Tout Va Bien - Criterion Collection

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.

Customer Reviews:

LETTER TO JANE.......2007-07-26

The Criterion Collection continues its practice of including valuable and significant bonus material by adding "Letter to Jane" to this release of the highly political/intellectual "Tout va bien." "Letter to Jane" is described by Criterion in the liner notes as "Jean-Luc Godard and Jean-Pierre Gorin's postscript to 'Tout va bien.'" And what a postscript it is--literally a very long letter that Godard and Gorin address to Jane Fonda. They read the letter while flashing a series of stills on the screen (although often the screen is just blank), mostly a single picture that they go on to analyze in--some might find excruciating--detail.

The occasion for the letter was the publication, by a French magazine, of the first of what would prove to be a series of "Hanoi Jane" photographs/images taken of Fonda's trip to Vietnam, a tour she made only a few months after finishing her work on "Tout va bien." "Letter to Jane" is approximately 52 minutes long. For the first 25 minutes or so I was bored stiff by it. It really seemed to be a whole lot of sophistry--watered down Heidegger by way of Sartre by way of Godard by way of a kind of pop French intellectualism. I was so put off by it that I almost stopped watching. But I'm so glad I persevered beyond my initial boredom because the second half of "Letter to Jane" comprises one of the most fascinating, in-depth analyses that I have ever had the good fortune of hearing. It's a perspicacious, somewhat discursive--if unfortunately also Marxist--dissection of how the media manipulates images by carefully constructing the context in which they are presented, how the media (or the interests served by and through it) has already made all sorts of assumptions for us, how it has framed and manipulated the images it chooses to present in a manner that dictates the way we interpret them. To point that out is no great feat and might even sound like indicating the obvious. What is truly special about "Letter to Jane" is that it doesn't just point that out; it picks an image ("Hanoi Jane") and asks a series of illuminating questions about it.

While I strongly disagree with Godard's Marxism, he hits the nail on the head regarding the way pictures and all sorts of information are framed and prepared for consumption. "Letter to Jane" actually teaches you something that can be applied to daily life, especially if you are exposed to a lot of television, movies, newspapers, and magazines (which I think is most of us). It shows us a kind of technique, a way of asking questions about the images we encounter in pop culture. The questions Godard and Gorin ask in "Letter to Jane" expose the way visual information--and by extension so much of our conception of reality--is shaped and manipulated for us by others. To an alarming extent, what we think of as our own personal opinions are actually prefabricated thoughts. Our beliefs are already there on the shelf, as it were, mass produced. Having manufactured opinions is easy; we merely have to shop for them, pick the brand we like. It barely involves thinking. But we take much for granted in the process, and instead of opinions we end up with lies and leave ourselves exposed to further manipulation.

As a filmmaker, Godard is naturally an expert on images and how to "read" them. He's in his element here and proves his expertise. If you watch "Tout va bien," don't miss its even brainier postscript. Kudos to Criterion for another job well done.

You have to love Godard.......2007-02-21

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... .......2006-10-02

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.......2005-12-08

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.......2005-10-11

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).

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