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U.S. PREMIERE! NEVER ON TV, VIDEO OR DVD!
(1966) “Walt Disney with blood.” Trench-coated Anna Karina arrives in Atlantic City (apparently a provincial French town) to track down boyfriend Richard P… (phone, plane or car noise constantly blots out the last name), only to find... And then the bodies start dropping, amid encounters with the mysterious, height-challenged M. Typhus, his nephew David Goodis (a character, not the Shoot the Piano Player author), Goodis’s singing Japanese girlfriend Doris Mizoguchi, characters named “Richard Nixon” and “Robert McNamara,” while being shadowed by Jean-Pierre Léaud and László Szabó’s “Paul Widmark,” with a break for a Hegelian bull session in a bar, punctuated with the real Marianne Faithfull warbling “As Tears Go By.” Made as a favor to his cash-strapped producer Georges de Beauregard, and filmed simultaneously with Two or Three Things I Know About Her, this ostensible adaptation of a story by American crime writer Donald Westlake was Godard’s farewell to his muse/ex-wife Karina, never filmed more glamorously, as she changes from one colorfully Mod ensemble to another, posed against starkly colored backgrounds and shot (by New Wave legend Raoul Coutard) in a succession of giant, haunting close-ups. But it’s simultaneously an extremely metaphorical and narratively disjunctive treatment of the notorious disappearance/murder — still unsolved — of exiled Moroccan leftist Mehdi Ben Barka and Godard’s own way of suggesting a vast Cold War conspiracy. Dedicated to “Nick [Ray] and Samuel [Fuller], who taught me about image and sound” and virtually unseen in this country due to rights issues, this is Made in U.S.A.’s very first U.S. release in 35mm. “The many shots of Anna Karina, with their wide variety of mood — each a different pose, angle, expression — serve as a catalogue of remembrances. The close-ups are the most expressive ones in color that Godard has made to date.” – Richard Brody. Color; Approx. 90 minutes
1:00, 2:50, 4:40, 6:30, 8:20, 10:..
View the trailer
GLOSSARY OF LITERARY & CINEMATIC REFERENCES
Jonathan Rosenbaum's review (following a rare 1981 screening of a 16mm print) [pdf file]
Glenn Kenny's interview with Made in U.S.A. star László Szabó on The Auteurs
Interview magazine article on Made in U.S.A. (and source material author Donald Westlake)
Green Cine Daily's podcast on Made in U.S.A., featuring Armond White
The Auteurs: "Notes on Made in U.S.A."
Godard on Made in U.S.A. (1966 Interview) [pdf file]
Biographies of Godard, cast & crew [pdf file]
Immediate Impressions of Made in U.S.A. from The House Next Door
IFC Daily's compilation of links
IN PERSON EVENTS
Q&A with co-star László Szabó following 8:20 show on Friday, January 9 (opening night).
Critic and author Richard Brody
(Everything Is Cinema:
The Working Life of Jean-Luc Godard)
will introduce the 8:20 show
on Friday, January 16.
EVERYTHING IS CINEMA:
THE WORKING LIFE OF JEAN-LUC GODARD
by New Yorker writer Richard Brody
is for sale at concessions
during the run of MADE IN U.S.A.
New MADE IN U.S.A. posters, designed by Japanese illustrator Keiko Kimura, on sale exclusively at Film Forum during run of film.
DONALD WESTLAKE (1933-2008)
Donald E. Westlake, who, under his pseudonym Richard Stark, wrote the source novel for Made in U.S.A., died this past New Year's Eve.
