The main character in Le petit Soldat is tortured. At one point, in voice-over, he calls torture "sad" and "boring" and it is a small wonder that Godard is able to convey an experience of it that is more sad than thrilling, more banal than pregnant with significance.
My relationship with the films of Ingmar Bergman has been analogous to that with a popular elder at a new church: I respect the title and all, but I usually find myself squinting when people tell me he's more than just deathly serious.
If the name "Antonioni" gives the neophyte cinephile pause, he can take solace in the fact confusion loves company almost as much as misery does. Andrew Sarris begins his introduction of Jean-Luc Godard's interview with cinema's Michelangelo by reminding readers that L'Avventura (1960) was hissed at the 1960 Cannes Film Festival.
The question that has preoccupied me since screening Peter Brookâs The Lord of the Flies is whether or not I would have recognized it as an important or excellent film without the Criterion Collection label on and treatment of the DVD.
