Starring: Anne Wiazemsky, Jean-Pierre Leaud, Juliet Berto, Michel Semeniako
Director: Jean-Luc Godard
The film: 'We should replace vague ideas with clear images,' reads a slogan in La Chinoise, a brash, revolutionary proclamation about filmmaking from Jean-Luc Godard, which has just been re-released.
It also sums up the French auteur's march into militant movie-making. The film, about a group of youngsters living out their ideals in a self-proclaimed Maoist commune, represented a radical departure from the subtle inquisition into capitalism that underlines Godard's earlier work.
La Chinoise is a theoretically stringent yet loosely plotted philosophical tract. Inspired by the Cultural Revolution in China, Godard offers a precursor to the anti-capitalist social movements that swept across the world a year after the release of the film in 1967.
The commune is led by two sharp-tongued radicals, Veronique (Anna Wiazemsky) and Guillaume (Jean-Pierre Leaud). They seek to provoke a mass insurrection against the bourgeoisie through ever escalating means, from touting manifestos to attempted assassinations.
In between, the group is seen spouting rhetoric about why they embraced left-wing beliefs. There are also rounds of mutual- and self-criticism and theatrical enactments of the evil of US imperialism flexing its muscles in Europe and Vietnam.