Claudio Carvalho During a war, the poor and ignorant brothers Ulysses (Marino Mase) and Michel-Ange (Albert Juross) are lured and recruited by two soldiers that promise wealth to them in the name of their King. The greedy wife of Ulysses Cleopatre (Catherine Ribeiro) and her daughter Venus (Geneviève Galéa) ask them to enlist to pursue fortune. They travel to Italy and become unscrupulous criminals of war. When Ulysses is wounded in one eye, he returns home with Michel-Ange and a small bag full of postcards of famous locations and the promise that they would be entitled of the properties in the end of the war. However, when the King signs the peace treaty with their enemy, they find that the agreement was actually surrender and they have a prize to pay for their actions. "Les Carabiniers" is another boring and annoying movie of Jean-Luc Godard. The anti-war message uses a black humor that might work for fans of this director, but unfortunately I did not like it. The gorgeous Geneviève Galéa is the mother of the wonderful Emmanuelle Béart, one of the most sexy, talented and beautiful French actresses. My vote is five.Title (Brazil): "Tempo de Guerra" ("Time of War")

Michael_Elliott Carabiniers, Les (1963) * (out of 4) Um, okay. Jean-Luc Godard film about two farmers who are picked by the King to join the war. The two aren't that interested at first but soon become very interested when they're promised that they can rape, murder, steal from and torture anyone they please since "that's what war is all about". I've seen plenty of anti-war film but there's no doubt this is the worst of the bunch. I'm going to go out on a limb and say this film is directed well since there's no way in hell, not even Ed Wood, could have made a film like this without it being on purpose. I wasn't shocked to learn that this film was bashed and bombed when it was first released in France only to gain popularity four years later in America. With all the anti-Vietnam stuff going on there's no wonder they ate this film up. The whole message was just downright stupid and if it was meant as satire then it didn't come off too well. The only nice scene is one where one of the soldiers goes to the movies for the first time. I wouldn't even call this thing technically well made like the previous film I watched. Compared to Paths of Glory this sucker is on the level of an Ed Wood film.

themadstork Godard might very well have set out to make an anti-war movie with Truffaut's comment that a truly anti-war film was impossible in mind, but even judged solely as an anti-war statement this film's a failure. Why? Well for one thing, Truffaut may have been a genius, but on this score he was certainly wrong. There definitely is a danger of aestheticizing anything you put on film, especially if you do it well (think of just how beautiful Sam Peckinpah can make a massacre), but aestheticizing war doesn't mean you can't successfully make an anti-war film. Think of "The Bridge on the River Kwai," "The Grand Illusion," or the more recent "Downfall." All are fairly conventional war films and none of them exactly make one want to go out and enlist. "The Grand Illusion," and to a lesser extent "Bridge on the River Kwai," paint a romantic picture of war only to undercut it later. You can't help coming away from those films with the message that, while there might be some nobility in war and the ideals that allow men to fight, both war and the ideals that motivate it are a form of madness. "Downfall" is a completely conventional war film, but it never makes war look like anything other than dirty, terrifying and completely insane. And to me this seems exactly the way one should make an anti-war film. Engage in dialogue with those who might find some nobility in war, admit their point, and try to show what's wrong with it while admitting its appeal; or show just how ugly, brutal, dehumanizing, and insane war is with as much realism as you possibly can. "Les Carbiniers" does neither. It's a smug statement aimed at those who already think that all war is wrong and anyone who fights in one degenerate and evil. People in that camp will no doubt find much to agree with, though little to entertain them, but anyone not so convinced will probably just be bored and angry. And who is it one's trying to reach with an anti-war movie anyway? In the end Godard succeeds too well at making an ugly film. Everyone here is either thoroughly nasty, helpless, or silly. It's kind of like Evelyn Waught at his nastiest, only not nearly as funny. In the scene where the captured partisans are shot Godard seems to me to mock the very idea of human dignity. But what is it that makes war so bad? Isn't it that people get killed? If people are as worthless as this film makes out, who really cares if they get killed? Even Waugh didn't' go quite so far; one always found a few noble fools here and there. The movie isn't a total wash. It might not be Waugh, but it is nastily funny here and there, and Godard was a pretty good craftsman when it came to film. Unfortunately, when you get down to it, this might be Godard's most characteristic film. Godard and Truffaut are often linked, but really ther films aren't alike. With Truffaut one always finds sympathy for his characters and there's just a certain warmth and light touch that permeate almost everything he did. One certainly doesn't find that in Godard. Yes there's craft and cleverness here, but also coldness, cynicism, and a failure to understand, or possibly care about, basic human emotion. To me that's what's characteristic of Godard; it's on display even in Godard's "more accessible" (I'd say "better") films like "Band of Outsiders," but nowhere is it clearer than in "Les Carabiniers," which might make it the best Godard film to start with if you really want to get an idea of the man and his work. Truffaut was a humanist in the true sense of the term, whereas Godard, like too many French intellectuals, subscibes to Ivan Karamazov's line: He loves humanity (in the abstract of course) and hates human beings.

