All's Well (1972) User Reviews

an interesting collaboration/experiment, not great, but not boring

[Quinoa1984 · 7/10 · 16 June 2005]

I've always found a kind of disconnect between the Godard films of the 60's and the Godard films of the 80's, 90's and today, which is that in the past twenty or so years Godard has kept on experimenting, not telling the usual stories that we're used to in movies, with impressive camera-work and aloof actors. But in these films he's also gotten rather boring with his material, and sometimes his experimenting goes a little over the edge for my taste. I had yet to see a work of his from the 70's, however, until Tout va Bien, or Everything is Fine (many of his films are either very limited or totally unavailable in the US). It's actually a good movie for him and co-writer/director Jean-Pierre Gorin. Gorin, unlike Godard, was not a big-time cinephile, but did have motivations to become a political filmmaker. What they concocted was a kind of response to the ways that political films are not made, and should or could be made, in the independent/art world of cinema. This time, as usual, Godard takes very long shots of people talking, and has a couple of his inventive, almost scarily calm tracking shots. But this time as well he has two international stars on his hands. This is where he and Gorin get creative more so.

It's a tale of the working class against the ruling class that gets one thinking during the film, and even after it. They place Jane Fonda and Yves Montand as a married couple who get locked in a bitter struggle between meat-factory workers and the management not giving them their proper due. Although Fonda and Montand are the 'stars' of the movie, right off the start of the film (including discussing narrating voices) the whole idea of what this film should be is dissected- the money involved, what the stars should be doing in this story, why should there even BE a story? In short, the film unfolds as the stars become more so observers than the main gig, and the non-professionals (at least I thought they were, they might've been character actors) became the real stars. There are a few monologues, long ones, that go on during this dispute, and they're inter cut with scenes where Godard and Going seem to be showing the double-edge to these workers- they're part determined to get their way, and partly like kids taking over the school.

After these scenes, we get mostly all scenes with the stars, as Montand plays a disaffected art-film-turned-commercial director, and Fonda plays an dissatisfied American reporter. Their dialog together sort of winds down the film (including more monologues), leading up to a scene in a supermarket that almost reaches to the heights of the sustained, overwhelming filmic anarchy of the traffic-jam in Godard's Week End. Then the film ends without much else to say. So, basically, Tout va Bien kept me interested with what the characters/actors/people had to say, and unlike in Godard's 80's films there was a structure. And I liked how the screen-time for the extras ended up being balanced out by that of Fonda and Montand.

The downsides, which there are a few, are that Fonda and Montand, up until their scenes together &/or their monologues, don't have much at all to do in the film. I can't criticize or comment too much on their acting, because they seem to be too natural (by way of Godard/Gorin's simplicity throughout, sometimes funny sometimes not) to be doing anything very powerful. And there were a few times the experimenting got annoying. But overall, Tout va Bien works on its own terms, and its the kind of film now on DVD can find its audience somehow. Whether or not the same audience that embraced with loving arms Breathless and My Life to Live will do the same with this is another matter- it's part frustrating, but part clarity all the same. At the least, it's not just Godard's doing whether or not the film works or not- Gorin deserves equal credit or berating. B+

Deeply flawed but nonetheless important

[JMartin-2 · 6/10 · 17 September 1999]

After his four-year, self-imposed Maoist/nihilist "exile," Godard made a temporary -- albeit slight -- overture toward conventional commercial (or "bourgeois," as Godard called it) cinema by combining a leftist political essay with a dissection of human interaction. Alas, the film fails on both these levels; as a study of the male-female relationship, it is nowhere near "Contempt" and "Masculin-Feminin"; as a pure Maoist political tract, it is shallow and mind-numingly boring compared to "Le Gai Savior" and "Vladimir and Rosa." Nevertheless, "Tout va bien" is nonetheless important within Godard's extraordinary body of work, for it marked the beginning of the seven-year process in which his films would gradually shed their ultra-leftist leanings and move towards more universal, humanistic themes, a process that would ultimately cumulate in the excellent "Every Man For Himself." Even true Godard aficionados will be as bored as everyone else, but they should nonetheless go out of their way to secure a copy.

Good One

[rbloom333 · 6/10 · 29 November 2008]

Jean-Luc Godard's follow-up to the ultra-Maoist Weekend, featuring Yves Montand as a former New Wave filmmaker and his wife Jane Fonda, as they become active in a factory takeover. The film is of course very sympathetic to Marxism and perhaps Leninism, but it's certainly toned down from the blood fest that is Weekend, perhaps regrettably. Godard insists on reinterpreting and imposing entirely new ideas about what a film can and ought to be, in this case an intellectualized espousal of the working class struggle. A few moments of daring misce-en-scene are worth mentioning; fist, Godard includes an awesome cutaway of the factory to reveal the power-dynamics of the uprising within, and an elaborate tracking sequence in a supermarket to reveal the gross stupidity of capitalist consumerism. Tout Va Bien is clearly a step-down from Godard's brilliant features of the 60's, but it's still provocative and worth any cinephile's time.

Newly released on (Region 1) DVD by Criterion

[zetes · 7/10 · 7 March 2005]

Although I'm quite familiar with most of Jean-Luc Godard's career, there is that 1970s period where he completely abandoned commercialism in all its forms and made experimental political films with Jean-Pierre Gorin and others. Tout Va Bien is not an impossible work, but it is challenging and, even if you win that challenge, the rewards are fairly limited. But it's interesting work, and Godard's fractured cinematic imagination is definitely brilliant at times. The grocery store sequence near the end of the film is as cinematic ally accomplished and impressive as the tracking shot of the apocalyptic highway in Week-End. And I love the meta-cinematic material at the beginning, where the filmmakers discuss how they can make a political film about May '68 and how the movement has evolved in the following four years. Step on: hire some stars. With stars come money. Thus Yves Montand and Jane Fonda are recruited for that purpose. The longest segment of the film has the two stars trapped with the manager of a slaughterhouse as his workers bar him from leaving his office. Godard and Gorin have a set designed after that large-windowed apartment building in Tati's Playtime. Perhaps it is even the same exact set, remodeled a bit for the way they want to use it here? The new Criterion DVD includes a follow-up film, A Letter to Jane, which discusses the famous photograph of Fonda meeting with the Viet-Cong. It is nearly unwatchable, though, and I gave up after 15 or 20 minutes (it's 52 minutes of Godard and Gorin speechifying – which is also prevalent (and hard to take) in Tout Va Bien, as well).

a disarming cinematic hybrid of storytelling and agitprop

[lasttimeisaw · 7/10 · 26 August 2019]

In the wake of May 1968 which effectually bookends the unrivaled movement of Nouvelle Vague, Godard founded Groupe Dziga Vertov (1968-1972), among which Maoist Jean-Pierre Gorin is a key figure, and TOUT VA BIEN is the most well-known works of the group's output, also heralds Godard's seminal transition from narrative tradition to a more essayistic, esoteric platform to which he has cleft ever since.

International star power swells in TOUT VA BIEN, Jane Fonda, freshly copping her first Oscar for KLUTE (1971), but subsequently...

keep reading my review on my blog: cinema omnivore, thanks!

Love for people

[haukurhe · 9/10 · 25 January 2001]

The first film I see from Godard. Absolutely astonishing! Conversational and narrative experiments that I now see as the origins of my favorites from Hal Hartley.

Framed by the conversation of a wannabe filmmaker to his friend, where they develop an outline for a story, is a film about love and revolution. Yes, it's French. Questions raised: can love survive relationship? Can revolutionary thought survive revolution? Is it any good?

I don't know where it comes from, how it gets through, but one can sense much love for all the director's characters, for people and for film. Love and compassion.

The last fifteen minutes of the film are among the most beautiful moments I have witnessed in cinema.

An Entirely Different Structure

[jzappa · 7/10 · 5 February 2007]

Godard builds his films from scratch. It's not that he shows up on the first day of shooting with no script or idea of what he wants. He simply works from an entirely different angle than most other directors. In an inventive, cerebral, pretentious manor, Godard and his co- director here, Jean-Pierre Gorin, shows us scene after scene. After each one, we naturally ask ourselves questions pertaining to the characters and the story. The story, or should I say the film, unravels further. We then not only ask ourselves the expected question, "What does this movie mean?" We also ask ourselves, "What is this movie about?" Godard drops characters and settings into a stirring pot, sprinkling it with title cards and captions, then pours them all into the oddly shape bowl of a film structure that he has fashioned himself. His cinematic expression is less a communication to and more a confrontation with the audience. He does not make his film easy on you. Still, his cinematography is interesting, and I admire some of his ideas.

Have I made it unclear where Tout Va Bien stands in my opinion? OK. Well, let me tell you that it is quite an interesting film, an especially unpredictable one, yet Godard and Gorin, as the occasional European filmmaker will do, just as Haneke does, enjoy the feeling of being beyond the audience. What is said with Tout Van Bien, politically, socially, sexually, is expressed as if we, the audience, are the ignorant ones he is in disagreement with.

The high points of this film are the presence of Jane Fonda and a very very long sideways steadicam shot that slowly moves from left to right repeatedly across several check-out lines in a grocery store as tension and rage slowly builds.

One of Godard's finest efforts.

[Sergeant_Tibbs · 9/10 · 24 July 2013]

I find that the films of Jean-Luc Godard rarely speak to me, but they do, such as Pierrot Le Fou, it really hits hard. Perhaps he's most effective when he talks about cinema itself. While Pierrot is most profoundly interesting through its debate about the arts, Tout Va Bien immediately addresses its own existence in its opening scene. It analyzes premise, storytelling, filmmaking and how they got the film made with how it cast two major stars in the lead roles. It's fascinatingly direct, almost confessional. With this abrasive and confrontational style in mind it charges full throttle into its politics of the French revolution in the late 60s as the lower and middle classes rebel against capitalism. While sometimes it can be a little too on-the-nose with its arguments as characters talk to the audience, Godard's point is undeniable and its very well demonstrated through the style. The highlight of the film is definitely the use of sets and colour. I love the stage-like sets where you can see into two floors and a dozen rooms. It categorizes the drama in a cartoonish way that satirizes the politics brilliantly while still retaining their power. Although this argument does interrupt the initial contrived story, it jumps back into it seamlessly making it work for the characters in an unexpectedly emotional way. Tout Va Bien is an incredible film and one of Godard's finest efforts. It lived up to my expectations and more.

