Le Petit Soldat

8/26/2018

Shot in 1960, but banned until 1963 due to its frank treatment of French torture of Algerian separatists, Jean-Luc Godard's <i>Le petit soldat</i> is a political thriller mixed with a love story. Bruno (Michel Subor) is a French agent in Geneva, fighting a secret war against Arab spies supporting the Algerian cause. Tired of his superiors' demands that he assassinate another agent to prove his loyalty, he dreams of escaping to Brazil with the lovely Danish young lady Veronica (Anna Karina). Will they make it or not? I am assuming that anyone who is considering this film has already seen Godard's first film Breathless. Love it or hate it, it's a 20th-century classic and something any film buff should see. Godard's second film here initially seems to follow the same plot, where a man play