Next up: Pillow Talk, française style.
A Woman is a Woman (France, 1961, Jean-Luc Godard)
Then Ben Begins:
I must first say that this film really made me laugh. It's entertaining as all get out and pretty consistently hilarious. One scene in particular brought me as close to peeing myself as any humour ever has. I was literally gasping for air. Monica had to stop the disc in order for me to catch my breath. Besides it had become utterly impossible for me at the same time to watch the pictures, read the subtitles and listen to the soundtrack.
It is the latter, in my view, that is the key to the film in general and especially what makes it funny in particular. There is no shortage of amusing camera trickery and solid-schtick sight gags as well as genre-tweaking highjinks in the screenplay. But the truly brilliant gimmick of the film is the juxtaposition of the soundtrack. Whether blaring out some fantastically inappropriate musical doggerel - Michel Legrand did the score and proves himself to be a mad genius - or cutting out altogether, dialogue included, the audio track for the whole film is the real star of the show.Even more than seeing a character's clothing instantaneously change as the person re-emerges from behind a chunk of wall (both physically incredible and narratively inexplicable), even more than conversation that sometimes comes close to William Burroughs' cut-up technique (moving in between heavy existential ponderings and near meaningless trivialities), even more than interior set designs and colour washes that scream so loud they're just one MGM musical this side of surreal (Spike Lee copped this indoor palette and brushed it all over the hood in Do The Right Thing) - the unrelenting silliness of what we hear, and don't hear, in relation to what we see is what makes A Woman is a Woman the wonderful wacky movie it is.
As for the substance of the picture, there isn't much. If it seemed reasonable to question the political ramifications of violence in Breathless, or lack thereof, nothing in A Woman is a Woman calls out for similar attention. The aesthetic deconstruction is even more ennunciated, but since the object of the irreverent juggling is not grim Noir but rather the likes of Rock and Doris in Pillow Talk - both in the credits and the dialogue A Woman is a Woman calls itself a "musical" but it ain't; only one song is sung and this in a strip club as part of the act there, it's a bedroom farce - well, there I said it; the thing is not too shy about its content being so much cotton candy.
It's the ol' battle of the sexes around love, marriage and baby-making, except with the notoriously French disrespect for the necessity of the middle term. Throw in the emerging promiscuity of the youth culture that was coming of age in the 60s and A Woman is a Woman manages to square the circle; cheeky about not upholding a standard for female fidelity and male chauvinist about motherhood being the whole purpose of life for a woman. Interestingly enough, pregnancy also comes up inBreathless and in both films both of Belmondo's characters toss off some grossly insulting comments about women. So, moving forward in GODARD 101, I will keep my feminist blinkers on.
Only two films into the course, already I have to slap myself upside the head about how ignorant I have been. The sheer audacity of Godard is still staggering. To say he was ahead of the curve misses the point. He was the curve! And to say that he made bold innovations that would influence his would-be peers, the subsequent generation and even generations to come is not merely an academic understatement. It is to neuter away the powerful aesthetic threat is his work that has been technically appropriated, culturally domesticated and ultimately rendered safe for mainstream commercial applications.
It can't be an accident that the director switched directions just as Hollywood started to make room for others to immitate isolated aspects of his cinematic reconfigurations. Godard himself would realize soon enough that radical rearrangements of existing artistic forms would not be enough to generate images of revolution. But in the meantime, Jesus, the nerve of the guy! In it's way, the inverting bricolage syntax of A Woman is a Woman is as challenging to comprehend as the allusive consciousness stream of an Eliot poem - and it's a light and fluffy confection! Or should I just observe that Belmondo's character in A Woman is a Women mentions that he was watchingBreathless on televison and towards the end of the film the other male character says he doesn't know if the film is a comedy or a tragedy but he is sure that it is a masterpiece?
And Dan:
Love, Parisian Style.
