The rich woman is anguished, screaming around her burning car and crying out “My Hermès handbag!”

Jean-Luc Godard, one of the most maddening auteurs in film history and a founding member of the French New Wave, made the incredibly influential “Breathless” in the beginning of his career.

It was a playful and beautiful riff on the film noir and gangster film. But as his career progressed, Godard’s work became increasingly cerebral, intertwined in a web of inter-textuality, politics and attempts to revolutionize cinema along with the world.

“Weekend” begins with an incredibly shallow bourgeois couple who decide to murder the wife’s father for his money. Their plan is to be taken out while going on a weekend holiday that, among other things, is made up of dead bodies, cannibals and traffic jams (one of Godard’s most incredible shots is a 10-minute tracking shot of the congestion).

After all, Godard is not the most subtle of filmmakers. In his brilliant “Band of Outsiders,” Godard’s characters decide to be silent for a minute and he literally eliminates the audio track in its entirety for that duration.

What he is aiming at with “Weekend” is a strong critique of capitalist society, especially the bourgeoisie. And if that was not apparent in his treatment of his characters, it quickly comes to the forefront in a scene in which the rich woman is anguished, screaming around her burning car, and crying out “My Hermès handbag!”

While “Weekend” is more of an intellectual experience than his earlier works, it is still a gem of the cinephile’s cinema and it is applauded that it has finally made its way to DVD.

New Yorker’s edition, while not nearly as comprehensive as Criterion’s efforts, stands above Fox Lorber’s dreadful treatments. New Yorker’s image and audio transfers aren’t perfect, especially the subtitle track that misses some of Godard’s intertitles.

And there has been some debate about the splicing of a jump-cut during the car crash, infringing on Godard’s original editorial techniques.

But New Yorker has supplied the film with two interviews: one by Godard’s cinematographer, the legendary Raoul Coutard, and the other by filmmaker Mike Figgis, and a commentary by David Sterritt.

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