Welcome to Godard 101, an unofficial and unaffiliated online undergraduate seminar where Ben and I take on the great man and his works, doing our best to understand how Jean-Luc got from there to here.  First up, Ben and I took a look at Breathless, the film that, along with Francois Truffault's 400 Blows, blew the roof off the joint back in 1960, kicking off the Nouvelle Vague and recreating cinema. Pretty heady shit. Then, we reviewed A Woman is a Woman, which you can find here. This was followed with an examination ofTo Live Her Life, Contempt, The Little Soldier and Band of Outsiders. Most recently, we looked at Alphaville and I did a solo turn with A Married Woman and The Riflemen.  Ben then returned, and we took a look at Pierre le Fou, and now finally have something to argue about, as we offer up our conflicting thoughts on...


Masculin Feminin (France, 1966, Godard)


Ben Begins:

The problem with reviewing an intellectual like Godard (is there another intellectual "like Godard?") is that he beats you to the presses when it comes time for a tag line.  For Masculine, Feminine, he himself says of it during it - in the form of an intertitle, no less: "This film could be called the children of Marx and Coca-Cola."  Yup.

From my point of you, what is interesting about this is that the director seems to be a tad stroppy about the children's prioritization of Coca-Cola over Marx.  This is to say thatMasculine, Feminine is the first film in which Godard deals directly with ideological stances in relation to the US campaign in Vietnam, the current political reputation of the French Communist Party, the continuing presence of de Gaulle and so on.  He also focuses pointedly at the incipient sexual revolution, especially as it was being facilitated by the new technologies of contraception.  There is even a bit with two men making out in a bathroom stall.  Would have raised more than an eyebrow in '66.

I wish I could say that all of this rich sociology makes for a facinating movie, but I must announce that Masculine, Feminine looks to me to be the first time Godard is treading water.  I do not doubt that in it's own day, it was a telling snapshot of the state of the republic from the perspective of the younger set.  Wiki informs me that it was banned for persons under 18 in France, which rankled Godard no end because that was exactly his target audience for the film.  It shows.  Watching it today, as a 50 year-old fat fart, I couldn't help feel that it was sorta like an episode of Friends, if you know what I mean.

Be this as it may, Masculine, Feminine has really helped with respect to my tracking of Godard's depictions of violence.  There is very little of it, but what there is has improved verismillitude.  That it is shown in the context of a movie-within-a-movie is neither here nor there at this stage of GODARD 101.  What is significant, however, is that it is presented in connection with sexual conduct.  Obviously, the mixture of hostility and eroticism is meant by Godard to be problematic, but what I realized is that this is the first time he has shown some actual sexual activity beyond a few kisses thrown into the conversation.

While I think my original speculation is beginning to pan out that Godard's treatment of violence is growing increasingly realistic as he becomes more overtly politicized, I now notice with a more Freudian eye that for all his attention to interpersonal heterosexual relationships and dialogue about true love spoken by lovers who fail to be true - where's the sex?  There has been some suggestion of it from time to time, in rude language and morning-after shots.  And yes, he has to deal with the same censorship by the distributors as the next film-maker.  But even so.  Things never even get lubricated, eh?  Perhaps the handling of violence is as awkward and bothersome as it is because of the continuum between violence and eroticism in the first place, that murky pit wherein the excessively intellectual Godard is not artistically at home. 

And speaking of sexuality, and remembering my promise to stay in touch with a feminist sensibility throughout GODARD 101, the portayal of women in Masculine, Feminine is pretty despicable.  It was darn crappy in a Woman is a Woman, but this could be forgiven insofar as it was so cadidly parodic of the cliche sexism attending the genre being twiddled.  Besides, even if Godard does offend the Sisterhood with that movie, To Live Her Life the next year does outstanding damage control; like I said in my review before, the female existential protagonist is given her dignity, neither to blame nor a victim.  In Masculine, Feminine though, well, the chicks are basically bimbos.  It's irritating, to put it mildly.

In fact, the whole film is rather irritating.  Again, I concede that it has the merit of an almost documentary record of the Parisian scene for post-highschool/not-in-university types at that point in history.  But it's a lot of talking heads with no story to speak of and just as little to look at cinematographically.  Kind of a relief, to tell the truth.  Guy was switching it up so fast and furious, my head was starting to swim.  Or should I simply say that after Alphaville - a small masterpiece that can still send a shiver down my back today -Masculine, Feminine has not aged well?

