Directed by Jean-Luc Godard • 1967 • France
Starring Mireille Darc, Jean Yanne
This scathing late-sixties satire from Jean-Luc Godard is one of cinema’s great anarchic works. Determined to collect an inheritance from a dying relative, a bourgeois couple travel across the French countryside while civilization crashes and burns around them. Featuring a justly famous sequence in which the camera tracks along a seemingly endless traffic jam, and rich with historical and literary references, WEEKEND is a surreally funny and disturbing call for revolution, a depiction of society reverting to savagery, and—according to the credits—the end of cinema itself.
Up Next in Explosive Political Cinema of the 1960s
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Shame
Directed by Ingmar Bergman • 1968 • Sweden
Starring Liv Ullmann, Max von SydowDirected by Ingmar Bergman, SHAME (SKAMMEN) is at once an examination of the violent legacy of World War II and a scathing response to the escalation of the conflict in Vietnam. Max von Sydow and Liv Ullmann star as m...
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Salvatore Giuliano
Directed by Francesco Rosi • 1962 • Italy
July 5, 1950--Sicilian bandit Salvatore Giuliano's bullet-riddled corpse is found facedown in a courtyard in Castelvetrano, a handgun and rifle by his side. Local and international press descend upon the scene, hoping to crack open the true story behind ...
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Harakiri
Directed by Masaki Kobayashi • 1962 • Japan
Starring Tatsuya Nakadai, Rentaro Mikuni, Akira IshihamaFollowing the collapse of his clan, an unemployed samurai (Tatsuya Nakadai) arrives at the manor of Lord Iyi, begging to be allowed to commit ritual suicide on the property. Iyi’s clansmen, belie...
