What was up with Paul. He found out that Camille was dead and was like: *beep* happens.." What???
And after that we see a long tracking shot, what for?
Atleast I remember his assistent telling him that.
Thank you.
Ello..?
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Yeah, that's never sat well with me - it's one've my favourite films but that car-crash ending seems superfluous, and i think cheapens it a bit. I've always felt the film's power was elevating a very personal yet relatable, archetypal human story to the level of epic tragedy (the Homeric elements, and especially the music obviously add to this), but Camille's death smacks of Godard not having enough faith in his work. Perhaps it's an unnecessary concession to the book though, i haven't read it.
shareummm...it's there because that's how the Oddesy ends and this is ostensibly a very mundane retelling of that story.
said the shotgun to the head
-Saul Williams
I haven't read the 'Oddesy'(sic) in a few years now, but I'm fairly sure noone dies in a car crash...
shareOpps...botched my spelling.
Anyway, no one dies in a car crash. But the wife does finally kill herself out of depression because her husband is gone. Of course, she does so just as he enters the bay and sees it.
said the shotgun to the head
-Saul Williams
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I don't think anyone on the film shoot is supposed to be aware that Camille or Prokasch have died yet. Paul took a nap, woke up, and got the farewell note from Camille, then we don't see him again until he bids Fritz Lang goodbye. There is the hint that Prokasch's assistant is crying as he passes her on the stairs and says goodbye to her, which may lead the viewer to think she has found out about the death, but it could just as easily be in reference to her perception that she's been dumped for the blonde bombshell Camille.
Meanwhile, recall that earlier in the film, Paul muses on the ineffectiveness of murder as a revenge for infidelity - that if he kills the man who has cuckolded him, he still doesn't get his wife's love back, and if he kills his wife, he is alone and without the woman he loves. This ending brings that tragedy full circle - while he ostensibly has his integrity back, Paul has lost everything else in the process.
Think also about how Lang speaks of man creating gods, and thus by repudiating their existence finds comfort because now, he is no longer bound by fate. Palance fancies himself a god, manipulating Paul and Camille for his own purposes, but he is proven wrong by perishing in the freak car wreck, as if the "real" gods were punishing him for his hubris.
In short, the ending works for me.
Well said Hoyk. I would agree with your theory.
Also, although it is very abrupt and unexpected how Camille dies, especially simply in how its presented so abruptly in terms of editing it is a trick that wouldn't at all seem out of place in any of the other earlier films Godard made in his career.
It seems clear to me as well that they dont know on set in Capri about the accident yet. If for nothing else, im sure poor old fritz wouldnt still be shooting if he didnt have Jerrys backing. Sadly for fritz, despite his best will of always wanting to "finish what one starts" it sees he wasnt ever going to finish shooting that one.
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The dead is Paul's fault, he want her to die, In all the movie the things that she do, are consecuence of Paul. That is what he doesn't care at all. That is at least my interpetation.
P.D - I don't speak english, but I guess all you understand the idea.
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I think it was the perfect wrap up. Throughout the whole movie, the characters are emotionally uncommited. With the exception of Jerry the evil producer, all the other characters are apathetic to everything--or at least they never react the way real emotional humans would. To drive the point home, Godard gives us a final & extreme illustration of their apathy. Paul's wife dies, and Paul is like "oh well. gosh i wonder what's for dinner"
I haven't seen too many Godard films, but in everything I've seen, he has a very bizarre sense of humour where he strings us along and ultimately hits us with a total WTF moment like that. Watch Alphaville, his "sci-fi" film, for brilliant examples of that. Basically I think all his films are tounge-in-cheek.
I didn't feel a thing for Brigitte Bardot's character in the end. I didn't understand her at all. Maybe I need to watch this a second time.
shareDespite my initial aversion to this movie, the decaying of a bad marriage, the abrupt ending did work for me, an agreeable companion to the director's earlier groundbreaking 'Breathless'. This film I finally saw last year and this song has been ringing around my mind this evening and as I ponder this 1963 classic Jean-Luc Godard French language film, I think this has to be the best use of a car crash I have seen in a movie and no doubt influenced Charlie Kaufman's written 'Adaptation' movie.
I think what I found revolting was the banal retread version of the 'Who's Afraid Of Virginia Wolf?' scenario without the additional couple as drunken enablers. Rather, we get the arrogant Yank as self-imposed, superficial demi-god and his comeuppance as a validation of the lead character's integrity. I was thinking as I saw this on TCM, 'Paul doesn't seem happy with his wife. Why does he stay? Why does she? It's all a pretense. Why am I watching this?'
If anything, as a subtext, this storyline validates the theory that humans were meant to have several longterm relationships over the course of a lifetime, as opposed to one all-encompassing mate that polite society, religion, and romantic 19th century female fiction would have us think otherwise.
Sure, Bridgette Bardot was a sex goddess back in the day but any person can get tired of their spouse if their behavior isn't working out for them. And I was so sick of their constant squabbling within the first ten minutes that I had to force myself NOT to turn it off. But the ending again has me in the corner that this is superior to some gray ambiguous ending in which they drive off into their new lives together, c'est la vie style.
Is this a male, sexist interpretation? Possibly.
But still, after all the sturm-und-drang of their bickering, it was nice to have a succinct ending. And the sheer fact that we are discussing this film nearly 50 years after it was made shows the timelessness of love and it accompanying failures that Godard made as a prism of one artistic man's tortured soul.