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This double-feature disc is a bit unusual, containing two separate discs in a wide box rather than two movies on two sides of a DVD. The price is more than right, as either of these movies could sustain a full-priced release on its own, and the box even comes with a handy booklet containing historical essays on both movies.

While modern critics (including one of the commentators on the DVD commentary track) might wish to see a connection with the goings-on in Black Legion and the political climate today in America, that's a big, big stretch, as well. The small fringe group Black Legion of 1937 focuses its sick, racist hatred on legal immigrants who are furthering themselves in America at the expense of no one. These immigrants are the "true" Americans, fulfilling the ideals of the country. Today, the political argument about the illegal invasion of immigrants - a significant number of them with criminal backgrounds - involves hundreds of millions of law-abiding, respectful citizens from all ends of the political spectrum, concerned with criminals who flood into the country unasked (ahead of hopeful immigrants who wait patiently and play by the rules), and who are breaking the back of the social programs that lawful citizens - of all races and backgrounds - increasingly can not afford to support. That's a night and day difference between these two supposedly connected situations. Perhaps what is connected in Black Legion with today's political climate - the voices of hate groups still touting age-old prejudices in the service of gaining political and economic power - is certainly ironic, when one sees that we have a current national political figure unrepentant in his 20-year support of just such a hate group, and yet who apparently doesn't have to be held responsible for that unstinting support, unlike Bogart's Frank Taylor.

Roger Ebert on [i]Film Socialisme[/i] wrote:The only way to make sense of it is to do all the heavy lifting yourself. And even then, how can you be confident that your reading of the film is what Godard had in mind?

Mr Sausage wrote:I wonder if he meant that the film doesn't seem to advance any purposeful meaning and that any attempt to find it on behalf of the viewer would be arbitrary, and he just phrased it really, really badly. Because otherwise, he's complaining about having to do what a critic is paid to do, which is so silly I have to think he didn't actually mean what he seems to be saying.

This film is an affront. It is incoherent, maddening, deliberately opaque and heedless of the ways in which people watch movies. All of that is part of the Godardian method, I am aware, but I feel a bargain of some sort must be struck. We enter the cinema with open minds and goodwill, expecting Godard to engage us in at least a vaguely penetrable way. But in "Film Socialisme," he expects us to do all the heavy lifting.

His Navajo speakers touch on socialism, gambling, nationalism, Hitler, Stalin, art, Islam, women, Jews, Hollywood, Palestine, war and other large topics. It all seems terrifically political, but there is nothing in the film to offend the most devout Tea Party communicant, and I can't say what, if anything, the film has to say about socialism.

Godard has sent my mind scurrying between ancient history and modern television, via Marxism and Nazism, to ponder — well, what?

Godard has provided an excellent jumping-off point for whatever you want to conclude about anything, so long as you connect it somehow with the words "Godard" and "Godardian."

Didnt know Jerusalem was this cool
I only know Jerusalem because Natalie Portman was born in there...And after I watched this movie,Jerusalem is really a cool place that shelts many religion and very different kinds of people...

I really liked this movie.I advise this one to anybody who wants to spend a fun 90 mins..

Why is it that bad artists always try to justify their garbage by claiming to be experimental, political, or any other aspect that does not pertain to the quality of the art? Well, simple- they cannot justify it any other way. Naturally, when the film or novel or painting’s been banned in many places, it only allows the puerile artist to stroke himself more. But, since that’s the only reason such art is made- witness all the art made from or with bodily excretions and/or simply used evoke outrage by lowest common denominator means, it means that the base reaction sought is easily achieved. Of course, astute art lovers and critics see through such crap with ease, while a few dilettantish asses do not; yet it’s the asses who seem to always be quoted.

knives wrote:On Salo

Why is it that bad artists always try to justify their garbage by claiming to be experimental, political, or any other aspect that does not pertain to the quality of the art? Well, simple- they cannot justify it any other way. Naturally, when the film or novel or painting’s been banned in many places, it only allows the puerile artist to stroke himself more. But, since that’s the only reason such art is made- witness all the art made from or with bodily excretions and/or simply used evoke outrage by lowest common denominator means, it means that the base reaction sought is easily achieved. Of course, astute art lovers and critics see through such crap with ease, while a few dilettantish asses do not; yet it’s the asses who seem to always be quoted.

At the turn of the century someone pointed out that the youths in the advanced economies were getting more and more conservative. Now it seems humanism retarded farther still.
Cannes has been awarding religious films in the past few years.... Couldn't humans live "better", after all, without the help of some external device they call God? The process of globalization, which causes the loss of local tradition everywhere, may be another driving force that works behind all this.
My personal impression of this film is that it is a bold attempt to attribute to God everything from the creation of the universe to the birth of life, and the internal struggle of modern, industrialized people. It is a propaganda film, just like Schindler's List or Malcolm X. As a religious confession, it may indeed be truthful. However, in this film, nothing is to be seen beyond God. That is why the family reunion on the beach feels no less monotonous than Paradiso of Dante. Whether you like this film depends ultimately on whether you accept the unmistakably pre-modern values that you discern behind its graphic beauty and tactful direction.