# Weekend (1967 film)
**Weekend** (French: *Week-end*) is a 1967 satirical film written and directed by [Jean-Luc Godard](https://www.edgepedia.org/jean-luc-godard), a French-Italian co-production in which a bourgeois Parisian couple drive into the countryside to secure an inheritance while French society around them collapses into traffic jams, road carnage, and armed insurrection.[1](https://www.cnc.fr/professionnels/visas-et-classification/33349) • [2](https://www.larousse.fr/encyclopedie/film/Week-end/10740) It was Godard's fifteenth feature film in eight years and his fourth release of 1967, and its closing title card, "End of Cinema," marked his break from mainstream filmmaking.[3](https://gala.gre.ac.uk/id/eprint/30712/7/30712%20KOROLKOVA_A%20World_to_Win_Catalogue_2017.pdf)
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Director and writer | Jean-Luc Godard; produced by Raymond Danon[4](https://www.criterion.com/films/28441-weekend) |
| Countries and year | France and Italy, 1967[1](https://www.cnc.fr/professionnels/visas-et-classification/33349) |
| French release | Visa no. 33349 dated 26 December 1967; released in theaters 27 December 1967; banned to moviegoers under 16[1](https://www.cnc.fr/professionnels/visas-et-classification/33349) |
| Running time | 104 minutes per the CNC and Criterion; other listings give 95, 103, or 105 minutes[1](https://www.cnc.fr/professionnels/visas-et-classification/33349) • [4](https://www.criterion.com/films/28441-weekend) • [5](https://www.gaumont.com/en/movie/weekend) |
| Principal cast | Mireille Darc (Corinne), Jean Yanne (Roland), Jean-Pierre Léaud (Saint-Just), Jean-Pierre Kalfon (FLSO leader)[4](https://www.criterion.com/films/28441-weekend) |
| Key crew | Cinematography Raoul Coutard; editing Agnès Guillemot; original music Antoine Duhamel[4](https://www.criterion.com/films/28441-weekend) |
| Signature shot | A lateral tracking shot along a traffic jam, filmed on 300 meters of rail, running about 7 minutes 50 seconds[6](https://en.plan-sequences.com/categories-of-shot-sequences/weekend) |
| Closing titles | "End of Story" followed by "End of Cinema"[3](https://gala.gre.ac.uk/id/eprint/30712/7/30712%20KOROLKOVA_A%20World_to_Win_Catalogue_2017.pdf) |
## Spoilers
### Plot
Roland Durand (Jean Yanne) and his wife Corinne ([Mireille Darc](https://www.edgepedia.org/mireille-darc)) are a middle-class Parisian couple who do not love each other and who trade accounts of their adulteries in the opening scenes. On a Saturday morning, with Corinne's father dying, they set out by car for the country hoping to arrive in time to be named in the will.[2](https://www.larousse.fr/encyclopedie/film/Week-end/10740) • [7](https://www.premiersplans.org/fr/film/week-end) The Criterion synopsis describes their goal as collecting an inheritance from a dying relative while civilization crashes and burns around them.[4](https://www.criterion.com/films/28441-weekend)
The drive becomes an ordeal. The couple are stopped by a traffic jam several kilometers long, caused by a terrible accident; escaping onto a side road, they meet only wrecked cars and corpses. After their own crash they end up at a farm, then make a series of encounters that culminate with the maquisards (rural resistance fighters, from [French Resistance](https://www.edgepedia.org/french-resistance) bands) of the F.L.S.O. (Front de libération de Seine-et-Oise), who kill Roland and eat him.[2](https://www.larousse.fr/encyclopedie/film/Week-end/10740) The Science Fiction Encyclopedia describes the same arc as a progression from social order through ever-worsening entropy, imaged in increasingly large-scale car smashes, to anarchy, with the couple finally joining armed anarchists before the woman eats the man.[8](https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/weekend)
The film announces its own instability from the start. Its first printed words are not the title but the label "A FILM ADRIFT IN THE COSMOS," soon followed by "A FILM FOUND ON A SCRAP HEAP," while the soundtrack opens on the roar of traffic, conversation, and a ringing telephone rather than any cozy domestic scene.[9](https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/films-of-jeanluc-godard/weekend/EEB4D9AE896E9D9404C902573A7B0D66)
