This is why I love Godard. He turned a 'commercial' project he did in order to get financing for "Hail Mary" into one of his most enthralling late works, a sleeker, leaner, funnier, lighter version of the sort of film Godard made after the 60's. The film follows four different 'stories' in the Hotel Concorde Saint-Lazare in Paris, where the entire film is set. Something of a deconstruction of the detective film or film-noir on paper, but the film is more formally interesting than it is story-wise (though its 'narrative' is often very amusing and overall very entertaining). Although critical reviews of "Detective" seem to be positive (all the ones I can find anyway, including Variety and the New York Times among others), the film is overall not too popular, and from my experience not too well-liked by Godard fans either. Shame as well because the fact that "Detective" combines some of the zip and light humor of Godard's early work with the more experimental sensibilities of later Godard films doesn't mean this is in any way lacking as a filmic experiment. It's gorgeously-shot with superb, intricate mise-en-scène, and features some of the most interesting and complex editing in any Godard film, but what really steals the show is the sound, which is an entire world all on its own. The visual splendor of the film is not only complimented, but overshadowed by the creative sound editing and mixing, genius use of music, and aural gags and puns. Dedicated to Edgar G. Ulmer, Clint Eastwood, and John Cassavetes, "Detective" is one of Godard's best, and likely his most criminally under-appreciated. It does ask for a patient, observant audience willing to listen carefully, but rewards that patience with great comic energy and some fascinating and beautiful aural experimentation. One of the best casts Godard ever worked with as well.
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analyzes the changed role of humanistic (public) intellectuals in the Western societies (a trend that started around the last quarter of 20th century and, as we can see today, it intensifies in the new century), and how this change has influenced everybody’s behavior and world view. From around the 18th century Western intellectuals had a leading role in European historical/cultural development. They were people who tried to root spirituality in socio-political realities. They were carriers of democratic sensibility and tried to create a unity between culture and the masses of people, they risked their comforts and sometimes life for the sake of existential truth. According to “Detective”, it is not true anymore – intellectuals today are transformed into technical specialists hired by the social powers.
Godard represents such intellectuals in the film. One of them – a private investigator with an air of a philosopher and a poet (Laurent Terzieff with his charm of other-worldliness), but his thinking about life is reduced and flattened. His nephew Isidore (Jean-Pierre Leaud 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 “Detective” Godard offers his classification of human groups/clans today’s post-industrial societies consist of. One group filled by those who live by investing money – they are personified by an intelligent and educated married couple (Natalie Baye and Claude Brasseur – both are masters of gentle characterization, through the art of acting, of the states of the human soul). The other group is those who multiply 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 Godard metaphorically names “mafia” – it is people who live and make their fortunes on extorting money (Godard’s Mafiosi take from people money with a matter-of-factness of tax collectors and righteousness of 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 private love life of people belonging to them). The emotional and intellectual condition of the young people is characterized by Godard through several personages 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 on to be able to understand better the future of US and Europe.
Please visit: www.actingoutpolitics.com to read the essays about “Detective” (with analysis of forty shots from the film) and other Godard’s films, and also essays dedicated to films by Bergman, Resnais, Bunuel, Bresson, Kurosawa, Pasolini, Antonioni, Cavani, Fassbinder, Bertolucci, Alain Tanner and Moshe Mizrahi.
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