Every Man for Himself (1980) on Netflix
Paul Godard, who makes films, and his estranged girlfriend Denise Rimbaud are separating. Denise leaves their flat for a country town, and Paul meets the prostitute Isabelle Rivière.
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- Netflix3.9/5
- IMDb6.5/104,355 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes90%
Trailer
Plot summary
Paul Godard is a filmmaker in Switzerland whose relationship with Denise Rimbaud has ended. He moves into a hotel, and the prostitute Isabelle Rivière picks him up at a late-night cinema queue; she is working to increase her earnings and to keep her independence from a pimp who claims half of them. Denise is building a life apart from Paul: she takes a manual job at a paper in a country town run by an old friend, lodges on a farm in exchange for helping with the cattle, and writes a project of her own that may become a novel. She still has to finish her television work and find a new tenant for the flat she shared with Paul. Paul collects his daughter Cécile from soccer practice and goes to meet the author Marguerite Duras.
Cast
- Anna Baldaccinias Isabelle's Sister
- Michel Cassagneas Piaget
- Nicole Jacquetas Woman
- Paule Muretas Paul's Ex-Wife
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Every Man for Himself (1980)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Poet and author Charles Bukowski is credited with the English subtitles for the American release, though he did not speak French; he adapted existing subtitles that had been translated into English from the original French.
- Godard called his method "decomposition": the action periodically slows to a frame-by-frame advance, a technique he had first used on his 1979 French television series France/tour/détour/deux/enfants. It gave the film its UK release title, Slow Motion.
- In his initial 20-minute video proposal for the film, Scénario de Sauve Qui Peut (la vie), Godard suggested a guest appearance by Werner Herzog that does not appear in the finished film, including a still photo apparently of Herzog doing a backflip.
- The recurring unnamed piece of music in the film is the aria Suicidio! (Suicide!) from Ponchielli's opera La Gioconda; it acts as a leitmotif for the whole story and underscores the death-wish haunting the central character.
- After twelve years of low-budget experimental film and video projects outside commercial distribution, Every Man for Himself was Godard's return to mainstream filmmaking with a sizable budget and French film stars; he promoted what he called his "second first film" heavily in the US, appearing on two episodes of The Dick Cavett Show.
