criterionforum.org

“If you use stars, people will give you money.” And so Jean-Luc Godard and Jean-Pierre Gorin went to work on what would be their first commercial narrative feature since coming together to form the radical Dziga-Vertov-Group filmmaking collective in the aftermath of May ’68. Enter Yves Montand and Jane Fonda as the stars, the latter of whose public support for the militant cause could serve as mutually beneficial for her own revolutionary credentials and for the publicity of Godard and Gorin’s film itself.

Tout va bien [Everything’s Going Fine] places Fonda and Montand in the roles of Her and Him, that is, a modern couple representative of the middle-class global bourgeoisie circa 1972. She’s a radio journalist at the French bureau of the American Broadcasting System; he’s an advertisement director who before ’68’s social upheavals served as a Nouvelle Vague screenwriter. Through Fonda’s and Montand’s star-personas, Godard and Gorin investigate ‘how the sausage is made’, both metaphorically (movie financing) and literally (industrial food processing), in the process questioning what it means to be involved or ‘engaged’ socially, politically, and romantically.

Taking a cue from the tricolour of the French flag, Godard and Gorin adopt the language of Frank Tashlin to discover whether or not, four years on, May ’68’s revolutionary spirit has not already been perverted into a living pop-art Looney Tunes, with society having finally transformed into a playground of consumption and commodity. With its bravura scenes of a factory cross-sectioned like a dollhouse (a nod to Tashlin-protégé Jerry Lewis’s film The Ladies Man) and an oscillating supermarket tracking-shot (one of many quotations of Godard’s ‘60s work such as Weekend, La chinoise, Le mépris, and À bout de souffle), Tout va bien remains a vital film of the 1970s — and for a world gone out-of-control.

SPECIAL EDITION CONTENTS:

High-definition digital transfer
High-definition Blu-ray (1080p) and standard-definition DVD presentations
Original uncompressed monaural audio
Optional English subtitles
Letter to Jane: An Investigation About a Still (1972), Godard and Gorin’s 55-minute film analysing the infamous photo of Jane Fonda meeting with the North Vietnamese published shortly after the release of Tout va bien
Video interview with Jean-Pierre Gorin from 2004 about his work with Godard
Vintage footage from the set of the film interviewing Godard
Reversible sleeve featuring alternate artwork

FIRST PRESSING ONLY: 48-page full-colour booklet containing English translations for the first time of writing on the film by David Faroult and Godard and Gorin, and a facsimile presentation of the film’s original pressbook

Interesting that Arrow appear to have licensed Criterion's Gorin interview. Other than the booklet contents this looks to be a straight lift of Criterion's disc content, which makes it easy to upgrade and sell the Crit DVD!

Another easy Arrow purchase.

This disc is apparently being produced by Evillights (Craig), so you have someone to contact if you want to give any extra ideas or suggestions for this release.

Tout Va Bien has been pushed back to Aug 7th.

Any word on the aspect ratio Arrow's using for this?

domino harvey wrote:Any word on the aspect ratio Arrow's using for this?

Someone mentioned this has started to ship. Mine won't be here til the other Godard set is released, but can anyone confirm the aspect ratio yet?

According to the back of the box from Arrow's Facebook, 1.66:1.

Excellent, thanks!

Got my copy in the mail, which was quite a surprise (no shipping email or indication it was coming separate from next month's DV box). Fun fact: there is a difference between the extras on disc-- the Arrow version of Godard's bathrobe interview runs eleven minutes longer than Criterion's (18 mins vs 7), in part due to more contextual material included around it-- I like how we get a breakdown of Godard's comments afterwards by the excerpted film's subjects (?) on a moving cafe! I'd like to see the rest of the film-- maybe we'll see more on an Arrow release of the Mattei Affair based on the references here?

Godard's negative remarks on Karmitz' Coup pour coup marks the first time I've even thought of those Karmitz movies in at least a decade!

Arrow's store been locked into part-shipping since I think the December sale of last year, meaning everything just ships as soon as it's in stock, so you can bundle together pre-orders for the free shipping threshold without worrying about it. This might go away when the store changes over, though.

domino harvey wrote: Godard's negative remarks on Karmitz' Coup pour coup marks the first time I've even thought of those Karmitz movies in at least a decade!

Apparently he's a big time movie producer now.

Yep, he produced a ton of Chabrol, among others. Plus, you know, he's MK2

Never put two and two together. That's mildly crazy.