One True Louvre

On Sunday, the Tivoli’s Jerry Harrington and Steve Shapiro discuss the 1964 Jean-Luc Godard movie Band of Outsiders and screen a fresh print. Considering that very little happens, the set is bleak and the editing is unexceptional, it’s surprising that the film is any good. The story follows two men who try to convince the naive Odile (Anna Karina) to help them rob her employers. Every time she protests, she divulges information that helps them (such as telling them where the money is). The men also compete for Odile’s affection, and their attempts to coerce her into bed and help commit a robbery form a single act of seduction.

The outcome is as predictable for the characters as it is for the viewers. Odile appears traumatized by the robbery she knew was coming and helped make possible; perhaps the weird, giddy romance kept her on board. We feel sorry for her because we, too, have been fooled by the playfulness that makes Godard’s movie go by so fast. Like Odile, we consent to the roles as victims of cliché — because we’re having fun.

One of Godard’s early efforts, Band of Outsiders is less political than the films he made after the worldwide upheavals of 1968, but a newspaper reader in one scene mentions cruelties perpetrated in Rwanda — a moment perhaps more evocative now, after decades of hindsight. The movie also foreshadows Godard’s turn toward radical filmmaking. In one scene, the three robbers-in-the-making sit in a café awkwardly trying to strike up a conversation. One character suggests that if they have nothing to say, they should observe a full minute of silence. For an uncomfortable sixty seconds, the movie theater falls quiet.

The most entertaining scene is still the characters’ mad dash through the Louvre to beat the world’s record for fastest tour of the museum. But watching Odile fumble through her first kiss offers its own small pleasures.