9/10

A Noble Failure

[bababear · 7/10 · 26 May 2008]

I really wanted to like this. It has a great cast, excellent camera work, and deserves points for being willing to deal in ideas. But there's a major problem for me in that I'm so apathetic that I was in my mid 30's before I ever voted so it's hard for me to get worked up about these things.

One problem the film will have with today's audiences is that the main motif of the narrative- the riots in France in 1968- won't be familiar to younger audiences. I remember reading about this in Life magazine when I was in college, and I'll be 62 in a couple of months. For viewers much younger than myself the film really needs a Cliff's Notes.

As to what's good in it, Jane Fonda is tremendous. Although I disagree with her politics completely, she seems like a person I'd really enjoy sitting and talking with. She plays Susan, a reporter trying to make sense of events in 1972 when the echoes of 1968 still reverberate. She covers a strike at a slaughterhouse which has resulted in the manager being held prisoner in his own office.

Suzanne is trying to find her footing in a complex world. As a reporter for an English language news service she wants to write intellectually stimulating material, but her editors reject her best work. Fonda lived in France during her eight year marriage to Roger Vadim and she shifts between languages with no effort.

Her husband Jacques (Yves Montand) has shifted from making feature films- he had been part of the New Wave movement- to directing commercials, because in the real world there are bills to pay.

There are two set pieces that remind me how important Godard's work is in film history. The scenes at the slaughterhouse use a two story set showing the offices with the fourth wall removed and we see what's happening on both floors of the complex.

Toward the end of the film there's a scene in a gigantic megastore where an author advocating the French Communist Party is promoting his (discounted) book. The scene, done in one continuous take, starts with the normal store activities. Then protesters arrive and start shouting that everything in the store is free and gradually a riot evolves with the police eventually showing up.

Godard is 78 years old now and as recently as 2006 was still directing films. It's been years since I remember reading about any of his work getting American distribution on a wide scale. That's a shame.

It's a funny thing. When I started writing this I originally gave it five stars. Since I've thought about it, I've upped that to a seven.

That's the good thing about films like this. Even though it's not necessarily perfect, it still gives the viewer something to think about.

Formalist elements, politics and above all ennui

[jjbul · 5/10 · 14 November 2004]

From the first credit sequence, Godard captures a realistic storyline in a formalistic fashion. Although these two schools are commonly combined, in Tout va bien they frequently contrast. From the credits at the start the viewer is introduced to the process of making a film, the sound of the clapperboard is followed by an unidentified hand signing off the costs of the film, normally invisible to an audience. The formalism is not particularly abstract but more utilitarian, whether the personal views of the workers are being recorded or two storeys of the factory are shown simultaneously, the viewer is constantly reminded of the artificiality of what is being put in front of the camera in these scenes. In addition to the formalistic shooting, there are strong elements within the storyline that detract from the seriousness of the situation. The comedy with the factory owner's desperate search for a toilet and the prescribed pattern of two lovers falling out and getting back together damage the credibility of the documentary-style scenes. With these constant reminders, it is hard to treat any of the action as real or serious; the revolution in the supermarket seems childish and futile, especially as it takes such a long time for the dreary process of shopping to be converted into a vibrant revolution; the chanting by the strikers also seems unnaturally orchestrated and weak. Symbolism is understated but the blue in the sausage factory seems important as every surface is being painted. In film this colour is associated with subdued emotions, it isn't a fiery colour of revolution but a cool, stable colour, even at its most vivid. Other recurring symbols might include the police, who are labeled as fascists and so on, dressed in black overcoats, dehumanised, until one policeman is turned from pursuer into pursued, again perhaps a comic moment and one that could be stretched to symbolise the brief glory of Mai '68. In general though, the large numbers of police imply a zero-tolerance approach to dissenters that coincides with the small numbers who turn out to demonstrate showing the trend to abandon the picket line in favour of earning a living.

