Weekend

Described as his “most savage attack upon the values of Western capitalist society”, Jean-Luc Godard’s Weekend (1967) is a brute of a film through which Godard critiques the values of the capitalist west, resulting in “an apocalyptic vision of the collapse of civilization in the West.” Despite not directly capturing the events of the time – La Chinoise (1967) being a more honest account of the state of affairs in France 1967 – Weekend still successfully manages to portray the mood of the time it is made in. Worlds apart from much of his work earlier of the same decade – À bout de souffle (1960), Une femme est une femme (1961), Les petit soldat (1963), Bande à part (1964) etc. – Weekend was intended to not only critique or disenchant the audiences which had come to admire Godard’s earlier ‘bourgeois’ work, but full on attack them.

Perhaps the most famous scene in the film, and also one of the best examples of Godard’s provoking style, is the traffic jam sequence, described here by Peter Cowie:

A traffic jam serves as an admirable metaphor for the fatal indigestion afflicting consumer society. In a brilliant travelling shot, almost a reel in length, Raoul Coutard’s camera gazes dispassionately at men playing cards beside the road, a cart-horse deep in its own mire, lorries filled with animals for some zoo, overturned cars and even one vehicle facing the wrong way, rammed up against a petrol tanker. Off-screen proclamations mingle with the din of crashing dustbins, in characteristic Godardian dialectic.

As the camera slowly moves alongside the traffic jam the audience is left feeling frustrated, wondering if the irritating sounds of car horns and never ending queue of traffic will ever come to an end – themselves ironically becoming stuck in a traffic jam which somewhat reflects the never ending boredom Godard sees in materialist western civilization. Other moments in the film, such as the shot of Mireille Darc’s character bathing from the shoulders up – deliberately not showing the audience Darc’s naked body, but instead placing a portrait of a naked woman directly behind her – as well as Darc’s materialistic screams of “No! My Hermes handbag!” after just escaping a burning automobile – her concern being not for her or her husbands well being, but for the well being of an expensive hand bag – add to Godard’s scathing critique, further highlighting the absurdity prevalent in the material world of the capitalist West.

The infamous traffic jam scene.