Exceptional, largely unknown Four-Part Omnibus pic serves up three winners, one toss-off and one gone missing.* The first two, from Hiromichi Horikawa in Tokyo and Ugo Gregoretti in Naples, have O’Henry-like twist endings as a young geisha thinks she’s taken advantage of a middle-aged gentleman after he dies back at his apartment and, over in Naples, a non-resident streetwalker marries a poor, elderly pensioner to gain a local work address. One of her clients, a shy law student thought up the scam, but it’s her possessive pimp who figures to collect on the legal trick. He just didn't think thru the ‘legal rights’ of a legit husband. Unexpectedly well-produced (the Naples segment, which wouldn’t shame De Sica, was shot by Tonino Dello Colli), neither outstays its welcome, something that can’t be said for Claude Chabrol’s silly short about a German Francophile who ‘buys’ the Eiffel Tower. Jean-Pierre Cassel & Catherine Deneuve play along (a favor to Chabrol?), but even at 15 minutes, this one-note fable is stretched pretty thin. (Hey, buy into this and I gotta bridge in Brooklyn that might interest youse.) But then Jean-Luc Godard, back when he made movies instead of philosophy treatises, heads to Marrakesh with cinematographer Raoul Coutard, Charles Denner & Jean Seberg for a mesmerizing mini-masterpiece about a photo-journalist who meets a disturbingly wise political theorist on the street. Played out in witty non-linear style as Seberg nearly gets into a jam over counterfeit bills (initiating a ‘meet-cute’ with a police inspector), Godard’s control of the medium is so dazzling, easy & casual at doing hard things, it’s hard not to feel a loss at his latter-day navel gazing profundity.
SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *A title informs us that Roman Polanski ‘requested’ his segment be removed. Does it exist? You can see bits of it in the trailer included in the fine Olive Films DVD.
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