Godard has his main character speak directly to the camera of the feeling of dejection and missed opportunities that followed Mai '68. The candid expressions and the direct address give a warm, honest feel to the character that encourages sympathy; we are expected to agree with what he says. Following Mai '68 a cross-section of society seemed to support widespread social change, workers felt that their voice would be heard and an enormous feeling of euphoric empowerment was experienced. Following those events, the C.G.T leadership as well as the communist party seemed to abandon the cause of the ouvriers taking up contradictory positions of passive acceptance. The issues that remained a problem went unresolved whilst the energy was gradually sapped out of those willing to protest until they became marginalised and unpopular. This is expressed by the loneliness of the strikers, the pettiness of the student rioters, and the way that when the rioters clash with the police they are inevitably outnumbered: society no longer has any time for them; they have become nothing more than a nuisance. This leads to the political leaning of the film. Aside from the fascist police, the right, exemplified by the factory owner are broadly ridiculed. Even the radio station where Jane Fonda works is clearly put in the wrong by the film. Sympathy is felt for the workers but they don't seem to have any particular ethos, certainly gauchistes aren't glorified in any sense. The only support politically seems to be given to the spontaneous and apparently anarchic students but there is no sense of moral resolution in their favour, on the contrary the ultimately inconsequential nature of their protest encourages the same cynicism that was reserved for the other political stances represented in the film. All this is contributes to the overall impression given off by the film, that of ennui. Many of the other comments posted have picked up on the boredom inspired by the film but I would differentiate between the two. Ennui being a French word, and one that has been explored by the greatest authors in French literature, it is not surprising that one of the greatest multimedia essayists in the world, who also happens to be French, should explore ennui in another medium. The difference between French ennui and English boredom is that ennui carries with it an enormous sense of frustration. The two C.G.T cronies are expressive of boredom as they wait for their spokesman to finish his lengthy speech; the censorship of Jane Fonda's character, the isolation of the factory strikers, the sleaziness of Yves Montand's rotting career, in fact the feeling of disinterest inspired by most of the scenes, these encompass ennui. If it can be assumed that Godard took the usual degree of care in making this film, then it must be the case that the drawn out shots in the factory and the supermarket that seemed to express ennui most clearly are deliberate. Whether this is sufficient defence for a film that flopped at the box-office is debateable. Nevertheless if Godard's intention was to portray a situation devoid of inspiration and where hope cannot extend beyond a fragile personal relationship, then his film has succeeded.

Interesting Godard

[Jeremy_TheFighter_Belmondo · 10/10 · 29 September 2008]

I've read commentaries of it being a lesser or unaccessible Godard, but for me it was just astonishing; seriously this film is brilliant on so many levels. Sure is kind of in your face consumerism and capitalism critic, but it has beautiful imagery with interesting symbolism, narratively speaking the way the story is presented with it's long lateral takes (the supermarket tracking shot is awesome)and also the film within a film concept in a very unorthodox way (the way he reminds us it's all a film by showing us the that the factory is a set for example)was fascinating, Godard being represented (mocking himself?) by Montad in that scene where he's interviewed(the part in which Montad speaks about the nouvelle vague) and the beautiful use of color made for a haunting experience for me.

A bold experiment

[michaelgfalk · 7/10 · 6 July 2016]

This film's an experiment, and I think it's fair to say that it doesn't quite pull it off. But I nonetheless found it quite an engaging film.

The plot is threadbare. An American journalist and her French husband are accidentally embroiled in an occupation at a factory. The different characters put their points of view about the occupation, and as the film goes on, the perspective widens, until it really isn't about the factory anymore, but about the state of France.

There are some striking scenes here, all of them pictorial rather than dramatic. Many of the characters speak to camera in one-sided dialogues (rather than monologues— the distinction is obvious when you watch). There are a few of Godard's trademark long panning shots. Fragments of vision recur or are recast. The effect of this style is to externalise all the characters. None is a mind or a soul. They are rather expressions of a certain point of view, or noises in the cacophony of society and history.

One of the film's more successful elements is its frame-narrative. Two voices discuss how the film ought to be put together, what it ought to achieve, and play around with the characters' fates. The frequent references to Brecht in the body of the film meld nicely with the frame, and make it clear that Godard is going for an "Entfremdungseffekt"—this is not a film to be immersed in, but one that is supposed to provoke reflection.

And that it most certainly does. I felt downright uncomfortable at times, as the film ruthlessly sent up the supposed insight of intellectuals, and the supposed historical effectiveness of political parties. But the film also had a light touch, and its gloriously silly penultimate scene left me laughing at my political certainties, rather than empty and sad.

It doesn't quite cohere, but I'm very glad I saw it. 7/10

For once, I am somewhat at a loss for what to write.....

[planktonrules · 4/10 · 25 November 2007]

This film deliberately ignores conventional structure and this is because director Godard liked to buck convention AND this film is all about the need to overhaul the system (and I guess this can extend to conventional film making as well). I actually liked the way it started--with two people talking about how to deign a scenario for a film. However, after that the film got a bit slow. The film turned out to be about the general strike that crippled France in 1968 that changed the face of French society--ushering in an age of increased workers' rights (such as French law making it practically impossible to fire workers, guaranteeing six weeks paid vacation, etc.) and the supposed paradise for the people.

So far, I have written a huge number of reviews on IMDb and they usually flow from my mind to the computer screen rather easily. Thank you, Jean-Luc Godard for making this a much tougher task than usual!! While I did not hate this film nearly as much as PIERRE LE FOU, ALPHAVILLE or PRENOM CARMEN (films of Godard that I have hated), I didn't particularly enjoy this movie nor did I really care about it--I just felt very little about the film one way or the other. As usual for Godard, the subject matter is the ills of conventional capitalism and his desire to overhaul "the system". However, unlike the three films I just listed, at least TOUT VA BIEN makes you think and it's not a film to easily dismiss or adore--it's more an enigma. Plus, I don't really think Godard thought he had all the answers to improving society, despite his far-left leanings and the leanings of his two stars. And I guess, for bucking convention, for allowing itself to be vague as well as offering something different, it might have been worth while. I certainly did not enjoy it, nor would the average viewer. Only those who adore terms like "class struggle", "prolotariot" and the like as well as die-hard Godard freaks will probably find this a great or memorable film.

An assignment worth completing

[Greekguy · 7/10 · 25 February 2013]

Most of the time, I do not watch Godard, because that would be maddening; instead, I roll up my sleeves and work at watching him. It's almost always rewarding, and it's much less frustrating than trying to remain entertained.

"Tout Va Bien" is not an entertainment – it's a sometimes funny look at how humanists deal with the aftermath of class struggle, the aftermath of the presence of the real possibility of change in society. Set and made in 1974, this film looks at the legacy of the student-led May 1968 Movement. What did this Spring of Revolution leave behind as seed, particularly for the upwardly mobile intellectuals who embraced its concepts without sacrificing their own materialism? To find out, we have to watch our hero and heroine, played by Yves Montand and Jane Fonda, as they negotiate their relationships with one another in the light of their politically committed past and the professionally unsatisfactory compromises that each of them are being asked to make in the present.

The main action of the film is the seizure of a food factory by its workers, and the consequent detention of our couple together with the workers' intended hostage, the factory manager. Through this device, the film raises issues of workers' rights, women's rights and the role of trade unions in the free market workplace. It also allows us to see snippets of an actual production line, and memorable glimpses of our stars making sausages and chain-sawing through pig carcasses.

It's very strange, but precisely because Montand and Fonda seem so cameo-esque in their execution of these tasks, the work itself becomes more tangible, more real. However, this is not to say that this film is a work of realism. Indeed, it's the opposite of that. The film itself begins with a series of shots showing the cheques that were written to fund it. Throughout the film, our couple remain "He" and "She". They have no other names. At times, they speak directly to the camera. Others in the story do the same. It is all part of a strategy to never hide the work's representational nature. This is, Godard says, a film, and films are made in order to look at issues. In turn, this honesty of approach, this confession that it is a performance that we are watching, allows us to concentrate on the questions raised rather more than the characters that raise them. That's okay, because it's not a film about them, it's a film about us. About you and me and this world. And though it was made nearly forty years ago, what it has to say about gender roles, power, economics and politics is as fresh as the blood on all their aprons.

Tout va bien and la potiche! Combined...

[s-wesner1 · 8 October 2012]

Tout Va Bien: A Movie Review Well, this divisive film certainly has polarized both those for and against consumerism at its finest: capitalism. One understands through the film that there are a lot of disgruntled people out there in "la Belle France" who basically strive hard to change things, from time to time, when times get rough, or things get intolerable in the political scheme of things. We see from the film, certain things that really catch our visual gaze: the eerie supermarket scene, where shoppers are basically targeted for their purchasing large quantities of goods big enough to feed an entire Catholic household by angry "anti-consumerist" revolutionaries who basically seem out of love with the French version of the supermarket, l'hyper-marché. We see that, not only in this scene but in others, there are many disgruntled workers/student activists, who want desperately to weed out the continuing problems in their society that won't seem to go away, no matter what they do. There are, next, the problems faced by the meat-packing workers who work in the meat-packing plant, who are faced with the problems wrought by working at a meat- packing plant, namely, cancer. Though these workers have a boss who is apparently jolly, cheery, and indeed, corpulent, they have nothing to live for as they are all dissatisfied with their jobs and indeed have to sing songs of protest directly in "leur patron's" face in order to get the message across to him that they "ain't gonna take it anymore." In fact, this movie reminds me so much of "Potiche" in its almost comedic look at French workers striking, so unique and unusual, and even creative in their tactics, are they. In Potiche, a movie which I am probably not even supposed to be reviewing on here, we find that a suburban housewife is tired of her banal existence as a housewife and wants instead to be mayor of her small town (her alternative existence is not very good; all she gets in that life is being chased around by squirrels on her daily jogs, washing dishes and cooking in her apron, and getting cheated on by her cigar- smoking husband). So, we find that, Catherine Deneuve, who plays this feisty house-wife- no-more character, becomes the lead striker in that she address the strikers' concerns whole-heartedly, being the former wife of the deceased husband and woman-chaser, and, like a true fiery politician, changes the way things were previously run at their car-producing- factory (or, something like that). So, while some may immediately label Godard as a boring film-producer who only produces film for his own money-making benefit (and, after all, we all have to earn our bread somehow, don't we?), there are those of us out there who have to acknowledge that the man is a prolific film- producer, and we can't just be jealous if there is nothing we can do about it. In addition, there are scenes in Tout Va bien which makes us question whether really, "Tout Va bien" or, "Tout ne va pas bien, du tout." There are scenes of utter chaos, to be sure, in the supermarket scene, which leads the average viewer to believe in miracles; the shoppers eventually catch on that there is enough chaos in the air that they will not be penalized if they take a little extra of the food and other supplies that the grocery store has to offer. The film-makers who are documenting the strike in this way truly believe that they need to change the mechanical way in which the butchers, or, before that, the factory- worker-butchers, are forced to behave; like robots. But, as we human beings are not robots, we must not be forced to act in this way for too long, or else, we will explode. The building in which many of these workers work, singing rather merry protest songs, cheerfully, along the lines of, "let's behead le patron" and things like that to scare him, aren't pacified by his apparent placidness and seemingly sociable manner and willingness to become one with his inferiors, at least for five minutes. We find that, indeed, the workers hate him, anyway, and will line up outside his door for days, weeks, months, if they have to. One unforgettable moment, anyway, is when the boss actually loses, it, technically, and throws a brick to pee out the window; the chants are surprisingly melodious, in fact, and they verge on rounds, which is quite incredible to me that strikers' songs, supposedly created on the spur of the moment, spun out of workers' minds, can be quite so creative. So, this movie, which starts out patriotic enough, advertising "la France" with the red, white and blue of its flag (it puts its letters in this colorful design), spans the years from 1968, when there were great student protests and somewhat violent riots against the police, to 1972, when the fictional, but largely truth-based strikes take place. The director is very revealing in the ways in which he shoots his scenes, he lays everything bare: his voice supposedly is heard calling the shots, literally, like, "Tout Va Bien, part two, cut," or "Tout Va Bien, scene three, take 5, cut," etcetera, etcetera, until the film really begins. Jane Fonda, and Yves Montand, and Victor Capprioli, also star, so no wonder that this was a popular film, at least during its time. Indeed, this is quite a film, a lot of work went into it.

