MOVIE • 2006

More British Sounds

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In More British Sounds images from The British Are Coming (1986) collide with dialogue from See You at Mao (1969) also known as British Sounds, produced by the Dziga Vertov Group under the direction of Jean-Luc Godard. “Workers have come to expect too much,” a narrator intones, as an English lad in a state of undress polishes the boots of a royal guard in full uniform. The soundtrack consists of a speech from British Sounds layered four times in the structure of a round. Gaps in the dialogue—filled by Godard’s heavy breathing in the original—allow certain key phrases to be heard in the chaos. The super-reactionary spouting venom must have seemed horrendous and absurd in the late 1960s, but his line was practically adopted as policy in early 21st Century America. The fetishistic sports underwear, skinhead tattoos, and bad boy snarls have been widely adopted as well.