Jean-Luc Godard's 1979 Sauve qui Peut (la Vie), released in the U. S. as Every Man for Himself -- the French title means something like "Save Yourself!," an imperative that might be uttered in the context of a shipwreck -- was touted as Godard's return to mainstream cinema after half a decade wandering the Maoist wasteland as part of the Dziga Vertov documentary group. Godard himself described the picture as his "second first film," drawing a connection between the movie and 1961's Breathless. The film is reasonably accessible and, indeed, comprised of three interlocking narratives that can be readily deciphered -- in this film, we know who's doing what to whom, a rarity in Godard's later films, although it is, certainly, not clear why some of things that we see are occurring. I don't like this movie -- it is shallow, cold, repellant, and disingenuous. On the Criterion disk, there are a variety of helpful extra materials, including a couple of cringe-inducing interviews with Dick Cavett. (Cavett is obviously suffused with boyish awe for the great filmmaker and Godard's English is not equal to what he wants to express -- he spends a lot of time staring into the air about eight inches above his balding forehead, apparently, searching for English words -- and most of what he says is gibberish, completely confounding to Cavett). In the Cavett interviews, Godard claims that the film is feminist (although he doesn't use that word), arguing that men will see the movie as expression of despair, but that women will be empowered by the portrait of the female of the species that he provides in the picture. And I almost believe him. But I know enough about Godard and his persistent misogyny to be suspicious of claims like this. In Godard's later films, he contrives ways to get his young, and comely, leading ladies naked, puts them in overtly degrading sexual situations, and, generally, asserts that women are so alien to male sensibilities as to be incompletely human. It is true that the male characters in Sauve qui Peut are uniformly despicable. But it is equally true that the women he presents are either disgruntled and rapacious ex-spouses or strangely benumbed whores -- an odd choice for a film that is supposedly feminist in its implications. Take, for example, a bizarre insert into the opening sequence of the film, the part of the picture that is most clearly feminist in its tone -- a woman rides a bicycle through Switzerland. She has abandoned her boyfriend, a lout named Paul Godard, who works (not surprisingly) in the Paris Tv and film industry. The woman, named Denise, hopes to sub-lease the apartment that she shared with Paul in Paris and she spends a lot of time on the phone making business arrangements with respect to the flat. The woman is a novelist and she is looking for a day-job. First, she meets an old friend at some kind of bizarre game played in the Swiss cantons -- it seems to involve hurling a hammer and catching it with baskets on tall poles. The man is strangely hideous. He tells the woman to seek work at a local dairy farm. At the dairy farm, the heroine watches cows being fed. Then, we are treated to a shot of a beautiful woman, naked from the waist down, exposing her luscious behind to the nearby cows. She says something like: "You can get the cows to lick the crack of your ass." (Godard is much concerned with rectal licking in this film -- an ability to effectively tongue an asshole is said to be a prerequisite for successful whoring.) The shot is certainly striking, unexpected, and remarkable -- but it's also totally gratuitous, without point from a narrative perspective, and awfully stupid: does Godard really want us to think that beauteous Swiss milkmaids routinely present their posteriors to cows be licked? Undoubtedly, Godard would accuse me of being naïve: obviously, the shot is just a distraction, an alienation effect, something to remind me that the movie is just a movie and not a representation of truth or existence -- okay, point taken, but why use this imagery? Godard would reply because the film is about sexual relationships between men and women and the image represents the kind of fantasy, one could suppose, that would occur to the loathsome Paul Godard, a fellow who routinely fantasizes about sodomizing his 12 year-old daughter. But all of this is a pretty wan justification for something that is, more or less, exploitation and gratuitous, as well as more than a little creepy to boot. Further, Godard would argue, one supposes, that he wants the (male) audience to acknowledge complicity in Paul Godard's nastiness -- that is, we are secretly excited by the image. But all of this is bullshit, Godard's métier to be sure, but bullshit, nonetheless. The fact is that Godard has an unhealthy interest in prostitution, a theme to which he reverts time and time again, using highly predictable imagery -- his prostitutes are always extremely glamorous, beautiful, submissive, philosophically astute, in a word fantasy-whores at the beck and call of a wealthy and powerful man (someone a lot like Godard himself). The fact that Godard openly acknowledges, and, even, luxuriates in his obsession with this material doesn't excuse the fact that he wallows in this stuff. Sauve qui Peut's plot, if it can be so characterized, is fairly simple. Paul Godard is a divorced man, estranged from his wife and adolescent daughter, both of whom treat him with contempt. He is also separated by his girlfriend, Denise, who has urged him to move to the Swiss countryside. Denise tries to rent the apartment she shared with Godard -- he has been living for some months in a luxury hotel. Godard picks up a young and beautiful prostitute, Isabel (played by the very young and luminous Isabelle Huppert). The film shifts emphasis to follow Isabel's peregrinations, including an elaborate Sade-ian orgy involving a wealthy boss, another prostitute, and an enterprising, and accommodating, male employee. The boss is clearly another surrogate for the filmmaker. Carefully arranging bodies and orifices, the boss says "now that I've got the visuals, we need so supply the sound," instructing the participants as to the noises they are supposed to make with each motion that he directs. Isabel is approached by her younger sister who needs to pay off some legal expenses -- she's been consorting with bank robbers (or jewelry thieves, I can't recall which). Of course, Isabel gives her sister some helpful tips as to how to make an earning in the prostitution business, including advice as to anal licking techniques. In the end, Isabel runs into Denise, Paul's ex-girlfriend, and subleases the apartment from her -- the picture has something of the character of Max Ophuls' La Ronde. As the film has progressed, characters have from time to time expressed puzzlement about music that they keep hearing -- this is the film's soundtrack. The last scene of the film shamelessly steals from Woody Allen's Bananas -- Paul's rapacious wife and daughter, hear music, enter a underground car-park, and, then, stroll past an entire symphony orchestra playing the theme music to the film. (In Bananas, Allen's character has an emotional love scene set to lush harp music; suddenly, he frowns, asks where the music is coming from, and finds a harpist in his closet -- "I'm just practicing here,' the harpist says.) Godard's soundtrack is conspicuously brilliant and the film, of course, is a master-class in disorienting ways to stage time-worn scenes -- the meeting of lovers in a train station, confrontations between an ex-husband and his former wife, pimps brutally disciplining a beautiful young prostitute. As always, Godard finds remarkable and innovative ways to present this material. But the material itself just isn't very good in this picture and I thought it was disappointing.
(How much the world has changed in just a few short years is evident from one of the opening scenes in the movie. The hero, Paul Godard, beset by an opera singer with an alarmingly loud voice in the next suite, flees his hotel room. In the parking lot, he is approached by a bell-boy who begs the famous director to bugger him. The man says that he is in love with Godard and tries to kiss him. Godard knocks the man down, shrieking imprecations, and drives away. A commentator on the film, narrating a video essay about the movie, remarks about this "hilarious scene' -- as far as I can determine the commentary was recorded in 2010. To the sensibility of 2015, with gay marriage now existing in a majority of states, the scene plays as homophobic, unfunny, and mean-spirited.)
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