And Dan:

Having not read your review for details, but having seen that you rank Masculine Feminine quite low on your Godard 101 master list, it looks to me like we have something of a disagreement brewing about the value of this cinematic work of art. And I don't use the term 'art' lightly here, because I am convinced that MF rightly deserves this ascription. Flawed though it is by some stunt casting in a key role, and a rather unfortunately typical and unforgiving attitude towards women, MF still stands as a stark and compelling portrait of confused Parisian youth in the tumultuous mid-60s. 

There is much about this film that I did admire, but I will start by discussing a significant grievance. MF makes a great show of it's political radicalism in scenes that sometimes walk a thin between amusingly ineffectual and mildly invigorating, but there is little doubt that the film's gender politics are reactionary. Godard's attitude towards the female characters is derogatory at best, as they generally come off as politically disengaged, socially self-involved, and hopelessly materialistic. And his casting of Chantal Goya in the pivotal role of Madeleine does not help matters, and her range of expressions is extremely limited, making almost anything that comes out of her mouth sound either vapid or unconvincing. Or both. This is certainly a problem, and Godard's misogyny an ongoing concern, but thankfully, neither is a fatal flaw. There's just too much here to enjoy.

Truffault's discovery/proxy Jean-Paul Leard (400 Blows) plays Paul, a disaffected youth who is not quite equal parts feigned cynic and disguised romantic. Leard imbues the part with an appropriate combination of earnestness, arrogance, sincerity and vulnerability that is usually appealing but sometimes off-putting. Paul, what we might call a hipster today, has just finished his mandatory military service, and now he is a bit of a French cliche, a 21 year old angst-riddled young man sipping his cappuccino in a Parisian cafe while coolly flipping cigarettes Belmondo-style into his mouth, and writing his political manifesto. The lad is politically engaged, at least at a simplistic activist level, and his leather patch radicalism, while more theoretical than actual, at least points to the character's well-meaningness. 

Still, while Paul spends considerable time mouthing the words of a radical--hell, sometimes he even scrawls them on walls--but truth be known, he is more of a yearning lover than a burning revolutionary. When his prospective girlfriend, the aspiring pop star Madeleine (played by Goya, a real life pop star--in Japan, at least) asks Paul what is his centre, he struggles for an answer, before finally arriving at his decision: love. But love proves frustratingly illusory for Paul, whereas Madeleine, the film's poster child for the emergent "me generation" chooses: herself. This self-centredness proves her saviour, while Paul's romanticism proves his downfall. 

Working for the first time with cinematographer Willy Kurant, Godard at first eschews the sort of eye-catching camerawork that we have come to expect in his collaboration with Roaul Coutard, choosing instead to settle the camera in unusual positions, often focusing on the listener rather than the speaker, encouraging us to experience the film through their ears, while focusing on their reactions. As the film settles in, Kurant is given more challenges, including one particularly impressive tracking shot through a pool hall/cafe that accentuates Paul's inability to find any place that he feels comfortable. Kurant's choice of raw film stock is also noteworthy, as the grays are mostly washed out of the mix in MF, giving the film a documentary style cinema verite appearance, while also making the film more of an authentic black and white experience, suiting not only the tone of the film, but the attitude of its youthful cast, who characteristically swing from one emotional extreme to another.

However, it is in the audio realm that Godard continues some of the bold experimentation that has marked his development as a formalist. Other than continuing the naturalism of his earlier films, and allowing ambient noise to not only creep into, but sometimes obscure snippets of dialogue, MF shows other interesting innovations in the use of sound. For instance, in the aforementioned scene where Paul and Madeleine meet, the camera shifts position part way through the conversation to reveal an agitated couple in the background. While continuing to foreground Paul and Madeleine, Godard shifts the audio focus away from the young leads, and allows us to listen to their argument, which eventually spills out onto the street in a shocking act of violence. In fact, throughout the film the audience is put in a similar position, eavesdropping on other's conversation, mirroring the one of Alfred Hitchcock's favourite tropes, filmgoing as voyeurism. However, unlike the psycho-sexual deviance of Hitch, the audio innovations in MF allow us to become part of a community of voices, most of which are exploring the film's key dynamic, the gender divide in the youth culture. 

This sea of voices is presented mostly in naturalistic ways, as we get a snapshot of mid-60s Paris locations, bars, coffee shops, arcades, recording booths, bedrooms and cinemas, as we observe people conversing on all matter of subjects. But one of Godard's favourite techniques for teasing information out of characters is the interrogation scene, which he deploys several times in the film, whether in a formal setting (Paul interviewing Miss 19, or the police detective questioning Madeleine and Catherine) or an informal one (Paul grilling Madeleine as she grooms herself in front of a mirror). The crime is modern society, and everyone is a suspect.

