Featured Audience Ratings

• Emil K

  
  Antoher artsy and pointless film from one of the most overrated directors of the whole history of cinema. With Le Petit Soldat director Jean-Luc Godard attempts to make somekind of a parody of an spy-thriller but makes it only a confusing and intellectual pice of nonsense. Once again… More
  Antoher artsy and pointless film from one of the most overrated directors of the whole history of cinema. With Le Petit Soldat director Jean-Luc Godard attempts to make somekind of a parody of an spy-thriller but makes it only a confusing and intellectual pice of nonsense. Once again there is the famous and irritating endless dialogue/monolgue running over the whole film's lenght and it is clear that Godard is taking his political thriller very seriously, even if there are few more playful scenes with cinema's rules they cannot take away the fact that this is just plain awful to sit through. Godard clearly sees himself as a somkind of a revoltuionary and brilliant genius with political agenda but if you ask me i think his films are horseshit to the bone.

• Anthony L

  
  I much prefer Godard's early work, Le Petit Soldat being his first political film and as far as I've seen, his best. First off, it looks great, new wave at its best. There is the romance between the two leads like in Breathless and there is intrigue like in Alphaville but Le… More
  I much prefer Godard's early work, Le Petit Soldat being his first political film and as far as I've seen, his best. First off, it looks great, new wave at its best. There is the romance between the two leads like in Breathless and there is intrigue like in Alphaville but Le Petit Soldat is never quite as accomplished as either film. It feels more like a Malle film to be honest but to Godard's credit, the ending is wonderfully bleak and very much his. I generally like the style of his script rather what is actually said but the last scene leaves you with very little doubt about what this film is about and it really makes the film. Michel Subor is super cool and a great actor and Anna Karina is a goddess.

• El Hombre I

  
  An early Jean-Luc Godard film that was made on a shoestring budget about a young revolutionary, Bruno, living in Geneva who is fighting against French involvement in the war in Algeria, only to run into Veronica (Anna Karina). Shot like a newsreel, much of the film is photographed… More
  An early Jean-Luc Godard film that was made on a shoestring budget about a young revolutionary, Bruno, living in Geneva who is fighting against French involvement in the war in Algeria, only to run into Veronica (Anna Karina). Shot like a newsreel, much of the film is photographed with a hand-held camera, with sound post-synchronized. A moody, often violent film, complete with sequences of torture modeled after the actions of occupying French forces in Algeria. These scenes resulted in the movie being banned by the French government for some time. <a href="http://s273.photobucket.com/albums/jj203/goji9000/?action=view&current=LePetitSoldat.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i273.photobucket.com/albums/jj203/goji9000/LePetitSoldat.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket"></a>

• Eric B

  
  The title is misleading -- there are no true soldiers in this film, and no uniforms. This is a movie about urban terrorism, plotted by young men in suits and ties. The plot is not especially easy to follow, but the setting is the Algerian War. A French deserter lives in Geneva, and… More
  The title is misleading -- there are no true soldiers in this film, and no uniforms. This is a movie about urban terrorism, plotted by young men in suits and ties. The plot is not especially easy to follow, but the setting is the Algerian War. A French deserter lives in Geneva, and is pressured to commit an assassination. When he resists, the heat comes down on him from both sides of the conflict. Along the way, he becomes smitten with a girl portrayed by Anna Karina, and who could blame him? What's most impressive about "Le Petit Soldat" is not its story, but how much director Jean-Luc Godard achieved on such a low budget. Almost all the scenes appear to have been shot silently, with sound dubbed in later. Most of the camera work is handheld, and the narration carries a heavy burden of explaining the background details. Typically for Godard, the script includes an obsessive number of allusions to personal influences like Paul Klee and Carl Dreyer. There's also an extended monologue where the lead actor suddenly turns and begins speaking to the camera. A startling moment, created with some rather primitive tools. "Le Petit Soldat" was Godard's second film after the more celebrated "A Bout de Souffle," but was initially banned due to a controversial torture sequence (laughably tame, by today's standards) and some unflattering comments about French politics.

• Walter M

  
  [font=Century Gothic]In "Le Petit Soldat," Bruno(Michel Subor) is an undercover antiterrorist agent in Geneva who works for the French Information Bureau and is tasked with an assassination. In the meantime, he is asked to photograph Veronica(Anna Karina) for some odd… More
  [font=Century Gothic]In "Le Petit Soldat," Bruno(Michel Subor) is an undercover antiterrorist agent in Geneva who works for the French Information Bureau and is tasked with an assassination. In the meantime, he is asked to photograph Veronica(Anna Karina) for some odd reason.[/font] [font=Century Gothic][/font] [font=Century Gothic]"Le Petit Soldat" is a political allegory about terrorism and graphically depicted torture that comes tantalizingly close to succeeding despite its very odd setting of Switzerland, a general lack of coherence and its polemical tone.(One shot features a woman reading from the works of Mao.) But then this would not be a Jean-Luc Godard film if he did not get distracted somewhere along the way which explains the photography session that is at least photographed nicely.[/font]

• Tom S

  
  Underrated as a founding film of the French New Wave.

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