Event

Every Man For Himself

(Jean-Luc Godard, France, 1980, 35mm, 87 min) Godard called Every Man For Himself "my second first film." It's a saucy rumination about a man and the two women in his life: Denise, who stands up for herself, and Isabelle, who, armed with an ambiguous smile, surrenders to mild victimization. The film also found Godard returning to celluloid and storytelling, after a decade of non-narrative video experiments. Every Man For Himself focuses on recognizable urban types grappling with midlife crises and existential ennui: Jacques Dutronc (as "Paul Godard!") and Nathalie Baye play TV producers stuck in a dissatisfying affair; while Isabelle Huppert also stars as a practical, no-nonsense prostitute (shades of Vivre Sa Vie). Sexually frank, emotionally wistful and visually refined, the film inaugurates Godard's mature period of Swiss pastoralism.

"A stunning, original work…breathtakingly beautiful and often very funny" —Vincent Canby, New York Times