‘Made in U.S.A.’: Westlake à la Godard
Legal problems are said to have held up the theatrical release of Jean-Luc Godard’s “Made in U.S.A.,” which screened for two nights at the Vista Theater in 1983 and arrives now for a one-week run at the Nuart in West Los Angeles. In terms of Godard’s body of work, the 1966 film is as challenging as it is important.
Nominally a film noir, “Made in U.S.A.” plunges the viewer into a morass of political intrigue. Elliptical in the extreme and loaded with cinematic and political references, the film is nevertheless compelling because of Anna Karina’s radiant presence and Godard’s stunning images, dry wit, political fervor and endless inventiveness and daring.
Loosely inspired by a novel by Donald E. Westlake, who died at 75 on New Year’s Eve, the film was made quickly, Godard has said, in order to help out his financially strapped friend, producer Georges de Beauregard, and “to highlight the Americanization of French life and to make use of one of the episodes in the Ben Barka affair.”
Mehdi Ben Barka was the exiled leader of the left-wing Moroccan opposition, who was said to be the victim of a conspiracy between the French secret police and Morocco’s minister of the interior, Gen. Mohamed Oufkir.
Holed up in a small hotel, Paula (Karina) is a journalist attempting to investigate the disappearance and presumed murder of her colleague and lover. (Their relationship is fading -- a clear and intensely personal reference to Karina’s disintegrating marriage and collaboration with Godard.) Incidents and encounters begin to suggest that it’s nearly impossible for Paula to trust anyone or to get to the bottom of a confounding conspiracy that invokes even the names Richard Nixon and Robert McNamara.
“Made in U.S.A.,” which has a stunning, contemporary coda, is charged with Godard’s love for classic American cinema and his hatred for our politics of the ‘60s.
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‘Made in U.S.A.’
MPAA rating: Unrated; in French with English subtitles
Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes
Playing: At the Nuart, 11272 Santa Monica Blvd., West Los Angeles, (310) 281-8223
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