it has its moments

[snucker · 6/10 · 7 December 2003]

my first Godard film. i saw it in film class and went into it with an open mind, knowing that i'm not gonna be in for anything entertaining. there are some seriously boring and annoying elements in this film. there is dialogue that doesn't go anywhere, obtuse framing that is used for artsy effects, we're always put on edge and we are never allowed to feel comfortable with this film. it also has this aimless quality about it, it has things to say about the ecconomics of making films, linking the film industry with capitalism and communism, and may 1968 protests. there are some very clever moments in this film. the long scene with the camera panning a supermarket back and forth while a mini revolution is taking place where people storm into the market and wreck havoc. there's also the scene where workers in a meat factory lock up their employer and not letting him to go the wash room (well...at least on time.) those two scenes are worth the price of admission.

Godard is trying to make a film about political issues and imbed it into his film making, and in a way, it works on that level. while watching it, it can be a tedious experience that is interspersed with some amusing moments. it's probably for godard fans only, cuz i doubt non-fans would forgive godard for making them sit through this.

a film we should learn from in these dark days

[eyalhochdorf · 8/10 · 11 October 2006]

Godard work sometimes is not entirely understood. having seen most of his films i must say the this film is one of the more comprehensible of the lot. To my understanding it deals with an important issue of the postmodern graded. the issue of how to react to the capitalist society in which we live in. Being disappointed from the communist party, as well as the worker's unions which turned their backs to the working class, the people are left with no alternative but to commence a revolution, one that uses force, one that shakes the basis of society. He also shows how the burglar reporters and film creator as a representing free mind are also been exploited by the capitalist regime and their creative spirits is dying. for the the solution is to continue creating at all cost. to bring the cry of the people, to help the coming revolution. The last scene at the supermarket is quite fantastic, and it shows the decay of the great ideas (a communist part member sells his book at a discount price but doesn't know what's written there, and the youth that stand up to the society rules and help people to leave the supermarket and not pay). I strongly recommend this movie, although you need some patience with Godard's worth the time.

All's not so well...

[JasparLamarCrabb · 6/10 · 25 April 2007]

TOUT VA BIEN may very well be the most frustrating movie made by the interminably frustrating Jean Luc Godard. Jane Fonda and Yves Montand are the billed stars, but it's Godard's overwrought direction that dominates all. Per usual, he's bashing the bourgeoisie while pretending to stick up for the little man (in this case striking factory workers...makers of sausage no less!) Overzealous camera work aside (Godard does snag at least one technique from Jerry Lewis...he removes the "fourth wall" of the factory and gives a terrific view of multiple floors at once), this is a pretty lifeless movie. The acting is so-so. Fonda is OK, but Montand barely registers. The factory workers shout a lot.

