Political cinema , in the narrow sense, refers to cinema products that portray events or social conditions, either current or historical, through a partisan perspective, with the intent of informing or agitating the spectator.
34-646: La Chinoise, ou plutôt à la Chinoise: un film en train de se faire ( lit. ' The Chinese, or, Rather, in the Chinese Manner: A Film in the Making ' ), commonly referred to simply as La Chinoise , is a 1967 French political docufiction film written and directed by Jean-Luc Godard about a group of young Maoist activists in Paris. La Chinoise is a loose adaptation of Fyodor Dostoyevsky 's 1872 novel Demons (also known as The Possessed ). In
68-425: A brief appearance. The two main characters, Véronique and Guillaume Meister (the latter named after the titular hero of Goethe 's famous 1795 bildungsroman Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship ), discuss the issue of revolutionary violence and the necessity of political assassination to achieve revolutionary goals. As an advocate of terrorism as a means of bringing about the revolution, Véronique roughly corresponds to
102-476: A critic of the ' society of the spectacle ', for whom "separation is the alpha and omega of the spectacle," was therefore also violently opposed to cinema, even though he would make several films portraying his ideas. In order to differentiate between the narrow and broad notions of 'political cinema', film scholar Ewa Mazierska suggested to divide all such films into the categories of conformist or oppositional and marked or unmarked: From this point of view, it
136-630: A discussion with the political philosopher, Francis Jeanson (Jeanson was actually Anne Wiazemsky's philosophy professor at the Paris X University Nanterre during 1966–67; a few years earlier, he had once been a communist and the head of a network which supported the Algerian national liberation movement. This led to his highly publicized arrest and trial by the French government in September 1960.) In
170-664: A manifest social reality in France— La Chinoise is now regarded as an uncannily prescient and insightful examination of the New Left activism during those years. Along with Pierrot le fou , Masculin, féminin , Two or Three Things I Know About Her and Week End , La Chinoise is often seen as signaling a decisive step towards Godard's eventual renunciation of "bourgeois" narrative filmmaking. By 1968 he had switched to an overtly-political phase of revolutionary Maoist-collectivist didactic films with Jean-Pierre Gorin and
204-511: A masterpiece due to its impact on the development of cinema. The basic structure consists of a description of an idealized lost idyll ("the Old South"), the disruption of this order during reconstruction post- Civil War , and the restoration of white supremacy , which is shown a legitimate goal that unites the former enemies. In the end, the leader of the KKK secures his private happiness too and
238-586: A means to disseminate American values. In Germany the Universum Film AG , better known as UFA, was founded to counter the perceived dominance of American propaganda. During the Weimar Republic many films about Frederick II of Prussia had a conservative nationalistic agenda, as Siegfried Kracauer and other film critics noted. Communists like Willi Münzenberg saw the Russian cinema as
272-512: A model of political cinema. Soviet films by Sergei Eisenstein , Dziga Vertov and others combined a partisan view of the bolshevist regime with artistic innovation which also appealed to western audiences. Leni Riefenstahl has never been able or willing to face her responsibility as a chief propagandist for National-Socialism , i.e., Nazism. Almost unlimited resources and her undeniable talent led to results, which, despite their hideous aims, still fascinate some aficionados of film. While there
306-454: A modern consumer-capitalist society—the very society which the student radicals hope to transform through their revolutionary project. This paradox is illustrated in the various joke sunglasses that Guillaume wears (with the national flags of the USA, USSR, China, France and Britain each filling the frames) while reading Mao's Little Red Book, as well as the sight gag of having dozens of copies of
340-488: A notion from the French resistance movement during World War II. The communist anticolonialist activist Henri Curiel participated in the network, as did the forger Adolfo Kaminsky . The philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and writer Simone de Beauvoir were supportive of the Jeanson network. Photojournalist and author Dominique Darbois was another intellectual in Jeanson's network. This French history –related article
374-572: A political function. The authorities in Nazi Germany , for instance, knew this very well and organized a large production of deliberately escapist films. In other 'entertainment' films, such as westerns , the ideological bias is evident in the distortion of historical reality. A "classical" western would rarely portray black cowboys , although there were a great many of them in the American frontier . Hollywood cinema, which can be understood as
