Band of Outsiders: Listen Up

Pardon me momentarily while I quote myself: In my review of American Movie Critics, I wrote:

While reading this book, one quickly discovers that the best critics are those who can make you want to drop everything and see some unknown film right now. If [Pauline] Kael doesn’t make you want to see Band of Outsiders before the day is through, then nothing will.

Perhaps this will cost me some of my film geek cred, but I wrote that line in part because, until just a few hours ago, I hadn’t seen Band of Outsiders. One of the developments that’s going to arise in the next few decades of criticism is that the next generation of critics is simply not going to be as intimately familiar with the whole of film history as previous generations. While many of us young twerps that Dave Kehr is so suspicious of (not entirely without reason) may watch movies at a prodigious rate, we’re also confronted with far larger chunks of film history to digest than those before us—especially if we hope to even remotely “keep up” with current cinematic offerings. What this means is that there will be people like myself who write somewhat professionally about film but have not seen canonical pictures like, for example, Band of Outsiders.

Fortunately, though, I no longer fit that bill, and thank goodness. Band of Outsiders is a reckless romp that careens through its 96 minutes with the same youthful dramatic streak as its three leads. Tragic, funny, and shockingly free-wheeling in its stylistics, it swerves and zooms with unhinged juvenile vigor.

The film is packed with stylistic tricks that, 40 years later, still spark with originality, but what interested me most was the film’s use of sound and music. The minute of silence in the café (which is really only about 40 seconds—thank you DVD player info screen); the dancing sequence in which the music drops out to make way for narrator while the characters keep dancing; the boiling swells of jazz that build into a climax and then just vanish, as if someone tripped over the record player cord; all of these moments seem designed to call our attention to what the non-diagetic music is doing.

Even after Godard has pulled out the musical rug from under us several times, each new use of the music seems entirely natural. It comes in, sets the tone, tells us what to feel about what's going on--all those movieish things that a score should do. Yet he continues to whisk the musical track away unexpectedly, leaving us with only the chaotic, unmixed background hum of the original shots. When the music plays, all is frivolous and romantic and exciting; when it stops, the world returns to its noisy, uncontrolled state. By toying with the entrance and exit of the music, Godard is reminding us of the difference between the jazzy, passionate, purposeful world created by the movies and the bustling, impersonal world we actually live in. This is a distinction his offhandedly criminal, movie-obsessed protagonists cannot make, and in the end, it costs them. Godard loves Odile, Franz, and Arthur so much that, no matter the consequences, he cannot bring himself to chide them for their fantasies; he can, however, tell his audience—at least those who listen closely.