Search - Weekend on DVD

Content Advisory: Violence, Nudity, Adult Situations, Not For Children, Adult Language Movie Release: 1967 DVD Release: 08/23/2005 Format: DVD - Enhanced Wide Screen Letterbox for 16x9 TV Audio Tracks: French Subtitles: English SwapaDVD Credits: 1 Number of Discs: 1 Run Time: 1 hrs 45 mins Studio: New Yorker Video Members Wishing: 26 Genres: Avant-garde / Experimental, Road Movie, Satire, Black Comedy

French filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard's Le Weekend remains his most consistently relentless attack on the bourgeois values of his own country and the perceived imperialism of the United States. Mireille Darc plays the central character, an "average" woman who is systematically radicalized during a weekend motor trip. No sooner have the woman and her husband (Jean Yanne) embarked on their journey than they become enmeshed in the mother of all traffic jams. The motorists rave, rant, burn, rape, murder, pillage and even descend into cannibalism -- all of which is treated by Godard as a natural progression of events. The prevalent theory that Jean-Luc Godard had intended Weekend as the apotheosis of his career is bolstered by the film's last two titles: "End of Film." "End of Cinema." ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Mireille Darc - Corinne
Jean Yanne - Roland
Jean-Pierre Kalfon - Leader of the FLSO
Valerie Lagrange - His Moll
Jean-Pierre Léaud - Man in the Phone Booth
Jean-Pierre Léaud - Saint Just
Jean Eustache - Hitchhiker
Paul Gégauff - pianist

Arguably Jean-Luc Godard's greatest film, and certainly the most powerful and influential of his polemic works of the 1960s, Weekend is a film that still rewards careful study nearly 40 years after it premiered, and thankfully New Yorker Films has finally given it a long-overdue domestic release on DVD. Weekend was been given a letterboxed transfer to disc in the widescreen aspect ratio of 1.85:1, and has also been enhanced for anamorphic playback on 16 x 9 monitors. The transfer is superb, and reproduces the depth of detail and carefully plotted color schemes of Raoul Coutard's cinematography with commendable accuracy. The audio has been mastered in Dolby Digital Stereo, faithfully reproducing the picture's original single-channel sound mix; the dialogue is in French, with optional English-language subtitles, which are easy to read but sometimes translate the French slang into British vernacular, adding a bit of disconnect to the experience for American viewers. As a bonus, this edition of Weekend includes a lively and enthusiastic commentary track from film writer David Sterritt, as well as a short interview with Raoul Coutard on the production of the movie, and a talk with Mike Figgis who shares his thoughts about Weekend and Godard's body of work. If this isn't the ideal video edition of Weekend (if ever there was a film that would benefit from a director's audio commentary, this is it), it does offer a fine DVD rendition of the film, and makes this trail-blazing work readily available -- anyone with an interest in the French New Wave owes it to themselves to see this picture, and this is the strongest home-video release of Weekend to date. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide