Jean-Luc Godard

Weekend

Weekend

This scathing late-sixties satire from Jean-Luc Godard is one of cinema’s great anarchic works. Determined to collect an inheritance from a dying relative, a bourgeois couple travel across the French countryside while civilization crashes and burns around them. Featuring a justly famous sequence in which the camera tracks along a seemingly endless traffic jam, and rich with historical and literary references, Weekend is a surreally funny and disturbing call for revolution, a depiction of society reverting to savagery, and— according to the credits—the end of cinema itself.

Share

Film Info

  • France
  • 1967
  • 104 minutes
  • Color
  • 1.66:1
  • French
  • Spine #635

Special Features

  • New digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
  • New video essay by writer and filmmaker Kent Jones
  • Archival interviews with actors Mireille Darc and Jean Yanne, cinematographer Raoul Coutard, and assistant director Claude Miller
  • Excerpt from a French television program on director Jean-Luc Godard, featuring on-set footage from Weekend shot by filmmaker Philippe Garrel
  • Trailers
  • PLUS: A new essay by critic and novelist Gary Indiana, selections from Alain Bergala’s book Godard au travail: Les années 60, and an excerpt from a 1969 interview with Godard

    New cover by Steve Chow

Purchase Options

Collector's Sets

Collector's Set

CC40

CC40

Blu-ray Box Set

49 Discs

$559.96

Special Features

  • New digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
  • New video essay by writer and filmmaker Kent Jones
  • Archival interviews with actors Mireille Darc and Jean Yanne, cinematographer Raoul Coutard, and assistant director Claude Miller
  • Excerpt from a French television program on director Jean-Luc Godard, featuring on-set footage from Weekend shot by filmmaker Philippe Garrel
  • Trailers
  • PLUS: A new essay by critic and novelist Gary Indiana, selections from Alain Bergala’s book Godard au travail: Les années 60, and an excerpt from a 1969 interview with Godard

    New cover by Steve Chow
Weekend
Cast
Mireille Darc
Corinne Durand
Jean Yanne
Roland Durand
Georges Staquet
Tractor operator
Juliet Berto
Bourgeoisie in Triumph/FLSO
Virginie Vignon
Marie-Madeleine
Daniel Pommereulle
Joseph Balsamo
Jean Eustache
Hitchhiker
Jean-Pierre Léaud
Saint-Just/Man in phone booth
Yves Afonso
Tom Thumb
Blandine Jeanson
Emily Brontë/Piano accompanist
Paul Gégauff
Pianist
Michel Cournot
Barnyard passerby
Anne Wiazemsky
Barnyard passerby/Miss Gide
Jean-Claude Guilbert
Vagabond
Omar Blondin Diop
Garbage collectors
László Szabó
Jean-Pierre Kalfon
FLSO leader
Ernest Menzer
FLSO cook
Michelle Breton
FLSO assistant cook
Valérie Lagrange
FLSO leader’s lover
Credits
Director
Jean-Luc Godard
Written by
Jean-Luc Godard
Produced by
Raymond Danon
Director of photography
Raoul Coutard
Editor
Agnès Guillemot
Sound
René Levert
Sound mix
Antoine Bonfanti
Original music
Antoine Duhamel
Assistant director
Claude Miller

Related Films

1/3
2/3
3/3

Current

The Last Weekend
The Last Weekend

Jean Luc Godard’s exuberant, multipronged attack on the bourgeoisie is both theater of the absurd and political horror.

By Gary Indiana

Essays — Nov 14, 2012
Godard in Fragments
Godard in Fragments

Regular Criterion Collection contributor :: kogonada explores the innovative cinematic lexicon Godard developed in the fifteen features he made between 1960 and 1967.

By Kogonada

Visual Analysis — Feb 10, 2016
Ben Wheatley’s Favorites, Mekas on Filmmaking and Poetry, Hitchcock’s Blocking

Did You See This?

Ben Wheatley’s Favorites, Mekas on Filmmaking and Poetry, Hitchcock’s Blocking

Director Ben Wheatley discusses his favorite films, which include Godard’s Weekend. After watching it, he says, “I almost felt like I’d had the stack of cards in my head rearranged and reprogrammed.”

Short Takes — Mar 25, 2016
Weekend with Godard in Atlanta

Repertory Picks

Weekend with Godard in Atlanta
From now until April 25, Emory University’s Emory Cinematheque in Atlanta will be hosting the series French New Waves: Classics and Rediscoveries. In addition to seminal works of the nouvelle vague, the series will be showcasing some celebrated pre…
In Theaters — Feb 25, 2016
Haskell Wexler’s Top 10
Haskell Wexler’s Top 10

For Haskell Wexler, the director of Medium Cool, and the Oscar-winning cinematographer of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Bound for Glory, writing about his ten favorite Criterion films became a trip down memory lane.

— May 28, 2013
Weekend with Designer Steve Chow
Weekend with Designer Steve Chow
For Janus Films’ new print of Jean-Luc Godard’s Weekend, which starts showing today, designer Steve Chow created an eye-catching poster that vividly captures that New Wave battering ram’s apocalyptic, sideways vision. This is the third Godard d…
Interviews — Oct 7, 2011

Explore

Raoul Coutard

Cinematographer

Raoul Coutard
Raoul Coutard

Perhaps the most famous cinematographer of the nouvelle vague, Raoul Coutard shot more than seventy-five films during his forty-three-year career. A war photographer (in Indochina) turned freelance photojournalist (his images appeared in Paris Match and Look), Coutard turned to film, hesitantly, only in the late fifties. After fumbling his way through a few film assignments (he was inexperienced with a movie camera), he was hired by producer Georges de Beauregard to shoot the debut film of a young critic named Jean-Luc Godard. His ragged, incisive shooting style on Breathless became iconic in modern cinema, and Godard kept him on board for the rest of the sixties and beyond, while other directors, like François Truffaut, Jacques Demy, Jean Rouch, and Costa-Gavras, also called upon his skills. His exacting images, which vary from rich and luxurious to gritty and documentary-like, can be seen in countless indelible films, including Shoot the Piano Player, Jules and Jim, Contempt, Alphaville, Pierrot le fou, and Z.

More Raoul Coutard View All