To be more specific, the crime as Godard sees it is pop culture and its influence on a youthful population trying desperately to find their footing, a hint of some meaning, in this world. Paul in particular (though he is not alone) is adrift, with no mooring,  moving from one job to another, one interest to another, one person to another, searching for a centre, settling on Madeleine, but it (she) cannot hold. 

MF is a film about children trying to become adults in a society in transition, but finding the requisite real life examples of adulthood lacking--there are very few adults on screen, and those that are do not offer much to emulate-- finding their models in the (mostly pop) culture around them--music, movies, and advertising in particular. Godard recognizes that his work in film has been part of the problem rather than part of the solution, as he has Madeleine and Paul reference Belmondo's romantic free spirited antics in Pierrot Le Fou when they attempt to be as free spirited and romantic as Belmondo, whose Breathless-level ultra-coolness Paul has been mimicking throughout, with both his cigarette flip and his thumb across the lip gestures, themselves imitations of Hollywood hipsters. In Paul's desperate attempt to be both grown up and cool--at least two degrees of separation from the source material.

MF is a film about young people set adrift in an uncertain, violent consumerist world of pop cultural influences without the social and intellectual mooring necessary to find their way through the morass. They move from one job to another, one interest to another, one person to another, looking for a centre, but it cannot hold. 

Then Ben:

We definitely saw the same film.  We just don't feel the same way about it.  I reckon this says more about the difference between us than anything else.  You seem to take each film as it comes with no pre-conceived notion about why it comes.  I take each film as a stage in a developmental trajectory that we know will come to a head in 1968.

Your attention to the formal construction of Masculine, Feminine aside - (I like your awareness of the audio disjunction, this picks up a thread we haven't unraveled further since I tugged at this yarn ball in my review ofA Woman is a Woman) - the political attitude informing the film you feel delivers "a stark and compelling portrait of confused Parisian youth in the tumultuous mid-60s."  What these French city kids are especially confused by, you indicate a number of times, is the pop culture conditioning their consciousness.

I do not disagree with the latter.  Indeed, in my final term paper for GODARD 101 I develop this position at length with an eye to something in this pop culture you have not noticed, at least not precisely in terms of media sources.  Nevermind that now, however.  What presently separates us is your appreciation of Godard's political attutude in Masculine, Feminine.  What you find stark and compelling, I find a tad stroppy; as in: "the director seems to be a tad stroppy about the children's prioritization of Coca-Cola over Marx."

I believe you have yet to see The Chinese, so I will not speak of it in any detail.  Still, I trust nothing will be spoiled for you by me asserting that Masculine, Feminine (early 1966) is best appreciated as a stepping stone to The Chinese (1967).  Considering I had not yet seen The Chinese when I  reviewedMasculine, Feminine, my irritation with the film was the result of my unwitting anticipation of the more fully realized work that would come.  "The tumultuous mid-60s" is right and Godard's transition in the year 1966 is pivitol.

All of this is to admit that I was a tad stroppy with Godard for being ONLY a tad stroppy with the kids' infatuation with fatuous consumerism while striking radical chic poses.  There is a connection between their political pretentions and their romantic preoccupations that ultimately rests on their sexual immaturity.  And on this, we really must bring the male chauvinism of the picture more centrally into it.  Both of us are offended by this sexism but do not seriously criticise it insofar as we partition off the matter from the rest of our discussion of the film.  But I now insist that it is at the very center of what makes Masculine, Feminine a wanna-be political statement that fails to materialize in the radical direction Godard tries to point it.

Am I too hard on the film from the perspective of the films that will follow it?  Well, yes and no.  It's a hell of a lot better thanMade in USA, as my review of that film indicates, but pretty much a throw-away compared to the uber-masterpiece of 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her, in which the director allows himself to confront absolute philosophic doubt, after which he is able to commit to The Revolution in The Chinese, albeit with a healthy dose of political scepticism.

I suppose my irritation with Masculine, Feminine could be regarded as misplaced by countering that the film should be understood as a kind of documentary.  After all, both of us touch on this quality of the film.  I actually think there is a case to be made that all of Godard's New Wave movies - even the most fantastic and surreal - have a kind of documentary quality, but I do not mean to pursue this case now.  My present point is that the documentary quality of Masculine, Feminine does not for me convincingly counter my irritation with it.

