Many of Godard's films, while loved by the lovers of the French New Wave, are not particularly approachable to the average viewer. Often, they appear strange and disjoint. This was actually this director's intent in many of his movies. However, this film, though unusual in many ways, is more conventional and I enjoyed it. For all its "normalness", I would also assume die-hard Godard fans would probably like this film LESS than the average viewer because the surrealistic touches are absent. About the closest to this the movie got was the cool dance scene--highly reminiscent of the dance in Pulp Fiction.

The movie is like a combination of an older Film Noir piece fused with New Wave. While the language was earthy, it was not exactly that of Noir but more realistic and rather believable. I have known women much like the extremely malleable and low self-esteem lead. And, the two petty thugs that befriend her to perpetrate the heist are believable--particularly the way Arthur mistreats and berates her. It's sad to watch, but more realistic than the portrayals of criminals in some movies as "nice guys".

The only negative for me, and perhaps I should have scored the film lower for this, was the DUMB death scene at the end. Arthur is shot 5 times at very close range with a gun that appears to be a .38 caliber--but he continues coming towards his assailant and then shoots him dead with only one shot. THEN, Arthur takes a seeming eternity to fall down dead--spinning and overacting like a hammy high school actor. Considering that Godard publicly spoke out against clichés and the Hollywood style, I was VERY surprised he did the campiest death scene I have ever witnessed. Perhaps this was some sort of inside joke where he deliberately over-did the scene. Who knows---it just looked dumb.

Two crooks with a fondness for old Hollywood B-movies convince a languages student to help them commit a robbery.

Godard described it as "Alice in Wonderland meets Franz Kafka". That may be suggesting it is a bit stranger than it is. Heck, after watching "Alphaville" this comes across as about as normal as it gets.

Although it is not obvious, the dance scene here influenced the dance scene with Uma Thurman and John Travolta in Quentin Tarantino's "Pulp Fiction". Tarantino loved this film so much, in fact, he named his production company after it. (Although a big fan of B-movies and Hong Kong, Tarantino has his finer tastes, too.) Pauline Kael described Bande à part as "a reverie of a gangster movie" and "perhaps Godard's most delicately charming film". A nice compliment. Others have said it is his most accessible. I liked it, but would not call it my favorite.

First, I should admit that "Bande a part" (called "Band of Outsiders" in English) is the first Jean-Luc Godard movie that I've seen, so I can't compare it with his other movies. But I certainly liked it. One of the many installments in the New Wave (in fact, Nouvelle Vague appears on a cinema marquee),it portrays small-time crooks Arthur and Franz - both fans of B-movies about gangsters - enlisting young foreign language student Odile to help them pull off a crime.

My interpretation is that the movie has many aspects. Clearly, we get to see early '60s Paris. But also, Godard likes to imitate some of the tricks used in film noir B-movies - as well as with the storytelling - without getting silly. In some ways, it seems that the movie has a plot similar to Stanley Kubrick's "The Killing" (also about a heist),but they set things up so as to prevent it from being an outright rehash.

A scene that people frequently like to discuss when talking about this movie is the dance scene; I certainly liked what they did with the sound there, as well as during the moment of silence. However, one scene that I would like to discuss is the English class where they read "Romeo & Juliet". As the teacher reads about the suicides, and about the characters being star-crossed lovers, it makes one ponder whether or not this reflects on unfolding events in the movie (but I'll let you find out for yourself what happens).

Anyway, I'm now eager to see Godard's other movies. Is he France's greatest director? That's debatable, but you can't deny that this movie is a great one.