## The traffic-jam tracking shot
The film's most celebrated sequence is a lateral tracking shot along an endless, honking traffic jam, which the Guardian's 1967 dispatch called one of the biggest traffic jams in cinema history.[10](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/sep/27/watching-jean-luc-godard-at-work-archive-1967) Cinematographer Raoul Coutard, the most famous cinematographer of the nouvelle vague, laid 300 meters of tracking rails along the road for the scene.[4](https://www.criterion.com/films/28441-weekend) • [11](https://www.eyefilm.nl/en/whats-on/week-end/790661)
The shot's measured length is about seven minutes and fifty seconds, running from 16:14 to 24:04 in the film, and it is interrupted by three intertitles ("13H40", "WEEKEND", "14H10") that break the continuity of the take.[6](https://en.plan-sequences.com/categories-of-shot-sequences/weekend) The Guardian reported that the sequence was expected to run between six-and-a-half and eight minutes depending on which take Godard used, and that the crew pushed the dolly 300 yards.[10](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/sep/27/watching-jean-luc-godard-at-work-archive-1967) Godard staged the jam near Versailles with an assortment of obstacles, including a llama, a man towing a yacht under sail, an oil tanker, lions, monkeys, and a child screaming to use the road; he directed the takes from atop the camera, running eleven of them across the day.[10](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/sep/27/watching-jean-luc-godard-at-work-archive-1967) The filming location was a road near Guyancourt, south of Versailles; the "Oinville" sign visible in the film was pasted over the village's real name.[6](https://en.plan-sequences.com/categories-of-shot-sequences/weekend)
## Politics and style
Revolution is a central preoccupation. The couple are given a lift by two refuse collectors, one North African and one sub-Saharan, who recite recent texts by [Malcolm X](https://www.edgepedia.org/malcolm-x) and [Frantz Fanon](https://www.edgepedia.org/frantz-fanon) advocating armed insurrection; these echo a 1791 text on liberty and violence by the French Revolutionary leader Saint-Just, recited earlier by [Jean-Pierre Léaud](https://www.edgepedia.org/jean-pierre-leaud) in full period costume.[3](https://gala.gre.ac.uk/id/eprint/30712/7/30712%20KOROLKOVA_A%20World_to_Win_Catalogue_2017.pdf) The film ends in a parody of revolutionary violence.[3](https://gala.gre.ac.uk/id/eprint/30712/7/30712%20KOROLKOVA_A%20World_to_Win_Catalogue_2017.pdf)
The film's provocations were strong enough that French censors banned it to viewers under 16.[1](https://www.cnc.fr/professionnels/visas-et-classification/33349) A Quebec classification review notes the elements that were relatively scandalous at the time: a bawdy narrative, roadside corpses, animal slaughter, Marxist speeches, guerrillas, and shootouts, all in service of a condemnation of consumer society within a deliberately theatrical, unreal register.[12](https://repertoire.cinema.mcc.gouv.qc.ca/film/week-end-62338/) The Angers festival retrospective adds that this was the first film in which Godard disliked his own characters and chose actors he found antipathetic, making Mireille Darc, an emblem of sexual liberation, the figure of French society's perversion.[7](https://www.premiersplans.org/fr/film/week-end)
## End of cinema and afterlife
Weekend closes with two title cards, the first reading "End of Story" ("Fin de conte") and the second "End of Cinema."[13](https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w15930/w15930.pdf) • [14](https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/9781478090137-009/pdf?licenseType=open-access) The declaration announced a real change: Godard then abandoned the mainstream film industry for more than a decade, first making militant political cinema with the Groupe Dziga-Vertov and then moving into experimental film and video, with *Sauve qui peut (la vie)* in 1979 marking a return to normal production methods.[15](https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2017/1967/weekend-jean-luc-godard-1967/)
