LE PETIT SOLDAT Nat'l Press Release - Rialto Pictures

– Keith Uhlich, Time Out New York
Starring MICHEL SUBOR and ANNA KARINA
Rialto Pictures presents Jean-Luc Godard’s Le Petit Soldat (1963) in a new 35mm
print featuring an all-new translation and subtitles by Lenny Borger.
Le Petit Soldat (The Little Soldier), writer/director Jean-Luc Godard's second feature film,
was made in 1960 but immediately banned in France due to its sensitive political content
and did not premiere until 1963. Michel Subor (Beau Travail) stars as Bruno Forestier, an
army deserter caught in the middle of a covert war between the French government
and the Algerian Liberation Front in Geneva. With both sides resorting to any means to
achieve their clandestine ends, Bruno must decide what he is willing to do to escape
with Veronica (Anna Karina, star of Band of Outsiders and A Woman Is A Woman, in her
enchanting debut) and lead a free life. Arguably an espionage riff on the filmmaker's own
debut feature, Breathless, this is the film where Godard penned his signature statement:
“Cinema is truth 24 frames a second.” Also starring László Szabó (Made in U.S.A.).
"A HEADY, INVIGORATING MIX OF CIVICS AND CINEMA! Godard
creates an on-edge atmosphere from the start, [making] audiences
viscerally experience and contemplate things they might otherwise
not have wanted to."
– Keith Uhlich, Time Out New York
"STILL FEELS DARING AND VITAL, both peculiarly timely and deeply
Godardian, a meditation not just on politics and war – the Algerian
conflict is the background – but also on morality and art."
– Rachel Saltz, The New York Times

"EQUAL TO BREATHLESS IN ITS INVENTIVENESS AND
EXUBERANCE... For Godard, political engagement was a deeply
personal practice… [Le Petit Soldat] is that rare occurrence in cinema
when action is infused with thought, and when the very nature of
thought comes to life on screen."
– Drew Hunt, Slant
"100% CINEMA ALL THE WAY! A fascinating
experience, if only because M. Godard lives and breathes cinema to
such an extent that everything he touches comes at once to life and
affects us even in spite of ourselves. There are marvelous things in the
film; little touches in the dialogue, sudden, telling moments in the
acting, the often dazzling black-and-white camerawork of M. Coutard,
the occasional Brechtian ruptures of tone which come off perfectly,
notably during Bruno's escape from his Arab tormentors."
- The Times (London)
"Far more of a classic film noir than Breathless... the dazzlingly
iconoclastic patchwork of his first film was altogether too brilliant and
self-aggrandizing for a subject of such moral gravity. Simplicity and
sincerity were all: Petit Soldat's audacity was built into the story."
- Richard Brody, Everything is Cinema: The Working Life of Jean-Luc Godard
"Breathless [seemed] a little dated [by the late 60s]. We [were] no
longer quite that interested in a facile, flashy editing style; Godard
himself educated us out of that infatuation... And gradually it
[became] clearer that, starting with Le Petit Soldat, Godard was
forging his own individualistic art and becoming the most relevant
director of our time."
- Roger Ebert
88 min | 1963 | b&w
A Rialto Pictures Release
Media Contact: Dave Franklin
media@rialtopictures.com
212-620-0986
Sales: Eric Di Bernardo
bookings@rialtopictures.com
212-472-1911