''Every Man for Himself'' () is a 1980 drama film directed, co-written and co-produced by

Jean-Luc Godard Jean-Luc Godard ( , ; ; 3 December 193013 September 2022) was a French-Swiss film director, screenwriter, and film critic. He rose to prominence as a pioneer of the French New Wave film movement of the 1960s, alongside such filmmakers as Fran ...

that is set in and was filmed in

Switzerland ). Swiss law does not designate a ''capital'' as such, but the federal parliament and government are installed in Bern, while other federal institutions, such as the federal courts, are in other cities (Bellinzona, Lausanne, Luzern, Neuchâtel ...

. It stars Jacques Dutronc,

Isabelle Huppert Isabelle Anne Madeleine Huppert (; born 16 March 1953) is a French actress. Described as "one of the best actresses in the world", she is known for her portrayals of cold and disdainful characters devoid of morality. She is the recipient of sev ...

, and

Nathalie Baye Nathalie Marie Andrée Baye (born 6 July 1948) is a French film, television and stage actress. She began her career in 1970 and has appeared in more than 80 films. A ten-time César Award nominee, her four wins were for '' Every Man for Himself'' ...

, with a score by

Gabriel Yared Gabriel Yared (Arabic: غبريال يارد; born 7 October 1949) is a Lebanese-French composer, best known for his work in French and American cinema. Born in Beirut, Lebanon, Yared scored the French films ''Betty Blue'' and ''Camille Claud ...

. Nathalie Baye won the

César Award for Best Supporting Actress The César Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role (French: ''César de la meilleure actrice dans un second rôle'') is one of the César Awards, presented annually by the ''Académie des Arts et Techniques du Cinéma'' to recognize the outsta ...

. Constructed as a musical piece, it has a prologue followed by three movements, each of which focuses on one of the three key characters and their interactions with the others, and ends with a coda. Throughout the film an unnamed piece of music recurs, which is the aria ''Suicidio!'' (''Suicide!'') from the opera La Gioconda by

Ponchielli Amilcare Ponchielli (, ; 31 August 1834 – 16 January 1886) was an Italian opera composer, best known for his opera ''La Gioconda''. He was married to the soprano Teresina Brambilla. Life and work Born in Paderno Fasolaro (now Paderno Ponchiel ...

. Serving as

leitmotiv A leitmotif or leitmotiv () is a "short, recurring musical phrase" associated with a particular person, place, or idea. It is closely related to the musical concepts of ''idée fixe'' or ''motto-theme''. The spelling ''leitmotif'' is an anglic ...

for the whole story, it underscores the innate death-wish haunting the central character.

Plot

The prologue introduces Paul Godard, a filmmaker, and his estranged girlfriend, Denise, in which a stressed Paul leaves the deluxe hotel to which he has moved and rebuffs the sexual advances of a male hotel attendant. The first section, "The Imaginary," follows Denise as she takes her first steps to an independent life without Paul. She lands a manual job on a local paper run by an old friend, perhaps an old lover, in a country town and gets a room on a farm in return for helping with the cattle. She is also writing up some new project, which may become a novel. At the same time, she has to complete her job at the television station where she and Paul work, as well as find a new tenant for her flat in the city where she and Paul have been living together. Realising she is late to collect the author and filmmaker

Marguerite Duras Marguerite Germaine Marie Donnadieu (, 4 April 1914 – 3 March 1996), known as Marguerite Duras (), was a French novelist, playwright, screenwriter, essayist, and experimental filmmaker. Her script for the film '' Hiroshima mon amour'' (1959) e ...

