• Le Petit Soldat is actually the second feature Godard made. He shot it in 1960 after Breathless with the intent of releasing immediately- but French censors pushed it to 1963 making it at that point his fourth feature. It also makes for a very busy 1963 from a release standpoint for him with this, Les Carabiniers, and Contempt
  • Shot on location in Geneva. Much of it in cars. It is shot in 35mm, black and white, largely handheld camera
  • The voice-over is about as dry as it gets
  • At 88-minutes, and with the jump cuts (they are there, just not as many, as jarring and as loud as Breathless) removing in-betweens, what is left is really a dense thicket of a narrative. It is almost as if, unlike Breathless, the jumps here remove the mood and atmosphere
  • If this would’ve been released as planned it would’ve been Anna Karina’s first archiveable film. It is clear Godard is in love with her while shooting. She lights up the screen- her bangs, eyes and eyelashes. The 20-year old Danish beauty would soon be Godard’s muse and wife (they were married in 1961). The scene of Michel Subor (good-looking but anonymous lead) falling for Karina is really a stand in for Godard. You can even see Godard (and Michel’s character) getting sidetracked from the movie. The best scenes in the movie are flirtation scenes with her- that’s when the film comes alive. Again, partly because Godard shoots her so well, partly because of her charisma and presence, and partly because Subor is a relative non-entity.
  • Godard- always the intellectual- discussions and refences to van Gough, Beethoven, Haydn, Mao—and self-referential—a magazine cutout of Jean Seberg is seen.
  • Godard’s major stylistic instrument here is the sort of tennis match pan back and forth… he oscillates back and forth between two having dialogue, even from the backseat of a car. He speeds it up at certain points almost making for a whip pan
  • Like Breathless, it can be viewed as genre revisionism. This is a spy film (critical of the French position). There’s a foreboding piano score, torture, secrecy. Like Breathless as well, the protagonist is distracted by the girl.
  • Recommend but not in the top 10 of 1963