Theater: Oak Street Cinema Godard is one of the most influential, creative, polarizing, infuriating and memorable filmmakers of the past half-century. His first feature, 1959's "Breathless" (Oct. 17-19) introduced a quick-cutting, jazzy visual style and throwaway approach to plotting and character development that didn't just break the mold of crime yarns. He obliterated it, with aftershocks you can still feel in "Pulp Fiction" and its cousins. Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg star as a Parisian crook and the American expat he pursues to a very bitter end.
"Contempt" (7 & 9:15 p.m. today-Sun. plus 5 p.m. Sat.-Sun.), Godard's 1963 Cinemascope film about filmmaking is a tragic, unforgettable take on artistic compromise. Michel Piccoli plays a writer who trashes his self-respect by rewriting Homer's "Odyssey" for a vulgar Yank producer (Jack Palance, of all people). To seal the deal the writer delivers his wife (sex kitten Brigitte Bardot playing serious for a change) into the ugly American's hands, losing her in the process. With breathtaking camera work by Raoul Coutard, music by Georges Delerue and German film god Fritz Lang ("Metropolis," "M") as the director of the movie within the movie, Fritz Lang.
Godard abandoned the classic three-act approach in "Two or Three Things I Know About Her" (7 & 9 p.m. Wed.-Thu.), a rough-cut essay about prostitution and the urban renewal of Paris. Marina Vlady plays a young housewife who casually sells sex to support her appetite for middle-class consumer goods. Antiestablishment to the core, the film breaks every rule of soundtrack continuity, picks up and discards sideline characters at whim, and employs printed inter-titles like chapter headings to underscore its Marxist themes. Also on tap: "Band of Outsiders" (7 & 9 p.m. Mon.-Tue.), "Alphaville" (Oct. 20-21) and "Pierrot le Fou" (Oct. 22-23).
Films aren't rated but include sex, violence and adult themes. In French, subtitled.
COLIN COVERT
