MovieChat Forums > Pierrot le fou (1969) Discussion > Has a kind of water boarding , from Viet...

Has a kind of water boarding , from Vietnam?

posted 14 years ago by ManFromSanFernando
5 replies | jump to latest

1hour14mins in, Belmondo is basically water boarded by American agents. When godard read about the recent scandal, he must have been like "old news!" Does anyone know if he would have gotten this from the news reports coming out of 'Nam?
I can only imagine what it must be like to be his age, have heard about waterboarding in the 60's, only to see it being reported as new in the 00's. Maybe a mixture of hate for the US and remorse for the human race....
Maybe we'll deal with it this time, as the gen. public knows about it, in the 60s you eother had to be Goadard or in the military to have the knowledge that this was happening.

[–] cpuller-642-329716 13 years ago

In le petit soldat there is a similar scene and I think this film was shot long before vietnam.
The method is probably very old.

[–] ManFromSanFernando 13 years ago

Do you know where it comes from? It must have come after modern day plumping,I assume?

"Trees cause more pollution than automobiles." Ronald Reagan

[–] cpuller-642-329716 13 years ago

Wiki says the spanish inquisition might have invented it.
And also the french used it in the algerian war so this is why it makes sense in "le petit soldat"

[–] freudified_n_funkified 12 years ago

Yeah, that was apparently a big thing in the French Algerian war, so it was a timely reference for Godard. A similar scene was censored out of Jean-Pierre Melville's Le deuxime souffle - but that one had the police doing it as a means of interrogation.

[–] savanna-2 9 years ago

Sometimes ignorance is too much ... so you think the US invented waterboarding and that Godard hated the US for it? How about educating yourself before spewing such on a message board. Not defending the practice, by any means, but, guess what, torture wasn't invented by the USA.