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#1732783915078408-532: A radical Maoist group called the "Aden Arabie Cell" (named after the novel Aden, Arabie by Paul Nizan ). The film won the Grand Jury Prize in 1967 Venice Film Festival . The five members are Véronique ( Anne Wiazemsky ), Guillaume ( Jean-Pierre Léaud ), Yvonne ( Juliet Berto ), Henri (Michel Semeniako) and Kirilov (Lex de Bruijn). A black student named Omar ( Omar Blondin Diop ), "Comrade X", also makes
442-481: Is an intellectual and philosopher who serves as a kind of father-figure/mentor to Véronique. Eventually the train arrives at its destination, and Véronique sets off to the hotel where the Soviet Minister of Culture is staying. She at first mistakenly reverses the digits of the room number and ends up killing the wrong man, then returns and carries out the assassination upon realizing her mistake. The return of
476-514: Is much controversy around her work, it is generally accepted that Riefenstahl's main commitment was to filmmaking, rather than to the Nazi Party . Proof of this might be seen by the portrayal of Jesse Owens ' victory in her film about the 1936 Olympic games in Berlin, Olympia (1938), and in her later work, mostly on her photographic expeditions to Africa. The same is certainly not true of
510-435: Is the oppositional and marked political films that the most viewers regard as 'political', as discussions about politics in film typically single out these two categories. Before World War I French cinema had a big share of the world market. Hollywood used the collapse of the French production to establish its hegemony . Ever since it has dominated world film production not only economically but has transformed cinema into
544-526: The Dziga Vertov Group , which lasted for the next six years until 1973. Political cinema Political cinema exists in different forms, such as documentaries , short films , feature films , experimental films , and even animated cartoons . In the narrow sense of the term, political cinema refers to films that do not hide their political stance. In this sense, they differ from other films not because they are political, but because of
578-615: The 21st century seems to focus on controversial topics such as globalization , AIDS , and other health-care concerns, issues pertaining to the environment , such as world energy resources and consumption and climate change , and other complex matters pertaining to discrimination , capitalism , terrorism , war , peace , religious and related forms of intolerance , and civil and political rights , as well as other human rights . The form has always been an important concern for political filmmakers. While some, like pioneering Lionel Rogosin , argued that radical films, in order to liberate
612-470: The French avant-garde of the 1920s. Even in his more conventional films Luis Buñuel stuck to the spirit of outright revolt of L'Âge d'or. The bourgeoisie had to be expropriated and all its values destroyed, the surrealists believed. This spirit of revolt is also present in all films of Jean Vigo . Griffith's highly controversial film, which glorifies the Ku Klux Klan , is widely considered to be
646-481: The Little Red Book piled in mounds on the floor to literally create a defensive parapet against the forces of capitalist imperialism, and a jaunty satirical pop song, "Mao-Mao" (sung by Claude Channes), heard on the soundtrack. Godard suggests that the students are, at the same moment, both serious committed revolutionaries intent on bringing about major social change and confused bourgeois youth flirting with
680-576: The alleged idyll is restored. Jeanson network The Jeanson network ( French : Réseau Jeanson ) was a group of French leftwing militants led by Francis Jeanson who helped Algerian National Liberation Front agents operating in the French metropolitan territory during the Algerian War . They were mainly involved in carrying money and papers for the Algerians and were sometimes called "the suitcase carriers" ( les porteurs de valises ),
714-626: The anti- empiricist ideas of the French Marxist, Louis Althusser . Godard likewise portrays the role that certain objects and organizations—such as Mao's Little Red Book , the French Communist Party , and other small leftist factions—play in the developing ideology and activities of the Aden Arabie cell. These objects and organizations appear to become repurposed as entertainment products and fashion statements within
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#1732783915078748-709: The character of Ivan Shatov in The Possessed , a student who is marked for assassination because he has abandoned the tenets of leftist radicalism. Kirilov is the only character in the film who actually takes his name from a character in Dostoyevsky's novel; in The Possessed , Kirillov is a suicidal Russian engineer who has been driven to nihilism and insanity by the failure of his philosophical quest. True to his literary namesake, Godard's Kirilov also descends into madness and ultimately commits suicide. When Guillaume complains that he cannot listen to music and work at
