Band of Outsiders

7/31/2018

Jean-Luc Godard's 1964 film <i>Bandè a part</i> (sometimes titled "Band of Outsiders") is an adaptation of a American crime novel that transcends its pulp origins through Godard's cinematic invention. The young lady Odile (Anna Karina), who isn't very bright, meets lowlife Franz (Sami Frey) in an English course and makes the mistake of telling him that the home in which she lives with her aunt holds a large amount of cash. Franz and fellow criminal Arthur (Claude Brasseur) plan a heist while at the same time vying for Odile's love, or at least her body. As is common in the French New Wave, the auteur only uses a crime caper as a skeleton for his own storytelling. A narrator (Godard himself) occasionally reads descriptive passages from the original novel, which are horribly purple prose, as