The Rise and Fall of a Small Film Company(GRANDEUR ET DÉCADENCE D'UN PETIT COMMERCE DE CINÉMA)
Dir: Jean-Luc Godard
France/Switzerland, 1986, French/Italian, 92mins, DCP
Cast: Jean-Pierre Léaud, Marie Valera, Jean-Pierre Mocky
The deconstruction of a murder as only Godard could envision it. Is it about the making of a murder mystery for television amid clashing ideas of art and finance? Or about the making of the making (the factory, not the dream), tied into petty and nefarious subterfuge and financial trickery? Or about cinema and its own enigmas, as Godard himself appears to comment while guiding us towards red herring filmic references? Made for a French noir thriller series, this selfreflexive meditation on the fate of cinema at a time when television and video threatened to overtake it is a wry and complex delight.