for an interview, she telephones Paul to ask if he can do it for her. Despite being in no mood to agree with her, he accepts. The second section, "Fear," focuses on Paul. He is afraid of life without Denise, perhaps of life itself. After picking up his surly daughter Cécile from soccer practice, at which seemingly apropos of nothing he asks the coach if he has ever felt like touching or having sex with his own daughter, he fulfils his favour to Denise by collecting Marguerite Duras from a local college, where she was due to give a talk. When she refuses to do so (her voice is heard but she is not shown), Paul reads out some of her notes, in which she says that she only makes films because she lacks the courage to do nothing. Paul says this is true for himself as well. The celebrity then gets Paul to take her back to the airport, after which he has to face a furious Denise who has lost her interviewee. That evening, as it is Cécile's birthday, he takes her and her mother to a restaurant but all his scornful ex-wife wants is money and all the girl wants is presents. Leaving in fury, after again expressing his alienation with inappropriate sexual innuendo, he meets Denise in a bar, where the two quarrel and part. Standing alone in a late-night cinema queue, he is picked up by the prostitute Isabelle. Part Three, "Commerce," is Isabelle's section, in which she devotes herself to increasing her earnings in order to achieve independence. After her night with Paul, in which she mechanically goes through the motions while mentally planning her next day, she is waylaid by a pimp who gives her a spanking to remind her that there is no independence in a commercial world and he must have 50% of her earnings. On returning to the apartment she shares with some other women, who all seem to detest her, her younger sister arrives unexpectedly and asks Isabelle for money because her lover and all his associates have just been jailed for robbing a bank. When Isabelle refuses, the sister asks if she will get her started in the local prostitution business. Isabelle agrees to coach her for a month, in exchange for 50% of the take. While continuing to service a variety of clients with different needs, sometimes inventive (one businessman choreographs a foursome while sitting at his desk), and all the while with her mind elsewhere, she is also searching for an apartment of her own. An old school friend she meets in a hotel corridor, probably a dealer and maybe a prostitute as well, offers her a lucrative opportunity to be a courier, but the boss of the operation finds Isabelle too dangerously naive. Going to inspect an apartment, it turns out to be that of Denise, and Paul is also there trying to rekindle the relationship. Isabelle and Denise form an immediate bond. In the coda, entitled "Music," Isabelle seems to prosper in her new apartment and Denise has moved on in life. After having spent several days adrift, Paul runs into his ex-wife and daughter and asks plaintively to spend more time with them. Walking backwards away from the two, Paul accidentally steps in front of a car and is hit. Isabelle's sister, now apparently a prostitute, flees the scene with the driver of the car, her client. Paul's ex-wife also urges Cécile to come away, saying "it's nothing to do with us." As the two walk off, they pass a small orchestra set up in a garage yard that is playing the theme music which has echoed through the film.

Cast

* Jacques Dutronc as Paul Godard *

as Isabelle Rivière *

as Denise Rimbaud * Cécile Tanner as Cecile, Paul's daughter

Background

After twelve years of low budget, militant left-wing, and otherwise experimental film and video projects outside of commercial distribution, ''Every Man for Himself'' was Godard's return to "mainstream" filmmaking, with a sizable budget and French film stars. Godard promoted what he referred to as his "second first film" heavily in the United States, notably appearing on two episodes of ''

The Dick Cavett Show ''The Dick Cavett Show'' was the title of several talk shows hosted by Dick Cavett on various television networks, including: * ABC daytime, (March 4, 1968–January 24, 1969) originally titled ''This Morning'' * ABC prime time, Tuesdays, We ...

''. Nevertheless, in addition to Godard's typical refusal to keep viewers oriented through expository dialogue and

continuity editing Continuity editing is the process, in film and video creation, of combining more-or-less related shots, or different components cut from a single shot, into a sequence to direct the viewer's attention to a pre-existing consistency of story across b ...

