Weekend (Week end). Jean-Luc Godard, 1967.
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Edition screened: Criterion Blu-ray #635, released 2012. French language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 104 minutes.
Summary: Butchering of various animals.
Details:
1) At 1:20:25 begins a 25-second shot of a woman carrying a skinned rabbit by its feet. This is cued by the dialogue: “Where are you going?” “To get a rabbit from Mr. Flaubert.” Murder of the woman causes the rabbit to be dropped, and from 1:20:50 to 1:21:24 is a close-up of the rabbit’s skinned head as it is repeatedly washed over with blood. This sequence is relentless and visually intense.
2) At 1:32:23 begins a 30-second montage of a butcher in the forest slaughtering a pig and a goose. The killings are real and moderately graphic. The scene is neither prolonged nor gratuitously gory as in 1900 or Salon Kitty, but is an unexpected shock, cued by the intertitle card, ‘Massacre de Septembre’.
3) The revolutionaries exit a small boat at 1:33:48, carrying more dead animals, and take them to the butcher who is still working with the pig. This is over at 1:34:50.
4) At 1:42:29 we return to the butcher who now is cooking and serving meat, with some of the dead animals lying about. The film ends very soon thereafter.
Godard designed the final 10 minutes of Weekend to be completely different from the opening 92 minutes. The first 1½ hours are a witty and visually dynamic romp through historical allegory, political satire, and domestic bickering. The housewife’s skinned rabbit serves as a transition, for the image begins as a gory but normal part of French culinary life and quickly becomes something inexplicably graphic and violent. The repeated dousing of the rabbit with blood signals the tone and content of the final 10 minutes. After the intertitle card ‘Massacre de Septembre’ the remainder of the film focuses on a band of symbolic young revolutionaries and their acts of violence and terroristic drumming. While the content and style of the ending combine to form an elite sociopolitical statement as only Godard can make, it is a tedious viewing experience compared to the literary underpinnings and visual wit of the bulk of the film.
In truth, the butcherings post-September Massacre aren’t as gruesome as the blood-soaked rabbit around 1:21, and you may find it valuable to watch Godard’s ending at least once. I look forward to future viewings of this film, but will allow myself to stop around 1:20 if the change of tone prompts no interest.