Ray Pride

Among the other virtues of the DVD revolution is the preservation and restoration of movies that might otherwise have fallen out of circulation; when the restoration is done on celluloid, rather than merely on the video copies, there's cause for celebration. With Jean-Luc Godard's 1967 sublimely beautiful "Two or Three Things I Know About Her," (2 ou 3 choses que je sais d'elle), there's even more to rejoice about. A boldly colored microcosm of a mid-twentieth century Parisian neighborhood--"la région Parisienne," as the film puts it, "Two or Three" circuits twenty-four hours in the life of one woman, a suburbanite who turns to prostitute in the afternoon, but manages to suggest a world both finite and infinite and, in a shot cited by many filmmakers since, including Martin Scorsese in "Taxi Driver," as Raoul Coutard's widescreen Techniscope camera sneaks into the universe inside a cup filled with swirling coffee. Godard muses on the soundtrack throughout: "Is it really only these words and these images that must be used? Are they the only ones? Are there not others? Am I speaking too loud? Am I watching from too far or too close?" From the right distance: forty years and an eternal present. 90m. Widescreen.

"Two or Three Things I Know About Her" opens Friday at the Music Box.

(2007-02-20)

Also by Ray Pride

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