Description: In 1972, newly radicalized Hollywood star Jane Fonda joined forces with cinematic innovator Jean-Luc Godard and collaborator Jean-Pierre Gorin in an unholy revolutionary artistic alliance. Tout va bien tells the story of a wildcat strike at a sausage factory, as witnessed by an American reporter (Fonda) and her has-been New Wave film director husband (Yves Montand), culminating in a free-ranging assault on consumer capitalism and ineffective leftists. The Criterion Collection is proud to present this masterpiece of radical cinema, a caustic critique of society, marriage, and revolution in post-1968 France.
You have to love Godard This is not a great Godard film, it feels like it is running on ideological vapors without the ballast of irony that drove a film like Sympathy for the Devil (One on One). In hindsight, however, it is refreshing for actively engaging issues of class struggle. When I watched the DVD, I threw up my hands in a hallelujah-- that yes, indeed, films can be part of social and politcial debate, based on ideas more than the cardboard characters hired to represent them. As in the later CHINA SYNDROME, Jane Fonda plays a reporter literaly captured by the story she is covering, and in both films she is given a priveledged view and insight that she utterly fails to convey to her putative audience. Similarly this film tries to convey the excitement and promise of 1968 and doesn't deliver. I love it (particulrly using the chapter breaks)for two gorgeous full camera magazine dolly shots; a pan back and forth of a cutaway set of a sausage factory (similar to the boat set and dolly work on THE LIFE AQUATIC), and a pan back and forth for ten minutes of the check out stands of what must have been the prototype for super-Kmarts. As a guerilla filmmaker and political person, this DVD was a must for my collection.
Great movie... Great, political Godard film. People need to think about the economic issues it deals with, especially in these days of an essentially oligarchical america. But whatever your politics, it is an excellent film.
Good one Jean-Luc Godard's follow-up to the ultra-Maoist Weekend, featuring Yves Montand as a former New Wave filmmaker and his wife Jane Fonda, as they become active in a factory takeover. The film is of course very sympathetic to Marxism and perhaps Leninism, but it's certainly toned down from the blood fest that is Weekend, perhaps regrettably. Godard insists on reinterpreting and imposing entirely new ideas about what a film can and ought to be, in this case an intellectualized espousal of the working class struggle. A few moments of daring misce-en-scene are worth mentioning; fist, Godard includes an awesome cutaway of the factory to reveal the power-dynamics of the uprising within, and an elaborate tracking sequence in a supermarket to reveal the gross stupidity of capitalist consumerism. Tout Va Bien is clearly a step-down from Godard's brilliant features of the 60's, but it's still provocative and worth any cinephile's time.
Power After more than thirty years of being done, I have to see some other feature that goes straight to the core of the workers' struggle better than this one (of course I wasn't even borne then, but DVD and video exists for a reason, as also my beloved Tel Aviv Cinemateque). Godard and Gorin succesfully use reflexive techniques to avoid the classic didactism or demagogy of political film and show how and why workers must take control of their workplace (and this doesn't mean to fall into bureaucratic soviet-style communism!). The arguments for all sides are expertly presented in a series of half-interviews (because we only listen to the answers give, the questions remaining off-screen) and reflexivity allows for freedom in the depiction of the beggining of a possible revolution. The film can be seen and understood in many levels, but I'm afraid that today's workers conciousness is far away from that of the French factory ones after May 1968. Still, if you're going to take to your political movie the mega-stars of the period (Jane Fonda!) this is the way to do it. For Americans: Carrefour is the WalMart of France (and many other parts of the world). The same system, the same faults. The Criterion edition included an excellent analysis (50 min) of a famous photograph of Jane in Vietnam, plus some excerpts of a Godard interview (explaining his position against naturalism in cinema) and a longer interview to Gorin (the co-director). It is an excellent edition as it is, but an introduction to the May 1968 events and/or to Nouvelle Vague would have been a good bonus for those that are not so into the subject, maybe as PDF-text so as not to take many space on the DVD (C'mon, with only 10 Megs you could include a lot).
Great 1972 Post Weekend Godard This movie follows the path set by '2 or 3 things', 'La Chinoise' and 'Weekend'. You'll see Godard trademarks such as a LONG tracking shot, actors delivering monologues straight into the camera as-if-being-interviewed, non moving camera even when someone outside the frame is doing the talking or voiceover-thinking, etc...
While the movie was made during the final stages of Godard's Dziga Vertov period it actually contains a plot revolving around the relationship of a couple. He (Montand), once a New Wave movie director who now makes comercials for tv; and She (Fonda), an american correspondant in Paris. Both of them get kidnapped for 2 days inside a sausage factory during a strike and we see how their relationship changes due to them becoming aware of the historical context they exist in.
It's weird to see both movie stars being used not for acting skills but for what they represent: 'international vedettes'; as the opening scene makes perfectly clear. To make a film you need money (even if you are JLG) and to get your money back you need stars.
The Dziga Vertov group made one more film before calling it quits ('Letter to Jane') and since that 'essay' has a direct connection with 'Tout va Bien' Criterion wisely decided to include it inside this DVD.
While this may not be the place to start if you haven't seen much of Godard (Breathless, A Woman is a Woman, Contempt or Band of Outsiders would be more like it) if you've followed JLG's path up to Weekend, they you will certainly enjoy this one and all the extras this edition includes.
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