British Sounds
Directed byJean-Luc Godard
Jean-Henri Roger
Produced byIrving Teitelbaum
Kenith Trodd
Edited byElizabeth Kozmian (aka Christine Aya)[1]
Production
company
Kestrel Productions
Release date
1969
Running time
54 minutes
CountriesFrance
United Kingdom

British Sounds (also known as See You at Mao) is an hour-long avant-garde documentary film shot in February 1969 for television, written and directed by Jean-Luc Godard and Jean-Henri Roger, and produced by Irving Teitelbaum and Kenith Trodd.[2] It was produced during Godard's most outspokenly political period.[3] London Weekend Television refused to screen it owing to its controversial content,[1] but it was subsequently released in cinemas. Godard credited the film as being made by 'Comrades of the Dziga-Vertov group'.[4]

Synopsis

The film opens with a long tracking shot of workers at an MG Cars manufacturing plant, with a voiceover containing quotes from the Communist Manifesto. Subsequent scenes depict a naked woman walking around a house with a voiceover from a Marxist feminist tract, a newsreader, representing the British bourgeoisie, delivering a reactionary rant interspersed with footage of workers, a meeting of Trotskyist trade unionists, students creating political posters against a soundtrack of parodies of songs by The Beatles. The film closes with footage of fists punching through Union Jacks.

References

  1. 1 2 Dawson, Jonathan (October 2005). "British Sounds". Senses of Cinema.
  2. ↑ Roud, Richard (1968). Godard. Thames and Hudson. p. 187. ISBN 0-500-48010-9.
  3. ↑ Buening, Michael. "British Sounds (1969)". AllMovie. Retrieved 27 July 2023.
  4. ↑ "British Sounds on Vimeo (with Italian subtitles)". Vimeo. 11 December 2009.


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