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Price: $42.95 Prices subject to change.
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Binding: VHS Tape
EAN: 9786302149487
Format: Color, Subtitled, NTSC
ISBN: 6302149487
Label: New Yorker Video
Languages: EnglishSubtitledFrenchOriginal LanguageAnalog
Manufacturer: New Yorker Video
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: New Yorker Video
Release Date: January 01, 1998
Running Time: 105 minutes
Studio: New Yorker Video
Theatrical Release Date: September 27, 1968
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Editorial Review:
Amazon.com essential video:
Jean-Luc Godard and Luis Buñuel enjoyed an ardent misanthropic duel in the '60s and '70s, but who won is anyone's call. Godard's Weekend lays down the trump in a harrowing and darkly funny allegory in which social mores fray along political lines. Played out in a metafilm in which characters question their own reality, a morally bankrupt Parisian couple tries to leave the city on a much-loathed country holiday with the wife's parents. Along the way, endless traffic jams, sudden violence, and vistas of gory car crashes underscore their corrupted values. Their lethal encounter with the in-laws and kidnap by an anarchic band of radical cannibals finds the couple--and presumably "decent" society with them--reverting to a nasty primitivism. The idea is of course that the bored, apathetic heart of the bourgeoisie is never far from acting out its most homicidal fantasies. --Alan E. Rapp
Average Rating: 
Rating:  -
WEEK-END
Jean-Luc Godard's WEEK-END is certainly beyond the usual egocentrism of Nouvelle Vague (New Wave) movies. In other terms, while the formers (including his BREATHLESS) deal with personal characteristic themes, WEEK-END is dominated by philosophical, cultural, social, and geopolitical themes. It's a franc satire of the Parisian upper-class but more importantly it's a dark view of the modern civilization's self decay, materialism, apathy, terrorism, and violence. And though the movie has the protagonists -like most nouvelle vague- as "anti-heroes", it's more adequately classified as a post-modern work, approaching very similar (if not the same) territories explored mainly by Bergman (movies like Shame, Passion of Anna) and to a lesser width in Antonioni's trilogy in that same era (mid-late 60's). While Bergman approached these themes in a sinister, philosophical (i.e. Bergmanesque) manner, Godard used his usual raw humor adding some surrealistic escapades in a direct ... Read More
Rating:  -
Jean-Luc Godard's "Weekend" has reached its four decade milestone. It's a surrealistic cinematic trip into Godard's commentary on then-contemporary French society. It doesn't have a straightforward plot; one assumes Godard didn't mean to have one.
"Weekend" begins with a couple enjoying double entendres in a drive in the country. They find themselves in an endless traffic jam, surrounded by hippies, Marxists, and those living the primitive live. It's a commentary on consumerism--but it's also a commentary on communism as well. Individuals are sacrificed to the community-literally-and the upper-class wife chows down on her husband,while a young woman is garnished with eggs. Communism consumes itself. Godard saw European society degenerating; he was prophetic. He critiques capitalism and communism alike.
"Weekend" is an afternoon trip... for the mind.
Rating: -
Don't buy this if you want a "story"- kind of movie, where everything makes sense. Some things in this movie make sense, some don't, and the story plays a minor role. There is nothing pretentious about it, it's just the kind of movie Godard likes to make. I don't agree with his political statements, but still liked the movie. It is full of interesting ideas, images and music. Compared to Godard's "A bout de souffle" (Breathless), "Weekend" left a greater impression on me, because it is not just about the main characters, but about society as a whole. The trip into the country of two main characters (with bad intent) turns into a metaphor for the end of civilization. And if I didn't like anything else about it, the actress would still have captured my eye the entire movie. As with most of Godard movies, afterward I wonder: "Why do I like this?", and Mike Figgis (extra features on the dvd) puts it in words very well, which I find helpful. The comments also point out some of the things that ... Read More
Rating: -
Influential French filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard was at his cinematic best during the early '60s (during which time he made Breathless (1960), Band of Outsiders (1964), Pierrot le Fou (1965), among other great films), a creative period ending with his equally colorful and political film, Weekend (1967), which marked the "End of Cinema" for Godard. He called Weekend "a film adrift in the cosmos," and "a film found on a scrap heap." It tells the story of a Parisian married couple, Roland and Corrine (played by French television stars, Mireille Darc and Jean Yanne), who leave on a weekend journey across the French countryside to collect an inheritance. After a memorable 10-minute scene in which they are stuck in a traffic jam littered with violent car crashes as they leave the city--(this scene is reason enough to experience this film, in that it conveys Godard's sense of boredom, disorientation, and frustration with the times)--Roland and Corrine are confronted by the French bourgeoisie, along ... Read More
Rating:  -
It's been 4 decades and viewing the political notions in Weekend had for me the feel of the stale dialogue that comes from aging activists who have built a lifetime's ethos and idealogy constructed around insights and ideas they had when they were 19 years old. No matter that history may have demonstrated how wrong-headed and downright misinformed they may have been, they remain true believers. Mind you, I have no idea what Jean Luc Godard believes today, but I believe he was part of that French intellectual class that embraced some, if not all, of the "revolutionary" rubbish of the 60's and 70's that passed for brilliance in its day.
This film is a product of the late 60's when intellectual France, much as intellectual America, was being galvanized into action by opposition to the Viet Nam War and by a romantic notion of the Youth Generation as torch bearers for a new age of enlightenment. Godard distances himself from the nonsense his young revolutionaries spout, so I don't ... Read More
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