Slime-3 Nothing is every straight-forward in a Godard movie and MADE IN USA is probably as baffling as they get! It's a bizarre tale that confounds logical dissection but if the weirdness of the story and structure sometimes make it a trial to watch, the beautiful late 60s colour photography and the dazzling Anna Karina offer considerable compensation! Quite why Godard wastes so much screen time on a tape recording of left- wing rhetoric can only be imagined. If it was to make a political point, that simply gets lost by overkill and makes one reach for the fast- forward button.The often curious soundtrack features a passing jet aircraft (or is it an express train?) which always obscures the surname of Karina's mysterious, deceased lover in a fashion that Tarrentino late used to obscure the name of the'The Bride' in KILL BILL. What's it all about? No idea! But the film, or maybe the style, certainly the luminous Karina, does somehow get under your skin and even though I found it hard to endure on a first viewing I'm increasingly keen to watch it once again . Amongst the mind-boggling strangeness I'm sure I must have missed something vital....now, where is that DVD?

Polaris_DiB An opening title card thanks a friend of Godard's for teaching him to love sound and image. From there comes Godard's building of a narrative through just that, sound and image, except now the sound is structured much more like how the image is in film, by cuts instead of layers, as opposed to the usual synced dialog with music and sound effects underneath.The genre would be film noir except there isn't a bit of black in it. It's shot entirely in bright, luminescent, primary colors. The narrative is taken from The Big Sleep, but frankly doesn't even matter to how the movie operates, as in one scene Godard deconstructs the whole thing by pointing out that sentences don't have any meaning. In fact, the bar sequence of this film is it's finest part.This is apparently Anna Karina's last role with Godard, and his eye for her hasn't changed a bit this late in the game. She pretty much is the frame, rather than fills it. Everyone and everything else in this movie is only there to be framed by her.Savvy self-reflexive dialog ensues. "La mise-en-scene! La mise-en-scene! La mise-en-scene!" (mistranslated laughably in the subtitles of the print I saw as "The charade! The charade! The charade!" Oops.) According to Godard's dialog, this is a Disney film--with blood. I say it's a comic book, and a rather good one at that.I suppose one could say that this movie isn't "logical" (it certainly doesn't fit the more confined logic of Alphaville and A bout de soufflé), but I'd honestly be surprised if anyone watches this movie for the plot. It's surreal and stagy--that's what this movie is, not how it's made. And yes, it bears Godard's "signature" throughout.--PolarisDiB

lefaikone It's probably useless to say anything against Godard, since it's some kind of an unwritten law, that Godard is a cinematic god, and if you don't confess your belief to him, you're a vulgar idiot. - still I have to say that he's one of the most overrated directors in film history.Yeah, sure I admit his historical value, the man made a huge change in to the course of film making, and I respect him for that. I have also read Godard's book about the structure and nature of film, and found it very fascinating. Still, for a man who knows a lot about the structure of cinema, a decision to throw every single characteristic in storytelling away, feels very strange to me. It just doesn't work. He, if anybody should know, that they don't exist for nothing.I can see why he achieved this "film god" status. He was something never seen before, something outrageous. But hey people, let's face it. An hour long political essay disguised as a movie is not "beutifully poetic" or what ever you want to call it. It's just plain boring. No one ever has anything else to say about Godard's movies, than they are "surrealistic" and have such a "strangely poetic mood" in them. Like it's some kind of a magnitude. Poetic or not, The characters are unidimensional and flat.If you want poetic movies with surrealistic mood, I suggest you to watch for example Robert Bresson's, Andrei Tarkovsky's or Krzysztof Kieslowski's films. They have a lot more in them than just the mood.

LeRoyMarko A cinematographic experiment by Jean-Luc Godard! Not too accessible. Interesting opening credits with just the initials of the cast. The colors are bright, contrasting with the usual black and white movies that Godard made before this one. At some point, the movie reminded me of the hit series "Twin Peaks" by David Lynch. But this is way more incoherent. In fact, it's hard to figure if there's anything to be made of this film. Still, Godard get to explore the fascination of the French for everything that comes from the U.S.A. Another interesting fact: some of the talks exchanged by the characters (ex. in the bar scene). A linguist would probably have some fun analyzing this. Some scenes are just painful to watch if you're tired (ex. the political manifesto on tape)! Anna Karina is great to watch, as usual.Out of 100, I give it 71. That's good for ** out of ****.Seen at home, in Toronto, on November 26th, 2002.