782-501: The character of Pyotr Stepanovich Verkhovensky in The Possessed . Véronique and Guillaume are engaged in a personal relationship, with Véronique as the more committed, dominant partner. Yvonne is a girl from the country who occasionally works as a prostitute for extra money to purchase consumer goods (much like Juliette Janson, the principal character in Godard's previous film, Two or Three Things I Know About Her ). Yvonne does most of
816-459: The dominant industry of cinema, was often accused of misrepresenting black, female, gay, and working-class people. More fundamentally, not only are the contents of individual films political, but the institution of cinema itself can also be taken as political as well. A huge number of people congregate, not to act together or to talk to each other, but to sit silently, after having paid for it, to be spectators separated from each other. Guy Debord ,
850-441: The housecleaning in the apartment and, together with Guillaume, she acts out satirical political skits protesting American imperialism in general, and U.S. President Lyndon Johnson 's Vietnam policy in particular. Henri is eventually expelled from the group for his apparent backsliding Soviet revisionism, comically suggested by his defense of the 1954 Nicholas Ray movie Johnny Guitar . In this sense he loosely corresponds to
884-443: The imagination of the spectator, have to break not only with the content but also with the form of Dominant cinema, the falsely reassuring clichés and stereotypes of conventional narrative film making, other directors such as Francesco Rosi , Costa Gavras , Ken Loach , Oliver Stone , Spike Lee or Lina Wertmüller preferred to work within mainstream cinema to reach a wider audience. The subversive tradition dates back at least to
918-600: The legacy of Lenin 's October 1917 Russian Revolution , the escalating U.S. military activities in the increasingly unstable region of southeast Asia , and especially the Cultural Revolution brought about by the Red Guards under Mao Zedong in the People's Republic of China . The film also touches upon the rise of anti-humanist poststructuralism in French intellectual life by the mid-1960s, particularly
952-519: The notion of radical politics as a fashionable and exciting distraction. La Chinoise is not one of Godard's most widely seen films, and until 2008 was unavailable on DVD in North America. However, a number of critics such as Pauline Kael , Andrew Sarris and Renata Adler have hailed it as among his best. Given that the film was made in March 1967—one year before violent student protest became
986-478: The novel, five disaffected citizens, each representing a different ideological persuasion and personality type, conspire to overthrow the Russian imperial regime through a campaign of sustained revolutionary violence. The film, set in contemporary Paris and largely taking place in a small apartment, is structured as a series of personal and ideological dialogues dramatizing the interactions of five French university students—three young men and two young women—belonging to
1020-440: The original owners of the apartment where the cell has been living causes them to leave. The revolutionary activities of the Aden Arabie cell prove unsuccessful, and the film ends with Véronique narrating that she plans to return to school, having realized that she has made only the "first timid step in a long march". Thematically, La Chinoise concerns the 1960s New Left political interest in such historical and ongoing events as
1054-588: The same time, Véronique uses a facetious declaration of "unlove" to teach him (and the audience) the Maoist lesson of "struggle on two fronts". Véronique then leaves the apartment alone and sets off for a mission to kill the Minister of Culture of the Soviet Union , Mikhail Sholokhov , during his official diplomatic visit to France. On the train ride en route to the planned assassination, Véronique engages in
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1088-482: The scene on the train, Jeanson argues against the use of violence as a means to shut down the French universities. However this does not dissuade Véronique (for her dialogue in this scene, Godard fed Anne Wiazemsky her lines through an earpiece). The appearance of Francis Jeanson in the film seems to correspond to the character of Stepan Trofimovich Verkhovensky (Pyotr's father and Stavrogin's surrogate father) in The Possessed . Indeed, much like Stepan Trofimovich, Jeanson
1122-530: The violent anti-Semitic films of Fritz Hippler . Other Nazi political films made propaganda for so-called euthanasia . Especially in the last decades of the 20th century, many filmmakers considered focusing on remembrance of and reflection upon major collective crimes such as the Holocaust , slavery and disasters such as the Chernobyl disaster to be their political and moral duty. Political cinema of
1156-403: The way in which their politics is presented. As such, a film does not necessarily have to be pure propaganda to be considered 'political cinema'. The broader meaning of 'political cinema' is argued to be that "all films are political;" even films that are ostensibly 'apolitical' and escapist , merely promising 'entertainment' as an escape from everyday life, can be understood as fulfilling
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