Dostoyevsky's novel "The Possessed" and features five middle-class students discussing their Marxist-Leninist ideals in a series of five dialogues.

it's in these dialogues where the real focus of the film takes place: this isn't so much a political essay as a character study, of five politically charged characters. the disrupting elements and the pop iconography don't detract from the energy and tension building up to the non-climax.

The nature of the (anti)climax gives a clue to what I feel was Godard's real intention in this film. far from being a pro-Maoist diatribe, it's a prescient critique of an impassioned, but misguided, youth that feel they have learned the slogans and the theories but have no real life experience, are far removed from the proletariat they claim to be fighting for.