Apocalyptic Weekend

In his latest film, Weekend, Jean-Luc Godard attacks the phenomenon of violence. He piles horror on horror—adds gore, callousness, perversion, brutality, all culminating in cannibalism. Not since Hieronymus Bosch and Goya have we been exposed to such ghastly pictorial visions.

As the chief symbol of this brutality Godard uses the automobile, the Moloch of our time. But where in his earlier film, Pierrot le Fou, the automobile served the hero and heroine in their quest for a meaningfu...