Chantal Delattre

As the city of Paris and the French people grow in consumer culture, a housewife living in a high-rise apartment with her husband and two children takes to prostitution to help pay the bills.

Two babies are switched at birth. When the mistake is discovered 12 years later, it leads to complications in the lives of both families. One family is affluent, with dutiful and (apparently) contented children. The other family is poor, with rambunctious (even delinquent) children, often hungry, but with lots of laughter in the house.

After a harrowing breakup, Marcel returns to his favorite hotel to find his room occupied by a journalist, whom he attempts to impress.

This film is based on actual letters German soldiers sent home from the siege of Leningrad during World War II. The litany of trouble these poor grunts endured is lamentable. One complains of returning home an invalid. An SS man has bad dreams about the Russian tank-driver he killed. Another complains when he sits down to hear a piano recital and one of the musicians has frozen fingers. Another soldier swears he will never forgive his father for injuries he suffered in the invasion of Leningrad. Stock footage of wars from World War II to Vietnam are inserted and give an ironic tinge to the feature.

Puts into practice a radical Godardian proposition: the screening of his Made in USA (1966) and 2 ou 3 choses que je sais d’elle (Two or Three Things I Know About Her, 1966) as a single work, with their reels and narratives intertwined. In 1967, having set aside the idea of adapting The Wild Palms, Godard proposed instead projecting his two very different most recent features, which he had shot back-to-back for separate producers, as an integrated work. As Richard Roud reported, what Godard wanted was to have them shown together, ‘first a reel of Made in USA, then a reel of Two or Three Things I Know About Her, then a reel of Made in USA, etc., just as Faulkner mixed two stories in The Wild Palms. That would be his adaptation of the novel.’

Pierre is a middle-aged factory worker with plenty of unresolved anger. After his father's death, his mother feels compelled to move in with him. Having just moved there with his beautiful girlfriend, he begins to feel the pressure. When the May Day revolt begins, he goes crazy.

In August 1966, the Cultural Revolution in full swing, 13-year-old Tian Ben is arrested for playing a pop record; he's sent to a remote mountain camp in Niu-Peng. There he's called "Four Eyes" and, with about 16 other older boys and men, he's made to carry muck up a mountainside, make bricks, saw logs, and sing daily to Chairman Mao of his faults. There's camaraderie among the five youths, especially with a young pickpocket named Baimao, and Tian is also drawn to a silent monk who cares for him when he falls ill and the others expect him to die. The camp is remote, so there are no fences or walls. Tian longs to escape.