I defy anyone to point to any redeeming features of this tedious, self-indulgent, nonsense
It's none of those things. Well, "self-indulgent" possibly, but all art is. Unless it's being created for charity, all art is essentially vanity.
But the redeeming feature (beyond how much fun the film is) would be Godard's use of post-modernism; the blending of influences and iconography to create a film that shows a representation of a possible future world, informed by the past, to create a commentary on the present.
Godard uses the mindset of Orwellian dystopia, showing its roots in the Fascism of the second world war, to create a statement about liberty at a time when politicians in France were attempting to reduce social freedoms; effectively enslaving the populace and making even the most basic of civil liberties completely illegal.
In this sense Godard's film is a protest, but a playful one. He shows us a world governed by unfeeling computers who murder people in televised executions because they cried at their wife's funeral. This is satire and it's very funny (it's not a million miles away from Monty Python in fact) but it also has a very serious relevance to the far right political groups gaining power in France during the 1960s.
The sub-text is political assignation, censorship and government control (all prevalent fears during the era of the film's production) as well as the "Americanization" of Europe, which Godard represents through the character of Lemmy Caution.
The references to the Nazis and, cinematically, German expressionism, relate to the German occupation, so Lemmy Caution is literally a symbol of American liberation. He shows us a Paris still occupied by German forces and has his American hero swoop in to save the day. But since Caution is a character adapted from French B-movies he's a reluctant hero who has more in common with Bogart from To Have and Have Not than someone like Flash Gordon.
Godard is also commenting on the state of cinema. Cinema was once occupied by the Germans, but after the end of the second world war it became occupied by Hollywood. So here we have a French film torn between the two influences, just as the film is torn between science-fiction and film-noir, and just as his characters are torn, politically and ideologically.
Godard makes his a spy masquerading as a reporter and in turn has his comic satire masquerading as work of science fiction and further masquerading as a work of cinema verite. It's designed to look like a "report" from a dystopian future state, but then Godard deconstructs the reality by throwing in obvious lifts from Murnau and Lang.
It's very clever, and very funny, and approaches poetry in the final third. It's a great, great film.
Had it been the product of a young film school student, I suspect the verdict would have been very different
But it shouldn't make any different. With this comment, you're really attacking the perceived hypocrisy of critics who "buy the artist instead of the art." It's a flimsy attack and irrelevant since I'd argue that all films are "student films."
Godard still considers himself a student; so does Coppola. Welles always maintained that he was nothing more than an ambitious student. The opposite is to declare yourself a master, which is just arrogance and in most cases untrue.
But because it is by Godard, no-one dares to criticize 'the great man' and instead prefer to join the chorus of "ooh, aah, what a masterpiece" and buy into the received wisdom that this is a work of art
Except this board is full of criticism. In fact there is more criticism here than praise. And Godard is the most criticized filmmaker of his generation. He's the only leading "art-house" filmmaker of the 1960s who hasn't been legitimately canonized, perhaps because he's still alive and working, or perhaps because most people are ignorant of the artistic movements that inform Godard's approach and that of his more aggressively experimental peers (most of whom are never spoken of.
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