Hilarious at times

[JohnSeal · 8/10 · 22 September 2007]

Perhaps I'm insufficiently attuned to the works of Jean-Luc Godard--though I'm a huge fan of Breathless and Weekend--but Tout va bien plays like a comedy to me. The film satirizes multiple targets: the conventions of film-making, the pompous self importance of the bourgeoisie, the underdeveloped logic of the lumpen proletariat, and so much more, including Godard himself. Did you enjoy the legendary tracking shot in Weekend? Well, you'll love the multiple tracking shots in Tout va bien, which take place in the offices of a sausage factory (what could be more emblematic of commercial film-making?) and in a supermarket where riot police are doing battle with shoppers. Yes, there's plenty of political content for those so inclined, but for me, this film is akin to Lindsay Anderson's acerbic Britannia Hospital: nothing is sacred. Highly recommended, and I'd have given it a '10' if not for the presence of the eternally irksome Jane Fonda and her horrible '70s shag hair-do.

Godard and Gorin, having become Maoist agitprop filmmakers, get to direct a big-budget film, and cast it out of references to Godard's New Wave work

[crculver · 7/10 · 4 August 2017]

In 1967 the French director Jean-Luc Godard, whose recent films had been increasingly imbued with political concerns and an infatuation with Mao, stepped away entirely from conventional filmmaking (even in its zany French New Wave form). Joining with his fellow French Maoist Jean-Pierre Gorin, he shot a series of self-funded political tracts that remain little-known today except to extreme Godard completists. But in 1972, after these years in the comparative wilderness, Godard and Gorin got funding to make a bigger-budget picture, with established stars Jane Fonda and Yves Montand. As they planned, the film would initially go through the motions of being a commercial-entertainment picture, but then move into overtly ideological territory. The result was TOUT VA BIEN ("Everything's Fine").

Fonda plays an American news correspondent in Paris. Montand is her husband, a former film director who sold out to shoot television commercials for consumer products. As the film opens the reporter, with her husband tagging along, arrives at a meat-processing plant where she had an appointment to interview the director (played by Italo-French comedic actor Vittorio Caprioli). This turns out to be the same day when the plant workers strike and barricade the manager in his office -- and Fonda and Montand end up being stuck in his office with him. The first half of the film consists of the workers stridently clashing with the manager, as well as their union representative who they feel is compromising too much with management. In the second part of the film, Fonda and Montand's experience in the factory, revealing their own guilt and dissatisfaction, opens a rift in their relationship.

There is a lot of farce in the first half of the film, and a darkly humorous misanthropy. Godard may have been intrigued by the romance of revolutionary politics, but he depicts the workers as venial, squabbling people that are nearly as awful as the exploitative management. Godard and Gorin make heavy use of Brechtian alienation techniques here, where the audience is continually reminded that they are watching a staged drama, not real life. Thus the factory director reads his lines in a hyperbolic comedic fashion, while other performers seem to be reading their lines in improvised fashion off a sheet of paper offscreen. Fonda and Montand are not directed to act much at all, rather they mainly stand on screen as token "movie stars" and only observe the workers' action. Naturally, French Maoism has not aged well as a political ideology, and people today will see this as a time capsule of a past age in politics than a powerful for the present. Still, Godard and Gorin do capture some timeless truths about how hard it is for the working class to put its frustrations into words.

In spite of being shot years into Godard's middle, "Maoist" period when he had supposedly left the New Wave behind entirely, from the very first frame one is likely to find this readily a continuation of his mid-1960s work. The visual aesthetic, i.e. the bright colours -- usually those of the French flag -- the way his actors are instructed to stand, and the general mise-en-scene are the same as his work from PIERROT LE FOU to WEEKEND. There is a reason for that: Godard had a serious motorcycle accident during the initial stages of the film, and while he was recuperating, Gorin had to do most of the directing. Gorin intentionally chose to emulate various bits of Godard's earlier films. This is important to note, because the 1970s would be a decade when Godard's visual style and editing would change dramatically, but due to Gorin's role this film looks backwards to early Godard instead of forward to late Godard. But even if it is a deliberate retread of earlier Godard, it is still visually gorgeous, and the elaborate shot in a hypermarket towards the end (by which Gorin imitated the car crash scene in WEEKEND) deserves to be acclaimed as one of cinema's great long takes.

Another effect of Gorin's look to the past is that, if it weren't for shots of France outside the film's set, where we can see that the new fashions and music of the Seventies have come, a viewer might think this was a Sixties film. Nonetheless, there are some fresh things here, namely the appearance of feminist concerns (something generally missing from Sixties radicalism). With its repeated mentions of May 1968, TOUT VA BIEN also captures a very interesting moment in time, when May '68 was close enough to be relatively fresh, but far enough in the past that people could understand what a failure it had proved and wax nostalgically about it.

TOUT VA BIEN has never been among Godard's most acclaimed films, and as I said, visually it is a sort of retread. Yet, I greatly enjoyed this film. For me, the mid-late 1960s and early 1970s were a very special time in French history (and in Western history more generally), and watching TOUT VA BIEN really does take one back to that era. I wouldn't recommend this to someone totally unfamiliar with Godard, but if you have seen all his New Wave work, then continue on to this.

tout va bien

[mossgrymk · 2/10 · 24 August 2021]

An important film for Godard haters (of whom I am, most assiduously, not one) since it denotes the beginning of this great director's artistic and mental decline.