MisterWhiplash One of Godard's better films from the 60's, which like a number of his films from his prime era is usually either liked a lot or detested to hell, is almost audience-dividing on purpose. His film is a black comedy that sometimes is (successfully) deceptively a bleak drama of corruption of the working man in times of War. Stylistically it is Godard all the way, though one can't disregard the likely significant contributions (though it may be hard to detect since it IS Godard's mouth all over the pie so to speak) of screenwriters Jean Gurault (usually Truffaut's co-writer), and (apparently) Roberto Rossellini. Rossellini, who was one of Godard's big influences, is countered by what was also a big influence likely on this picture, Samuel Fuller, the king of B War pictures. So one could look at the quasi-split of ideals in the film, of Rossellini's documentary style of telling it like it is, crossed with Fuller's hard professionalism and no-holds- barred view of War. Whomever influence comes through stronger, this is really Godard's show, and has here something that is fairly usual in terms of his challenging styles and criticizing past films (including Truffaut with his own comments on War depicted in film), but also is unique for how it is presented, and makes it a difficult, though rewarding experience. This is the French new-wave equivalent, to put it another way, to Sam Mendes's Jarhead; you're not sure if this really should be classified as a typical 'war' film, despite being in a league of other films already in place.One thing that is as fascinating as it is occasionally frustrating is Godard's main male actors, Albert Muross and Marino Mase, are not very expressive, and of course are not really 'actors' in the traditional sense (at least at the time they were close to un- professionals). But maybe that is what's needed, dumb farm boys who are propogandized into going to fight for their invading, nameless country; the opening scenes of the list of things the men will get is equally funny and troubling. Then the boys go off to war, and there is a really astute episodic kind of storytelling used, which works considering the short time length. One scene that really stood out was when one of the soldiers goes to see his first film ever, and is almost like some kind of primate seeing a woman disrobing on a screen (it's also arguably the funniest scene in the film). When the boys come home they are loaded with pictures, in a scene that is the one that almost had me questioning if it was either really good or really too long; the length of the list of pictures is like a litmus test for moviegoers- can you take all of these images, done almost to make a point that's not too clear? But what makes Les Carabiniers work for me is how it is so un-like other war films that it stands alone on its own terms, like a French new-wave Dr. Strangelove (though maybe not a masterpiece like that one). At times I wasn't totally sure where the satire started or ended, and there is a certain distance that Godard places with his many long-shots getting in as much landscape as tanks and soldiers with their guns. What's surprising is how the tone is always assured, which is crucial considering this is a story told through the side of the invaders this time, men working under their elusive King for land and riches and wealth. One of the best scenes I may have seen in any Godard film is when they have a woman who is at first thought to be 'a friend' of the soldiers, but then goes off on a Leninist rant. The men are about to shoot her, but can't for a few minutes, as the words she says strike some kind of chord in their primal mindsets. Amid montages of archive footage of planes flying and bombs dropping, there's a scene that would never ever be in any 'conventional' war picture. There's a real thought process going on here, and even if it's got some of Godard's usual 'f*** you, it's my style, take it or leave it' attitude, it's not totally un-accessible either. It's a slim volume of gritty anti-War pathos, and it's maybe a tad under-rated in the director's massive catalog.