Weekend (1967 film)

Weekend (French: Week-end) is a 1967 French postmodern black comedy film[2][3] written and directed by Jean-Luc Godard, based on Julio Cortázar's La autopista del Sur. It starred Mireille Darc and Jean Yanne, both of whom were mainstream French TV stars. Jean-Pierre Léaud, comic star of numerous French New Wave films including Truffaut's The 400 Blows and Godard's earlier Masculin Féminin, appeared in two roles. Raoul Coutard served as cinematographer; Weekend was his last collaboration with Godard for over a decade.

Weekend
Theatrical release poster
Directed byJean-Luc Godard
Screenplay byJean-Luc Godard
Based onLa autopista del Sur
by Julio Cortázar[1] (uncredited)
Produced byRaymond Danon
StarringMireille Darc
Jean Yanne
CinematographyRaoul Coutard
Edited byAgnès Guillemot
Music byAntoine Duhamel
Distributed byAthos Films
Release date
  • 29 December 1967 (1967-12-29) (France)
Running time
105 minutes
CountryFrance
LanguageFrench
Budget$250,000 (estimated)

Plot summary

Roland and Corinne Durand are a bourgeois couple. Each has a secret lover and conspires to murder the other. They drive out to Corinne's parents' home in the country to secure her inheritance from her dying father, resolving to resort to murder if necessary. The trip becomes a chaotically picaresque journey through a French countryside populated by bizarre characters and punctuated by violent car accidents. After their own Facel-Vega is destroyed in a collision, they wander through a series of vignettes involving class struggle and figures from literature and history, such as Louis Antoine de Saint-Just and Emily Brontë.

When Corinne and Roland eventually arrive at her parents' place, they discover that her father has died and her mother refuses to give them a share of the spoils. They kill her and hit the road again, only to fall into the hands of a group of hippie revolutionaries (calling themselves the Seine and Oise Liberation Front) that support themselves through theft and cannibalism. Killed during an escape attempt, Roland is chopped up and cooked.

Cast

Themes and style

Weekend has been compared to Alice in Wonderland, the James Bond series, and the works of Marquis de Sade.[4][5] Tim Brayton described it as a "film that reads itself, tells the viewer what that reading should be, and at the same time tells the viewer that this reading is inaccurate and should be ignored."[6] In one of the first scenes Corinne tells her lover about a sexual experience she had. Part of the story she tells is based on the Georges Bataille novel Story of the eye (Histoire de l'œil). [7]

Inspiration

According to a letter from famous Argentine writer Julio Cortázar to his translator Suzanne Jill Levine, the indirect inspiration for the movie was Cortázar's short story La autopista del Sur ("The Southern Thruway"). Cortázar explained that while a British producer was considering filming his story, a third party had already presented the idea to Godard, who was unaware of its true source.

References
  1. Week End, by Godard, in the film cycle on Cortázar 09-09-2014, UNICEN – National University of the Center of the Province of Buenos Aires (in Spanish)
  2. Lorefice, Mike (15 March 2004). "Week End". Raging Bull Movie Reviews. Retrieved 3 July 2018.
  3. Movie Gazette (2 March 2005). "Week End (1967)". Movie Gazette. Web Gazette. Retrieved 17 September 2010.
  4. Hoberman, J. (5 October 2011). "Weekend: When Godard Burned the Movie House Down". The Village Voice. Retrieved 15 February 2017.
  5. "Weekend Reviews". Rotten Tomatoes. Fandango Media. Retrieved 3 July 2018.
  6. Brayton, Tim (21 January 2008). "Week End (1967)". Alternate Ending. Retrieved 15 February 2017.
  7. Hibernan, J. (5 October 2008). "Week End: When Godard burned the movie house down". The Village Voice. Retrieved 16 April 2020.
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