, the film is experimental in its use of the technique that Godard called "decomposition," which he first employed for the 1979 French television series ''France/tour/détour/deux/enfants''. In the technique, there is a periodic slowing down of the action to a frame by frame advancement. Consequently, the film was given the name ''Slow Motion'' when it was released in the UK. The French title ''Sauve Qui Peut'' literally means "save who can," and is a common phrase shouted among a crowd of people when there is dangerhence the American title of the film, ''Every Man for Himself''. Godard has stated that a better title in

American English American English, sometimes called United States English or U.S. English, is the set of varieties of the English language native to the United States. English is the most widely spoken language in the United States and in most circumstances ...

would be "Save Your Ass." In his initial proposal for the film, a 20 minute video known as ''Scénario de ''Sauve Qui Peut (la vie)'' '' (included as a supplement on the

Criterion Collection The Criterion Collection, Inc. (or simply Criterion) is an American home-video distribution company that focuses on licensing, restoring and distributing "important classic and contemporary films." Criterion serves film and media scholars, cine ...

DVD), Godard suggested a guest appearance by

Werner Herzog Werner Herzog (; born 5 September 1942) is a German film director, screenwriter, author, actor, and opera director, regarded as a pioneer of New German Cinema. His films often feature ambitious protagonists with impossible dreams, people with u ...

that is not in the finished film, including a still photo that is apparently of Herzog doing a backflip. Perhaps this is a joke, Herzog having made '' Every Man for Himself and God Against All'' six years earlier. Poet and author

Charles Bukowski Henry Charles Bukowski ( ; born Heinrich Karl Bukowski, ; August 16, 1920 – March 9, 1994) was a German-American poet, novelist, and short story writer. His writing was influenced by the social, cultural, and economic ambience of his adopted ...

provided the subtitles for the film's English-language release.

Reception

The film premiered at the

1980 Cannes Film Festival The 33rd Cannes Film Festival was held between 9 and 23 May 1980. The Palme d'Or went to the '' All That Jazz'' by Bob Fosse and ''Kagemusha'' by Akira Kurosawa. The festival opened with '' Fantastica'', directed by Gilles Carle and closed with ...

, and went on to garner 620,147 admissions in France. Film critic

Vincent Canby Vincent Canby (July 27, 1924 – October 15, 2000) was an American film and theatre critic who served as the chief film critic for ''The New York Times'' from 1969 until the early 1990s, then its chief theatre critic from 1994 until his death in ...

, writing in ''The New York Times'', described the film effusively as "stunning," "beautiful," and "brilliant". In the 2012 ''Sight & Sound'' polls of the greatest films ever made, ''Every Man for Himself'' made the top-10 lists of two critics and two directors.

Awards and honors

(France) ** Nominated:

Palme d'Or The Palme d'Or (; en, Golden Palm) is the highest prize awarded at the Cannes Film Festival. It was introduced in 1955 by the festival's organizing committee. Previously, from 1939 to 1954, the festival's highest prize was the Grand Prix du Fe ...

(Jean-Luc Godard) *

César Awards The César Award is the national film award of France. It is delivered in the ' ceremony and was first awarded in 1976. The nominations are selected by the members of twelve categories of filmmaking professionals and supported by the French Mi ...

(France) ** Won: Best Actress – Supporting Role (Nathalie Baye) ** Nominated: Best Director (Jean-Luc Godard) ** Nominated:

Best Film This is a list of categories of awards commonly awarded through organizations that bestow film awards, including those presented by various film, festivals, and people's awards. Best Actor/Best Actress *See Best Actor#Film awards, Best Actress#F ...

It was submitted as the Swiss entry for the

Best Foreign Language Film This is a list of categories of awards commonly awarded through organizations that bestow film awards, including those presented by various film, festivals, and people's awards. Best Actor/Best Actress *See Best Actor#Film awards, Best Actress#F ...

at the

53rd Academy Awards The 53rd Academy Awards ceremony, organized by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), honored films released in 1980 and took place on March 31, 1981, at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles beginning at 7:00 p ...

, but was not accepted as a nominee.Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences

References

External links

* *
''Illuminations: Godard’s Every Man for Himself''
an essay by

Colin MacCabe Colin Myles Joseph MacCabe (born 9 February 1949) is an English academic, writer and film producer. He is currently a distinguished professor of English and film at the University of Pittsburgh.