Themes: Down on Their Luck, Crumbling Marriages, Faltering Friendships
Main Cast: Claude Brasseur, Nathalie Baye, Johnny Hallyday, Stephane Ferrara, Laurent Terzieff, Jean-Pierre Léaud
Release Year: 1984
Country: CH/FR
Run Time: 95 minutes
Plot
After several years of making films to please only himself, French director Jean-Luc Godard once more invites the audience to the party with The Detective. Not that there's anything so blase as a linear plot or appealing characters, but at least some of Godard's isolated vignettes are accessible this time around. Set in the Hotel Concorde at St. Lazare, the film is set in motion when miserably married Nathalie Baye and Claude Brasseur attempt to collect a debt from mob-plagued boxing manager Johnny Hallyday. Meanwhile, hotel detective Jean-Pierre Leaud tries to solve an old murder case. These two gossamer plot strands are used to tie together Godard's scattershot views on modern life, with emphasis on the voyeuristic potential of the recent video-camera boom. The director dashed off The Detective to raise money for a film he truly cared about, the controversial Hail Mary. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Review
Détective is a funny, nonsensical, sometimes captivating, sometimes maddening film noir homage. In a 1985 interview with Katherine Dieckmann director Jean-Luc Godard said, "That's why we went over budget with Hail Mary and had to stop and shoot Détective to make some money...I didn't want to make Détective at all, though I don't mind it now that I've done it." The movie is rushed and careless in a manner corresponding to Godard's confession, but it also has an energy and humor characteristic of his early work. It's reminiscent of Howard Hawks' explanation of his scattered-brained The Big Sleep, "the scenario took eight days to write, and all we were hoping to do was make every scene entertain." The plot, such as it is, has a hotel detective, his undercover nephew (a goofy high energy Jean-Pierre Leaud), and his girlfriend investigating a murder while moving incongruously towards another series of shootings. The hotel is filled with a variety of stock characters including Johnny Halliday as a heavily indebted boxing manager, his boxer Tiger Jones who shadowboxes while yelling "I will KO Tiger Jones," Nathalie Baye as his former lover, mobsters, and their children. The narrative is deliberately impossible to follow, mirroring the mindset of the characters and the detectives (as audience) nervously fumbling towards a cockeyed concept of truth. ~ Michael Buening, All Movie Guide
Alain Cuny - Old Mafioso; Eugene Berthier - Eugene the Old Manager; Emmanuelle Seigner - Princess of the Bahamas; Cyril Autin - Punk groupie; Julie Delpy - Wise Young Girl Groupie; Ann-Gisele Glass - Anne; Aurelle Doazan - Ariel; Xavier Saint-Macary - Accountant; Alexandra Garrijo - Young Daughter; Pierre Bertin - Young Son
Credit
Jean-Luc Godard - Director, Don Leaver - Director, Marilyne Dubreuil - Editor, Christine Gozlan - Production Designer, Bruno Nuytten - Cinematographer, Christine Gozlan - Producer, Alain Sarde - Producer, Sally Head - Producer, Jean-Luc Godard - Screenwriter, Anne-Marie Miéville - Screenwriter, Alain Sarde - Screenwriter, Philippe Setbon - Screenwriter, Ted Whitehead - Screenwriter, Chabrier - Featured Music, Fryderyc Chopin - Featured Music, Ornette Coleman - Featured Music, Franz Liszt - Featured Music, Franz Schubert - Featured Music, Jean Schwarz - Featured Music, Richard Wagner - Featured Music, Paul Ferris - Book Author
