Godard is telling a story that has many cinematic antecedents--the story of the doomed romantic outlaw couple, recalling such films as Fritz Lang's You Only Live Once (1937) and Joseph H. Lewis' Gun Crazy (1949). And in turn, Godard's film strongly influenced later films in this sub-genre, most notably Arthur Penn's Bonnie and Clyde (1967). Nonetheless, in contrast to all these other films, Godard does not tell his story in a straightforward way. What are the unusual formal devices that Godard uses in this film? What effect do they have on our understanding of the film? How do they break up the flow of the narrative? How do they violate the traditional rules of continuity editing, and what do they give us in place of the certainty and linearity that is established by such rules?
At one point, just before she sets their car on fire, Marianne says to Ferdinand, "this isn't the movies!" At another point, as he is driving, Ferdinand looks backwards and addresses the camera; when Marianne asks what he is doing, he replies that he is speaking to the audience. In what ways does the film reflect or refer to "life," and in what ways is it conscious of itself as a movie? What do you make of the occasional song and dance numbers?
What do you make of all the intertextual references in the film--especially to books, and to other films? Why are passages from famous books read on the soundtrack, or recited by the characters? Why do we so often see close-ups of Ferdinand's diary, often with him adding or crossing out words?
What do you make of the film's many digressions, and especially of the times when stories are told, either by or to the main characters?
The American director Samuel Fuller, appearing as himself in the party sequence towards the beginning of the film, gives his view of "what the cinema is." He says: "The film is like a battleground. Love. Hate. Action. Violence. Death. In one word, emotion." How do these words apply (if they do) to Godard's film?