The film begins ``once upon a time`` and the table is set for a fable. And while the film is ultimately a bit of a trifle, the meal is an undeniably delightful confection. Godard is clearly having a blast as he whips up this frothy concoction.
In A Woman is a Woman, Godard continues what he began in Breathless, blending the old and the new, both stylistically and thematically. And while he hasn`t yet found much to say, he sure does say it with panache. The film`s themes, however slight they might be, revolve around the evolution of gender roles in the early sixties, and the contradictions that emerge between those assigned by society and those pursued out of personal desire.The film is wonderfully playful as it teases out this tiny thread of an idea. The story unfolds in a boarding house setting, where the central character`s neighbour is entertaining a steady stream of young men who enter and exit her room in a various states of undress. The contradictions between old and new take human shape in the form of Angela (the luminous Anna Karina), a single striptease artist, the very image of a modern girl, who paradoxically yearns to have a baby with her resistant boyfriend Emile (Claude Brialy). And while Angela apparently wants to establish a traditional family with Emile, she is the epitome of ineptitude in most matters domestic, as she ruins the roast dinner, and intentionally drops its intended replacement on the floor. Further adding to the conflict of conventional and contemporary mores, Angela determines that if her boyfriend will not supply her with the domestic happiness she seeks, she will get his best friend to impregnate her. Wrapping things up, the film`s resolution of this sexual conflict is an equally goofy and playful merger of traditional and unconventional.
Two pieces of business that highlight the charms of A Woman is a Woman also examine the issue of conflict and communication pointedly. The first occurs when Angela amusingly employs a Socratic technique of inquiry to lead Emile to understand how she has ruined his roast dinner and the second unfolds as the pair of lovers use book titles to communicate their feelings of anger and frustration. It is out of the conflicts, contradictions and paradoxes that we can catch glimpses of Godard`s mission. Once again, he is toying with the conventions of genre, this time musical comedy and sex farce, as well as the language of the cinema, in order to challenge our preconceptions about what the story should be about and how it should be told.
Throughout, in what has quickly become a familiar refrain in Godard`s films, he insists on reminding us that we are watching a movie, whether that is in his toying with the form with a-synchronous sound or through absurd pieces of stage business, such as the magical closet that changes the entrant`s costume in the fraction of a second. Also, the characters recurrently break the fourth wall to look at the camera or address the audience, while Godard repeatedly references and parodies the beloved Hollywood musical comedies that inspired him to make this film. This self-consciousness and reflexiveness, can be seen in Belmondo`s winking mention of his intention to watch Breathless later that evening, or in Jeanne Moreau`s cameo, wherein she references her current work on Jules and Jim with Godard`s colleague Francois Truffault. Truffault gets another nod when Shoot the Piano Player is twice mentioned, first when one of that film`s co-star Marie Dubois makes a brief appearance, and later when Angela`s love of the film`s other co-star, Charles Aznavour, leads to his musical appearance in this picture. Again, as with Breathless, we see Godard as the deconstructionist. 
Again, as with Breathless, Godard`s irreverence is borne out of affection for the genre, not disdain. He deconstructs the musical comedy form throughout, mocking its artifice and affectations, in a parody that is as ultimately gentle and kindhearted as his lead actress. If A Woman is a Woman is a musical (or `the idea of a musical`as Godard himself put it), this is the sort of high concept musical that drops the music away when a character sings, and where characters dance, but with no choreography (or discernible skill for that matter.) This is a film where discordance is as important as melody, where ineptitude is as vital as talent. The form is being turned on its head, just as the gangster film was given the once over in his debut film. Just as old sexual values are being challenged by the new, Godard is attempting to reinvent familiar cinematic tropes.On the evidence of Breathless and A Woman is a Woman, Godard has not yet clearly determined that he has something substantive to say, but we sure get to have a lot of fun while he is figuring it out. Still, if Godard is going to show that he deserves to be considered a master chef, he will need to stop tinkering with the appetizers and move onto the main course.
The zany trailer for this wacky film:
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