false legends
by Douglas Messerli
Éric
Rohmer (screenwriter), Jean-Luc Godard (director) Tous les garçons s'appellent Patrick (All the Boys Are Named Patrick) / 1957
Jean-Luc
Godard’s 1957 short, Tous les garçons
s'appellent Patrick (All the Boys Are
Named Patrick) is a quick-moving farce, often shot at a lower frame rate to
give it the jumpy feeling of early Chaplin films and other silent, is really a
one-liner: two roommates, Véronique and Charlotte (Nicole Berger and Anne
Collette), while waiting for one another in a park, are picked up by the same
boy, Patrick (Jean-Claude Brialy), and, after resisting his charm, agree to be
taken to neighboring bars where they agree to meet him each with two days:
since both have meetings that night with one of the girl’s cousins.
Yet it’s also quite apparent, as critic
Sean Duffy has pointed out, that Godard and his screenwriter, fellow new wave
director Eric Rohmer were already quite themselves seduced by American
filmmaking in this early short, which would become truly apparent in his first
great piece of cinema three years later, Breathless,
which features the American actress, Jean Seberg.
The roommates compare the varying
qualities of their two Patricks before actually observing him in the process of
picking up another woman, and recognizing him for what he truly is: a fraud, a
kind of false legend himself, no longer worthy of their attention, as they plan
a date together, implying that in such a sexist world perhaps feminine company
is simply preferable—and maybe even intimating some of the feminist ideas that
percolate through Godard’s work.
Even if it is sort of a one-liner, All the Boys Are Named Patrick reveals
the cinematic energy of the future new wave wonder that Godard was very soon to
become.
Los Angeles,
Christmas Eve, 2016
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