Windows on the World

Jean-Paul Belmondo with fag permanently clamped in gob.

Now i know why there’s so much smoking in films. This films fault.

And apparently it also started the French New Wave too, and is very influential and very significant.

Probably to aspiring film directors it is, and nerdy pseudy film students.

But 50 years on it seems hopelessly dated.

I tried to imagine what it might have been like to watch this back in 1960 as an idealistic 20 year old. Whether it would have impressed me with it’s cool detachment, it’s anarchic spirit, it’s obsessive narcissistic self-absorption. Maybe it would.

Maybe I’d be wanting to walk around with a fedora hat on and a fag on and a fuck you attitude on – being a bit of a wannabe cool-dude gangster. Wanting to put my pecker in pretty Parisian girls so bad. Aching them for it. Being a bit of a bad lad cus they like it. Spinning enigmatic talk like:

“Why are you unhappy?” (she says) …. “Because I’m unhappy” (I say)…. “Thats silly” (she says) (It is. But I’m being a clever dick)….

I could say, “It’s life; burglars burgle, murderers murder, lovers love”… (that would get their knickers off)….

I could poke my cock out, being enigmatically epigramatically existential: “I want to be immortal – then die” (I’d be in then)

I wouldn’t bother to love the girls. Altho i would bother them with love, and talking about it all the time, being a right pest.

And then do the post-coital comedown: “When we talked, I talked about me, you talked about you, when we should have talked about each other”.

That would piss them off. But they wouldn’t care. Cus they wouldn’t be loving me as much as i hadn’t been loving them. Cus we’d both be too self-preoccupied in only loving ourselves.

And still that fag would dangle. I’d be puffing my smoke and ash all over them.

“Why you looking at me?” I’d say. “Because I’m looking at you” they’d say (getting their own back)

The jazz xylophone would tinkle annoyingly away. I’d stick my shades back on. (So as not to listen to it)

“I’m sick of it all. I’m tired” I’d say, “I want to sleep”. I’d give her my gun to shoot me in the back. “Why are you going to shoot me” I’d say. “Because I’m going to shoot you” she’d say. (”Because you’re a scumbag” is what she’d really be thinking)

“You’re a scumbag” I’d say. She’d have her Mona Lisa smile on. I’d Bogart her back with an existential grin. Time to go to sleep. One last puff….

She’s shot me. Thank God.

Is this a “Forever film”? No. Without the historical context, and the cooing of the critics- you’d want to skip this film. I promise you, you wouldn’t want to watch it.

I’d been putting it off. But finally felt obliged to, dutifully having to pay homage to the “Godfather of the Avant-Garde”. Cus Godard’s one of the “Greats” right?.

Only, i don’t think I’ll be wanting to watch too many more of Jean-Lucs films in a hurry.

They’re enough to make me wanna commit slow suicide – go smoke myself to death.

Dir: Jean-Luc Godard, France

3/10