Praise Marx and Pass the Ammunition (1970)

This is the only film I've seen where at the end I was seriously tempted to turn to the rest of the audience and ask if anyone could tell me what it was about. While Godard is clearly the major influence, it's never clear whether the film is intended as a p**stake or an homage. Perhaps both.

The oddness of this movie is reinforced by the unintentional irony that John Thaw, who plays the revolutionary marxist protaganist, later became immensely famous playing policemen in two British TV series. The film has curiosity value for that reason alone, in any event it's worth seeing once by anyone interested in political cinema.

Some of the scenes here are frankly ludicrous and appear to have been conceived as such - John Thaw and Carl Davis together in a room writing the title song for example, or lines such as "you bourgeois women feel my rough hands upon you and you know that the day of the revolution is approaching" (misquoted from memory). The quixotic nature of Dom's struggle is regularly sent up. On the other hand, later in the film the narrator reels out shocking statistics about poverty in Britain at the time which anyone with a conscience would have to take seriously, and the points about May 68 and its impact on the left appear genuine.

Furthermore, Dom's sexual politics are antediluvean. Just part of the 1970 zeitgeist or a conscious critique by the director?

In a way the film captures the spirit of intelligent left-wing politics well, the combination of irony and serious passion that you need to cultivate just in order to keep going. So maybe that's what it's about. I'm not sure. Maurice Hatton, if you're reading, give us a clue please mate!