Jean-Luc Godard’s BAND OF OUTSIDERS is a different kind of heist movie
BANDE À PART (BAND OF OUTSIDERS) (Jean-Luc Godard, 1964)
Film Society of Lincoln Center
Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center, Francesca Beale Theater
144 West 65th St. between Broadway & Amsterdam Ave.
Friday, October 18, 7:40
Series continues through October 31
212-875-5601
www.filmlinc.com
When a pair of disaffected Parisians, Arthur (Claude Brasseur) and Franz (Sami Frey), meet an adorable young woman, Odile (Anna Karina), in English class, they decide to team up and steal a ton of money from a man living in Odile’s aunt’s house. As they meander through the streets of cinematographer Raoul Coutard’s black-and-white Paris, they talk about English and wealth, dance in a cafe while director Jean-Luc Godard breaks in with voice-over narration about their character, run through the Louvre in record time, and pause for a near-moment of pure silence. Godard throws in plenty of commentary on politics, the cinema, and the bourgeoisie in the midst of some genuinely funny scenes. Band of Outsiders is no ordinary heist movie; based on Dolores Hitchens’s novel Fool’s Gold, it is the story of three offbeat individuals who just happen to decide to attempt a robbery while living their strange existence, as if they were outside from the rest of the world. The trio of ne’er-do-wells might remind Jim Jarmusch fans of the main threesome from Stranger Than Paradise (1984), except Godard’s characters are more aggressively persistent. One of Godard’s most accessible films, Band of Outsiders is screening October 18 at the Francesca Beale Theater as part of the expansive Film Society of Lincoln Center series “Jean-Luc Godard — The Spirit of the Forms,” which continues through October 31 with such other Godard works as Les Carabiniers, La Chinoise, Contempt, Film Socialisme, King Lear, Nôtre musique, and many more.