Film Details

Anna Karina made her Jean-Luc Godard debut in this, the director's second feature (following Breathless). But the movie was initially banned in France (it referenced the nation’s contentious Algerian War), so when it was finally released in 1963, it appeared to be Godard’s fourth film. Michel Subor portrays a French deserter in Geneva, Bruno Forestier (also the name of the character he would play in Claire Denis' Beau Travail39 years later), who agrees to kill a top FLN (Algerian Liberation Front) official in order to prove his loyalty to France. Karina (who became Mrs. Godard in 1961) plays an FLN sympathizer with whom Forestier falls in love. "A scandal in 1960, banned by French authorities… it might have been the Zero Dark Thirty of its day if more people had actually seen it." -Village Voice.