Made in U.S.A.

Having effectively deconstructed the American crime thriller in Pierrot le fou, Jean-Luc Godard goes several stages further with Made in U.S.A. and drives the policier genre to its absolute limits of abstraction. Guns, gore and gangsters are just some of the film noir trappings which find their way into this singular offering to the cult of série noire, a film which has everything except a plot and dialogue you can make sense of. At the same time, Godard uses the film to express his own political concerns, notably his distaste for consumerism, his contempt for American imperialism and an affinity for leftwing politics. There are also a few thinly veiled references to the Algerian crisis and the assassination of J.F. Kennedy, both hot topics of conversation at the time the film was made. As a result, the film is a curious mélange of film policier and film politique, although Godard would perhaps have preferred to label it film poétique. As the film’s trailer cheekily proclaimed, Made in U.S.A. is a film po- in more ways than one. - James Travers, 2001