Wind from the East
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''Wind from the East'' (french: Le Vent d'est) is a 1970 film by the
Dziga Vertov Group The Dziga Vertov Group (french: Groupe Dziga Vertov) was formed around 1969 by politically active filmmakers including Jean-Luc Godard and Jean-Pierre Gorin. Their films are defined primarily for Brechtian forms, Marxist ideology, and a lack of p ...
, a radical filmmaking cooperative that, at its core, included
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 ...
and
Jean-Pierre Gorin Jean-Pierre Gorin (born 17 April 1943) is a French filmmaker and professor, best known for his work with '' Nouvelle Vague'' luminary Jean-Luc Godard, during what is often referred to as Godard's "radical" period. Jean-Pierre Gorin was a studen ...
. As with most films from this period in Godard's career, directing credit was given to the collective and not himself or other individual filmmakers. Of the Dziga Vertov Group films, ''Wind from the East'' became particularly notable due to Peter Wollen's influential essay about it: "Godard and Counter Cinema: ''Vent d'est''." Wollen contends that ''Wind from the East'' exemplifies how
Brechtian Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht (10 February 1898 – 14 August 1956), known professionally as Bertolt Brecht, was a German theatre practitioner, playwright, and poet. Coming of age during the Weimar Republic, he had his first successes as a p ...
principles of "
epic theatre Epic theatre (german: episches Theater) is a theatrical movement arising in the early to mid-20th century from the theories and practice of a number of theatre practitioners who responded to the political climate of the time through the creatio ...
" can be applied to film as "counter cinema."


Synopsis

The film reflects Gorin and (especially) Godard's interest in divorcing sound from image, as a means of reinventing the language of "bourgeois" commercial cinema. The soundtrack of the film begins with the story of a kidnapped ALCOA executive but abruptly changes the subject to a lengthy lecture on the history and political context of revolutionary cinema, including Marxist–Leninist self-critique, and a critique of Hollywood's film industry. The visual component of the film features an outdoor natural setting and characters in what appears to be a
spaghetti Western The Spaghetti Western is a broad subgenre of Western films produced in Europe. It emerged in the mid-1960s in the wake of Sergio Leone's film-making style and international box-office success. The term was used by foreign critics because most o ...
film (or a parody thereof). The two components, while separate, frequently interact; the soundtrack occasionally refers to the cinematic tropes that appear onscreen, while the story told in the visuals contains dialogue and sound that overlaps and competes with the primary soundtrack.


Cast

*
Gian Maria Volonté Gian Maria Volonté (9 April 1933 – 6 December 1994) was an Italian actor, including roles in four Spaghetti Western films: Ramón Rojo in Sergio Leone's ''A Fistful of Dollars'' (1964) and El Indio in Leone's '' For a Few Dollars More'' (19 ...
- Le ranger nordiste *
Anne Wiazemsky Anne Wiazemsky (14 May 1947 – 5 October 2017) was a French actress and novelist. She made her cinema debut at the age of 18, playing Marie, the lead character in Robert Bresson's ''Au Hasard Balthazar'' (1966), and went on to appear in several ...
- La révolutionnaire * Allan Midgette - L'Indien * Christiana Tullio Altan - La jeune bourgeoise * José Varela - La guide *
Götz George Götz George (; 23 July 1938 – 19 June 2016) was a German actor, the son of actor couple Berta Drews and Heinrich George. His arguably best-known role is that of Duisburg detective Horst Schimanski in the TV crime series ''Tatort''. Early lif ...
- Soldier


Reception

John Simon described Wind from the East as 'a piece of infantile Maoist propaganda, so boring, antifilmic, sloppily made, and yes, insane, I see no point in a detailed description of it'.


References


Further reading

*Julia Lesage, "Godard-Gorin's ''Wind from the East'': Looking at a film politically," ''Jump Cut'', no. 4, 1974, pp. 18–23. https://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/onlinessays/JC04folder/WindfromEast.html .


External links

* 1970 films 1970s French-language films Films directed by Jean-Luc Godard French avant-garde and experimental films Non-narrative films 1970s avant-garde and experimental films 1970s French films {{1970s-France-film-stub