No Godard film since Pierrot le fou has excited me as much as Sauve qui peut (La Vie) [released in the United States as Every Man for Himself]. Though his feeling for narrative has still not progressed from A to B and his disdain for psychological consistency and sociological probability is as outrageously apparent as ever, his zest for cinema is undiminished. Sauve qui peut is perhaps more like a piece of music than a movie. Every image is suffused with such elegant and exquisite insights into what makes the medium interact with its material that the total effect is intoxicating. Godard once wrote that the late Nicholas Ray was cinema. Perhaps the same can be said of Godard today. I would not care to debate Godard's "ideas" or speculate on his knowledge of the world and its people, though he is undoubtedly wiser and more reflective than...