2 x 50 Years of French Cinema

You might have guessed that Miéville/Godard's contribution to the BFI's 'Century of Cinema' would be a demolition job on the series' premises. Godard invites Michel Piccoli (in his capacity as chairman of the official Centenary Committee) to a hotel lake and asks him what there is to celebrate. Isn't the cinema dead? Isn't French cinema forgotten? Disturbed by his host's harangue, Piccoli spends the rest of the movie asking hotel staff what they know of French cinema and discovering Godard was right. His hilariously hangdog field research is overlaid with stills and lines of dialogue from everyone's best-loved French movies, and the whole is rounded off with Godard and Miéville's elegy for the great tradition which has died. More of a wake than a funeral, and wickedly funny.