Documentary About The Sausage Industry

[loganx-2 · 8/10 · 30 July 2008]

A less heavy handed, less pretentious, more political film from Godard?? Well it is, and it works. May 1968, was a big month for French politics, students taking over administration buildings, the president evacuated, the next french revolution armed and ready...but then, things went back to normal and Jean Luc Godard made a film called "Tout Va Bien" or "Everything's All Right".

It's a film about how complex making a film with a "single' political stance can be, and how absurd, and kinda impossible that is, so instead of the apocalyptic barrage of "Weekend", we get the sober, hang over, of political doubts and inconsistencies on both the right and the left. Big stars like the Fonda's, function as big stars, to entice the audience, but do job performances anyway.

Like many Godard films, it's kind of an essay in film form, but if that kind of thing holds no interest, for you, just ignore this. It's good, and funny, but it's about a very specific place, at a very specific time, through the minds of not one but two very eccentric and at times difficult, artists, in Gorn and Godard, and that probably wont appeal to everyone. Which is fine, movies are good, because of their specificity to individual lives, tastes, and concerns, not their universal appeal to crowds.

possibly the worst film I have ever seen

[kirsten-7 · 1/10 · 14 May 1999]

I saw this film as part of a first year film course, and though sorely tempted to leave, sat through the whole film. It not only utterly bored me, but made me angry at the pretension and arrogance of the director and all involved in this appallingly unsubtle piece of left wing propaganda. I recognised Goddard's aim in making his film, but felt that instead of encouraging would-be supporters to his cause, he would have alienated them. Cinema is primarily an entertainment medium, easily enriched by enlightened, educated thought. The best films are not those with mindless special effects and gimmicks, but those which give the spectator something to think about. In making a film, the director may hope both to entertain and to positively promote certain politics or ideologies in an engaging manner. Tout va Bien did neither.

Reflections on May 1968

[eabakkum · 8/10 · 20 December 2010]

In our modern society revolutions have become rare. And the times that followed may 1968 were indeed a revolution, albeit in Europe a relatively soft one. In the years 1968-1975 I passed the adolescence, and consequently the era has left a lasting impression on me. Much later I realized that the turmoil of the New Left had already started in the preceding decade, notably in the USA. First there was the civil rights movement, against the segregation. And then there was the resistance against the horrific and pointless Vietnamese war. It launched a counter culture, of hippies and flower power, and new methods of social interaction. The Asean and African nationalist movements enjoyed their newly gained freedom, and in Latin America the dictatorships tumbled. In retrospect many of the new ideas may not have been viable, and often even decadent. But still, for me it is impossible to give an objective judgment of the film Tout va bien. This is especially so, since at the time I have missed the film and therefore the belated acquaintance was making up arrears. To me the film is inspiring, because it uses a truly alternative technique in the narrative. And because it is a reflection on the contemporary thoughts and developments. The technique uses mainly monologues, in which the main characters explain their feelings and thoughts just as if they are interviewed. It starts as a "Lui et elle" film. The French film producer Jacques (Yves Montand) and the American radio reporter Susan (Jane Fonda) have an affair. It is 1972, and they ponder over the events in their careers, notably after may 1968. Jacques makes advertisement clips, but feels unhappy about it. He accompanies Susan to an interview with the manager of the Salumi meat factory. However, just before they enter the building a wild strike is initiated, the offices are occupied by the blue collar workers, and the manager is taken hostage (for some reason, even in our days this can still go unpunished in France). The official of the communist union CGT is furious, and complains about the inadequacy of their actions. The manager uses abusive language, but is also phlegmatic, and defends the conservative entrepreneurial views. We also hear the opinions and feelings of some of the workers. Jacques and Susan are locked up together with the manager, for more than a day. Subsequently we witness several student uproars and riots, which are dispersed by the police. A real story line is absent, and therefore the film can simply end just like he began. In conclusion, the film is a surprising experience. I guess the best way of digesting it would be to analyze all those the monologues, and empathize with them. And I guess that the CGT official is right. Other illustrious films about those days are "Strawberry statement", "Fritz the Cat" (animation) and possibly the most outstanding of all: "Hair". If you like social films, you may find my other reviews interesting.

To put it plainly

[Hannahcostello824 · 10/10 · 20 May 2006]

Godard uses Brechtian devices in this film to portray a left wing political message to his viewers. Thats just for a shorter briefing me lovelies!

It says that I must ten lines so basically Brecht was a left wing theatre practitioner who did not believe that an audience should watch a film to be caught up in the action and escape reality. He instead believed it was a political tool and created his own "epic theatre". This theatre was developed to alienate the audience so that the audience would think "this is strange" and therefore remove themselves from the action to consider the meaning of the play. Devices from this theatre which are present in Godards films are the showing of props, narrative devices interjections (Godard interrupts to tell the audience the point of the film) placards and chanting.