Jean-Luc Godard

Made in U.S.A

Made in U.S.A

With its giddily complex noir plot and color-drenched widescreen images, Made in U.S.A was a final burst of exuberance from Jean-Luc Godard’s early sixties barrage of delirious movie-movies. Yet this chaotic crime thriller and acidly funny critique of consumerism—starring Anna Karina as the most brightly dressed private investigator in film history, searching for a former lover who might have been assassinated—also points toward the more political cinema that would come to define Godard. Featuring characters with names such as Richard Nixon, Robert McNamara, David Goodis, and Doris Mizoguchi, and appearances by a slapstick Jean-Pierre Léaud and a sweetly singing Marianne Faithfull, this piece of pop art is like a Looney Tunes rendition of The Big Sleep gone New Wave.

Film Info

  • France
  • 1966
  • 85 minutes
  • Color
  • 2.35:1
  • French
  • Spine #481

Special Features

  • New, restored high-definition digital transfer
  • Interviews with stars Anna Karina and Lászlo Szábó
  • A video piece on the personal and the political in Made in U.S.A and 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her, featuring Godard biographers Richard Brody and Colin MacCabe
  • A visual essay cataloguing the multiple references in the film
  • Original and rerelease theatrical trailers
  • New and improved English subtitle translation
  • PLUS: A new essay by film critic J. Hoberman

    New cover by Jason Hardy

Purchase Options

Special Features

  • New, restored high-definition digital transfer
  • Interviews with stars Anna Karina and Lászlo Szábó
  • A video piece on the personal and the political in Made in U.S.A and 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her, featuring Godard biographers Richard Brody and Colin MacCabe
  • A visual essay cataloguing the multiple references in the film
  • Original and rerelease theatrical trailers
  • New and improved English subtitle translation
  • PLUS: A new essay by film critic J. Hoberman

    New cover by Jason Hardy
Made in U.S.A
Cast
Anna Karina
Paula Nelson
Jean-Pierre Léaud
Donald Siegel
László Szabó
Paul Widmark
Marianne Faithfull
Herself
Ernest Menzer
Edgar Typhus
Kyôko Kosaka
Doris Mizoguchi
Marc Dudicourt
Barman
Yves Afonso
David Goodis
Jean-Luc Godard
Richard Politzer (voice)
Roger Scipion
Dr. Korvo
Sylvain Godet
Robert McNamara
Jean-Pierre Biesse
Richard Nixon
Claude Bouillon
Inspector Aldrich
Philippe Labro
Himself
Credits
Director
Jean-Luc Godard
Screenplay
Jean-Luc Godard
Based on the novel The Jugger by
Richard Stark (Donald Westlake)
Cinematography
Raoul Coutard
Editing
Agnès Guillemot
Sound
Jacques Maumont
Sound
René Levert

Current

Marianne Faithfull Brings on the Heartbreak in Made in U.S.A

One Scene

Marianne Faithfull Brings on the Heartbreak in Made in U.S.A

With her a capella take on the Rolling Stones’ “As Tears Go By,” the singer turns a brief moment in one of Godard’s most playful films into a reflection on loss.

By Michael Atkinson

Godard at Cannes, Part Two
Godard at Cannes, Part Two

The filmmaker’s latest offering at the film festival reaffirms the author’s faith in him.

By Colin MacCabe

Explore

Jean-Luc Godard

Writer, Director

Jean-Luc Godard
Jean-Luc Godard

A pioneer of the French new wave, Jean-Luc Godard has had an incalculable effect on modern cinema that refuses to wane. Before directing, Godard was an ethnology student and a critic for Cahiers du cinéma, and his approach to filmmaking reflects his interest in how cinematic form intertwines with social reality. His groundbreaking debut feature, Breathless—his first and last mainstream success—is, of course, essential Godard: its strategy of merging high (Mozart) and low (American crime thrillers) culture has been mimicked by generations of filmmakers. As the sixties progressed, Godard’s output became increasingly radical, both aesthetically (A Woman Is a Woman, Contempt, Band of Outsiders) and politically (Masculin féminin, Pierrot le fou), until by 1968 he had forsworn commercial cinema altogether, forming a leftist filmmaking collective (the Dziga Vertov Group) and making such films as Tout va bien. Today Godard remains our greatest lyricist on historical trauma, religion, and the legacy of cinema.