So this is another movie by Godard, this one from later in his career than Breathless. The subject matter of it is: 1) Movies (surprise!), and 2) a dissolving relationship.

As a movie about movies, it kinda works in an arch way, both on a surface level and on a meta-level. The surface level is obvious: In the film, the characters are making a movie: Fritz Lang (played by the real Fritz Lang!) is directing a movie financed by an American producer (played by Jack Palance, sounding exactly like Martin Sheen), who acts like a stereotypical American and a stereotypical producer. As a lightly comic interplay between the artistic genius and the tasteless money guy, their interactions are well-done.

On the meta level, this is a film that really wants you to be aware that you’re watching a movie. The film score swells with grandiose violins… which then cut off in the middle of scenes, or drown out dialogue seemingly intentionally. The movie is filmed in that ultra-widescreen Cinemascope (apparently forced on Godard by the film’s actual producer), which Lang mocks as suitable only for snakes and which Godard uses to frame enormously awkward scenes, keeping people just off the edge as the camera pans too slowly and such-like. And the movie ends in a way that is almost a deliberate fuck-you from the director; it’s superficially tragic, but it elicited a laugh from me, and I think that’s the reaction he was going for.

So that’s okay, and that part works. The part about the relationship… rather less so. The fundamental problem is that the people act like Weird Movie People, all dramatic declamations and sharp back-and-forth dialogue, but not really acting like people actually act at any point. And that’d be fine, except that like 2/3 of the movie is just the protagonist (the writer of the movie-within-the-movie) and his wife going back and forth, and it gets really tedious really fast. (Wikipedia describes one particularly interminable scene as: “the characters played by Piccoli and Bardot wander through their apartment alternately arguing and reconciling.” Which pretty much sums up how frustratingly pointless it feels.)

Oh, and it has the by-now-standard downplayed bit of domestic violence. I’m not sure people of the mid-twentieth-century even thought of a slap to the face as qualifying as “violence,” given how lightly movies skip over it.

It’s clear that Godard actually wants you to feel the frustration and irritation of this dissolving relationship, but fuck that, I say. Strip out 60 minutes of pointless incoherent marital bickering, and I’d be happy to enjoy all the meta-narrative filmic stuff. As it is, meh. I had a certain fondness for Breathless, but this one… not so much.