Weekend and the preceding *[La Chinoise](https://www.edgepedia.org/la-chinoise)* form a diptych, both pitting a fantasy of armed revolution against the decadence of the bourgeoisie. The curator's catalog for a 2017 London season is emphatic that neither film announces, anticipates, predicts, or in any way foresees the events of May 1968; Weekend, it argues, is about the state of France in 1967.[3](https://gala.gre.ac.uk/id/eprint/30712/7/30712%20KOROLKOVA_A%20World_to_Win_Catalogue_2017.pdf)
The film's reception at release was muted. Godard had already severed ties with commercial cinema and did little to promote it, and Alain Bergala observes that it is likely the 1960s Godard film on which the least documentation exists; the main record of Godard's own thoughts comes from a 1978 lecture series in Montréal, where he described the film as "a huge salad, a big club sandwich" and said he was "closer to a cry or to song."[15](https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2017/1967/weekend-jean-luc-godard-1967/) Later criticism has treated the film less as an ending than as the beginning of Godard's late style, an approach continued in works such as *Adieu au langage* (2015).[15](https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2017/1967/weekend-jean-luc-godard-1967/) Its afterlife extends into other artists' work: [Ousmane Sembène](https://www.edgepedia.org/ousmane-sembene)'s *Xala* (1974) invokes Weekend in engaging life after decolonization in Senegal, and Nancy Davenport's *Weekend Campus* (2004) brings it into direct dialogue.[14](https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/9781478090137-009/pdf?licenseType=open-access)
## References
1. [WEEK END, fiche œuvre, CNC Visas et Classification](https://www.cnc.fr/professionnels/visas-et-classification/33349)
2. [Week-end, Larousse, Dictionnaire mondial des films](https://www.larousse.fr/encyclopedie/film/Week-end/10740)
3. [A World to Win: A Century of Revolution on Screen, exhibition catalogue, Kino Klassika Foundation / University of Greenwich](https://gala.gre.ac.uk/id/eprint/30712/7/30712%20KOROLKOVA_A%20World_to_Win_Catalogue_2017.pdf)
4. [Weekend (1967), The Criterion Collection](https://www.criterion.com/films/28441-weekend)
5. [Weekend, Gaumont](https://www.gaumont.com/en/movie/weekend)
6. [Weekend sequence shot (1967), Plan Séquences](https://en.plan-sequences.com/categories-of-shot-sequences/weekend)
7. [Week-end, Jean-Luc Godard, Festival Premiers Plans d'Angers](https://www.premiersplans.org/fr/film/week-end)
8. [Weekend, The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction](https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/weekend)
9. [David Sterritt, "Weekend," in The Films of Jean-Luc Godard: Seeing the Invisible, Cambridge University Press](https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/films-of-jeanluc-godard/weekend/EEB4D9AE896E9D9404C902573A7B0D66)
10. [Peter Lennon, "Watching Jean-Luc Godard at work," The Guardian archive, 27 September 1967](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/sep/27/watching-jean-luc-godard-at-work-archive-1967)
11. [Week-end, Eye Filmmuseum](https://www.eyefilm.nl/en/whats-on/week-end/790661)
12. [Week-end, Répertoire des films classés, Gouvernement du Québec](https://repertoire.cinema.mcc.gouv.qc.ca/film/week-end-62338/)
13. [Godard's use of spontaneity, NBER Working Paper 15930](https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w15930/w15930.pdf)
14. [The Afterlife of Weekend, Or, The University Found on a Scrapheap, De Gruyter](https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/9781478090137-009/pdf?licenseType=open-access)
15. ["End of Story, End of Cinema: Weekend (Jean-Luc Godard, 1967)," Senses of Cinema, issue 82](https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2017/1967/weekend-jean-luc-godard-1967/)
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*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Black comedy and satire films › Released 1939 to 1997*
*Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*
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