Brian Toro

1/2/26

An analysis of Jean-Luc Godard's film Made in U.S.A.

We can trace back to the standardization of films from the earliest development of cinema, the rationalization of form emerging from the mass production of films to assimilate the audience with familiarity. The fact that audiences grew accustomed to this popular form thus generated side effects that Jean-Luc Godard believed to be dangerous, primarily because he believed it deprived them of critical thought, thereby clouding the horrors of modern society and distorting their ability to grasp truth. Here, we must be clear about the integration mentioned because Jean-Luc Godard is combating and expressing many things at once when unfolding his new thought of cinema. According to Jean-Luc Godard, the corruption stems not only from the form of cinema, but also from the ideology, and therefore, these are seen primarily as one. This unification launches his attempt to overcome these errors with the same device of cinema by making his films more difficult and visceral, with the purpose of elevating the audience into an awareness of their own blindness, both political issues, and the seductive effect cinema has. This is the point where Jean-Luc Godard urges cinema to take on a new form. He retreats to an extreme anti-conventional form that includes: fragmented dialogue, contorted narrative, and illogical structure. This is also the point where the general audiences depart because they find him to be too alienating and technical, which depletes their wish to understand the film. It is true that his films can leave the audience disoriented and confused. However, I believe the greater scrutiny and analysis the audience can impose onto the film, the more rewarding his films can actually be. One critique we can immediately raise is whether or not the film form he believed was corrupting the audience is, in fact, as pernicious as he asserts. We can begin by stating that the familiarity that exists with conventional form shouldn’t be recognized as an error when it is able to communicate authentic storytelling that moves the individual into experiencing aesthetic beauty or gaining a greater awareness of the complexity of human nature, which could be a benefit for the audience. In many cases, there have been many great standard films that do address similar current modern issues that Jean-Luc Godard wished to address in his own epoch. Therefore, it is clear this convention does not completely disable critical thinking and individual awareness; however, the criticism that Jean-Luc Godard is raising isn’t form itself being unable to achieve the same means that we are addressing here, but it is the offshoot of conventional cinema that leads to a mode that does in fact invert the qualities of thought and beauty. More specifically, it is the conditioning the audience builds unknowingly; it is the rejection of a secondary form, either being an unconventional form or the content within the form, which attempts to communicate more rigorous formal and perceptual demands than those normalized by dominant cinema, that is obstructed indirectly from the audience's own standard comfort. This habitual preference leads to a blindness of how films subdue the audience, which then permits an imposition of artificial thought, since the habitual state they are in does not require further intellectual labor. 

A counter-argument that could be made is that the audience is not dull enough to be convinced of artificial ideology that may be imposed in a film, especially if it is bad! I will argue against that and to make the point that Jean-Luc God is making more clear, we can start by analyzing the film Made in USA (1966), beginning with the bar scene where Marianne Faithfull sings “As Tears Go By”.  Before entering the bar, the characters are participating in an investigation of a suspicious death, and they are now in the cafe bar to seek new information. At this point in the narrative, we expect things to unravel and to gain more information about the death that they are investigating. Instead, we get nothing but trivialities and irrational behavior! The film breaks into a quiet musical when Marianne Faithfull sings “As Tears Go By”, a capella, and the two characters in the back discuss philosophy and linguistic misunderstandings. These points have nothing to do with the narrative or the plot. Jean-Luc Godard adopts the structure of a conventional film that he thinks of as highly: The Big Sleep (1946) and completely empties the substance that would allow us to engage with the film He deliberately makes the plot absent to reveal where one should expect something to occur, especially in a conventional film, but here it lacks anything coherent that we are accustomed to, which then withdraws the audience from the film and moves them into a deep frustration. That is exactly where Jean-Luc Godard wants the audience to be! This appears trivial at the surface because it seems he is manipulating the audience to sabotage their ability to gain pleasure from this aesthetic experience; however, at this point of viewing, if the audience is willing to investigate further into the absence that is presented, they will find that they have reached the point of awareness that directly allows us to understand our blind habit! When one begins to question the emptiness, the absence that we discover allows us to experience the habitual framework we are in that no other film has ever allowed. This isn’t important to simply understand how film form works, which I believe many are indirectly aware of, but it is to gain an awareness of how film can build comfort without thought, which can be utilized without ethical grounding. If the audience omits a non-conventional form, not just structurally, but inherently in the film content, eventually this will halt the producers and studios' willingness to create films that attempt to exist outside of this logical algorithm, which will limit the director's ability to communicate greater significance or critical thought. This is the core reason why the audience is responsible for questioning the films they consume. Therefore, the awareness in the audience is crucial, and the mundanity that one sees in the cinema of Jean-Luc Godard is not at all frivolous.