The Cinematheque

35mm Print

“A heady, invigorating mix of civics and cinema … Even this early in his career, Godard knew how to make audiences viscerally experience and contemplate things they might otherwise not have wanted to.”

Keith Uhlich, Time Out

Godard’s follow-up to Breathless was the first French film to deal openly with the Algerian crisis. Completed in 1960, it was promptly banned by the French government for three years. Both Left and Right condemned the movie for its political ambivalence, while the irreverent use of gangster-film conventions may not have endeared it to such critics either. Michel Subor stars as Bruno, an agent for a French fascist organization sent to assassinate an Algerian Liberation Front (FLN) sympathizer in Geneva. Anna Karina (future wife of Godard and a mainstay of his cinema through the mid-1960s) makes her screen debut as Véronica, a young informant for the FLN with whom the hero falls in love. The steely B&W cinematography is by Godard regular Raoul Coutard, whose centenary occurs in 2024. Claire Denis paid tribute to Le petit soldat in her 1999 masterpiece Beau travail, which cast Subor as an older Bruno.

In French with English subtitles

“Still feels daring and vital, both peculiarly timely and deeply Godardian, a meditation not just on politics and war … but also on morality and art.”

Rachel Saltz, The New York Times