Though I have some serious reservations about [Every Man for Himself] and the post-modern tradition it exemplifies, it is nonetheless an important work of art, a signal event in film history.

Godard's most impressive achievement is to refashion the formal tools of naturalism. Until now, the approach has been not to call attention to the medium but to focus attention on the development of plot and characters. He expands the mode by employing a whole range of cinematic devices—slow motion, freeze-frames, intertitles—that in the hands of lesser directors typically announce the triumph of empty form over trivial content.

I initially suspected that Every Man for Himself was also pretty inconsequential. We follow the meandering misadventures of a trio of seemingly negligible individuals without, at first, having a great deal of interest in their fates….

As the film unfolds, instead of engaging our emotions, Godard overcomes our indifference by using his dazzling command of film syntax to provide startlingly naturalistic flashes of the complexities of their lives. For instance, at the end of the movie (it would be wrong to call it the climax of the skeinlike structure), Paul by chance spots his wife and daughter on the street and rushes toward them. Since a previous meeting had been unsatisfactory for all concerned, we expect that he will be angry or even violent. Our expectation is heightened because Godard turns the image of Paul's running into a slow blur just before he reaches the two. But it turns out that Paul is seeking reconciliation. When his ex-wife spurns him, he backs away apologetically, stepping off the curb, and is struck by a speeding automobile.

This epitomizes how the director manipulates the rhythm of a scene to allow meaning to emerge organically. The suspense and frustration find their perverse resolution in an accident, the perfect metaphor for the arbitrary yet meaningful flow of the characters' existences. Paul has about as much control over his wife and daughter, or himself, as he does over the car that hits him and sends him flying onto the pavement. (p. 19)

Despite its breathtaking facility, Every Man for Himself contains an irritating dose of the unlamented Godard of the late '60s. To begin with, there are his patented non sequiturs. A man compliments Denise for her "beautiful black hair" when it is obviously brown. Paul is distressed by the voice of an unseen opera singer he alone can hear, until it mysteriously ceases….

Then there are the annoying puns and in-jokes. One of Isabelle's clients is Mr. Person, a rather crude moniker for an anonymous John….

Present, too, are the pseudophilosophical musings that plague French films. "Life," Denise proclaims, is "a gesture made at a faster pace."…

Finally, and most annoyingly, Godard allows Paul to step out of character and comment on himself at the end of the film. Lying in the street after being hit by the car, he says, "I'm not dying—my life hasn't flashed in front of my eyes."

All of these irritating tics are, I suspect, the director's way of distancing himself and us from his characters. Godard is right to shun melodrama, to refuse to let the audience empathize or identify emotionally with his characters. But the detachment evident in these silly Godardisms is the cheapest of ironies. A director can only undercut his characters so many times without undermining the appeal of his entire enterprise.

Still, we should be grateful that Godard has rediscovered playfulness and abandoned the Marxism that, during the past decade, turned his films into strident sermons….

From a formal point of view, Every Man for Himself represents the next logical step after the movies he made in the late '60s, so its appearance in 1980 suggests that the intervening decade was wasted. In fact, this film almost seems the precursor, rather than the successor, to the works of the German postmodernists who appeared during the '70s, particularly Peter Handke and Wim Wenders; it could have been the impressive original of which such films as The Left-Handed Woman and The American Friend were pale copies.

On the other hand, Godard has taken the postmodern esthetic further than the Germans have. Handke and especially Wenders are committed to a cinema where meaning is revealed through plot and characterization. The fragmented narrative form of their works is disturbing because it merely obscures the content, no matter how trivial. In Every Man for Himself, however, Godard has for the most part achieved that elusive unity of form and content that characterizes true and lasting art. (p. 20)