Elliot's Watching week of 7-11-21: Godard et al

 Elliot’s Watching - Week of 7-11-21

Jean-Luc Godard’s 1964 film, Band of Outsiders (Bande a part) must have been, at least in part, a response to Truffaut’s sweet and sentimental story about a threesome, Jules et Jim. Godard’s is also about a 3-some, two guys and a girl (Anna Karina in a great role!), that is not in the least “sweet”: the 3 meet up in an adult-ed English class (one of the men presciently notes that he’s going to drop English and study Chinese, as that will be the dominant culture in the future), where the Karina (Odile) lets slip that in one of the other tenants in the suburban house where she’s rooming has a huge stash of francs - and the two guys, Arthur (he tells the naif Odile that has last name is “Rimbaud, one of several literary in-jokes) and Franz, hatch a robbery plot. But these guys (and they seem a bit too old for the part) are dopes and their entire plan is cock-eyed from the start; for most of the movie the robbery scheme is played as a high comedy of blunders, but in the end, no surprise, things go radically wrong in every imaginable way. We don’t watch this film, today, for its plot; rather, for its highly imaginative use of cinematography - most notably in the dash through the Louvre (how did they get permission to film that? Maybe they didn’t) and the terrific scene in the diner, with the great dance sequence and the surprising minute of silence. Also, we watch this film to see a Paris that is no longer - mostly grungy and not at all scene or touristic (scars of the war seem still evident), yet in some ways an idyllic setting - esp. the rooming house in one of the Paris suburbs; lots of scenes involving driving - easy to do in Paris and environs back in the day, no traffic jams, parking everywhere - it seems many lifetimes ago, and not at all the way we think of Paris on film - it’s the dark flipside of the record. 

John Dower’s true-crime documentary Sophie (2021, on Netflix) is a three-part examination of the death of the eponymous Sophie (Toscan du Plantier  in remote West Cork, Ireland, in 1996 and the failure of the Irish police to come up w/ sufficient evidence to charge and convict anyone of the murder - though not without arresting a villager who aroused many suspicions through his bizarre and at times self-incriminating behavior (he was a known eccentric even in the small, highly tolerant community in which he lived). The series gives us a great sense of the small town of Schull and a pretty good portrait of the late Sophie, through interviews with her family members and friends, although mystery surrounds her throughout the series: Who was she? Why did she retreat to Ireland sans family? Why did her prominent husband make no appearance in the film? The film will keep you thinking and guessing, and the crew knows well how to end each of the first two episodes at a cliffhanger or crisis point. On the other hand, like so many t-c dox, the film could be cut by about 25 percent - like, we know already that this is a town with great diversity and with tolerance of artists and others with “alternate life styles,” one might say. Still a good film - and spoilers will occur right here so skip this if you haven’t seen the film: Although the film does everything possible to build toward a satisfying conclusion with the trial in absentia of the local suspect,  it’s impossible to think that the case was really closed. Yes, there’s a lot of behavior (and hearsay) about the suspected killer, but none of it comes close to conviction beyond a reasonable doubt; the cops came up w/ no forensic evidence, and no witnesses - and I can’t imagine an American jury convicting him on the basis of suspicion - yeah, he seems like a self-important oddball and would-be writer, w/ a violent streak, but that’s not a enough to convict a guy, I would hope - at least not in the U.S. In my view, he was railroaded and the Irish cops, who’d never encountered a murder investigation!, screwed up big time.