By the way, this documentary is not without its fantastic/surreal/what-to-call-it-? moments.  Can you please explain to me the significance of the pinball arcade scene wherein a stranger stabs himself in front of the protagonist?  I mean - what? (!)  This doesn't come out of just left field.  It comes out of another ball park altogether.

And Dan:

I reckon what you are referring to that I have not unpacked Godard and pop culture-wise is the awareness that characters have in many of his films that they are themselves instances of pop art themselves. Hence the films constantly have the characters breaking the fourth wall, reminding us that we are watching a movie, that these are actors performing roles that have been created by someone else (Godard) and to be thinking about what this all means in relation to ourselves. Godard doesn't want us to ever get so "lost" in the film that we forget this very important fact, because he wants us to be constantly aware of, examining and questioning the relationship between audience and the (pop) art we are viewing. 

As for the scene you mention, well, first off, we have to give Godard some props for actually showing some flesh and blood violence, right? Regarding its meaning, I reckon your guess (come to think of it, you didn't make a guess!) is as good as mine. It does foreshadowing later events, of course, but actions should not exist purely as literary devices, they should stand on their own right a well, and the only things I can come up with is the way that the moment (a) plays around with (pop) psychological notion that violence against others is evidence of self-loathing (b) contributes to the feeling of uncontrollable and unpredictable violence that runs throughout the film and represents the mood in Paris at the time, according to Godard (c) presents the idea that this generation of confused youth have a decidedly self-destructive bent.

Now, over to you. What do you have to say about this scene?


Then Ben:

Yeah, come to think of it, I didn't make a guess and still can't make one as good as yours.  Not that I find yours all that helpful.  I mean, I get your points (a), (b) and (c)  - basically one point approached from three different angles for argumentative momentum - but I feel you are too quick to dismiss the literary device of foreshawdowing.  I must confess to not remembering the film in detail well enough to fathom what this scene foreshadows.  So please tell me what subsequent event or events you have in mind.  Honestly, I just could not make head or tail of the self-stabbing in the plot ("plot" that is).

Meanwhile, no, I do not have to give Godard some props for actually showing some flesh and blood violence.  At least not for the scene under discussion.  I will give him those props for the scene which opens the film.  I agree with you that it shows a "shocking act of violence."  But the self-stabbing is too bizarre.  The lack of communication - not just no verbal exchange , no body language also - made the whole thing for me weird in the extreme.  Rather than actual flesh and blood violence, I saw a strange ritualistic act, almost a piece of street theatre.

How this may or may not support your attempt to make sense of the scene is beyond me.

And Dan:

I wish I had more to add to help you with the ritualistic/theatrical angle that you are trying to develop here in support of Godard's inclusion of this scene, but I don't. As for the foreshadowing, well it could be argued that this incomprehensible act foreshadows the future somewhat incomprehensible death of the central character. Was it suicide? Accident? He does say early on in the film that a life without tenderness would lead one to suicide, and Madeleine is not a beacon of affection, so there's that.

Then Ben:


Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.  I completely forgot the plot point that the central character dies at the end.  Thank you for reminding me. I guess his death was so incomprehensible I just didn't try to sort out if it was an accident or a suicide in relation to the rest of the film that came prior.  As before, your guess is better than mine.  If he did kill himself in keeping with his emotional principle, though, this only adds to the stupid sexism of the film; as if the function of a woman is to keep a man alive with her affection.  Reminds me of what a female character critically says in a Margaret Atwood novel:  When a man says that his woman doesn't understand him, what he means is that she doesn't suck his cock enough.  Sometimes a cigar is not just a cigar.


And Dan:


To be fair to the character, he did not say men would die without tenderness. He suggested that people would die without tenderness. And while that is a foolish and naive notion on a purely physical level, there is truth to it on an emotional level. Something in us dies if, for whatever reason, we are cut off from human affection.


Then Ben:

You are so right.  And so wrong.

You are so right that we are finally chewing the meat of the matter with regard to the protagonist.  You dig him a fair bit whereas I figure he's mostly a wanker.  Clearly, this is behind you liking the film more than I do.  In your review you describe the character as "usually appealing but sometimes off-putting."  It would appear that I found him sometimes appealing but usually off-putting.

But you are so wrong if you think this is all the meat that matters.  I continue to focus also on the women - "meat" indeed in the movie - and I continue to insist that our identification with the protagonist must be restricted by our criticism of the sexism conditioning the film as a whole.  In your review you state that "the film's gender politics are reactionary."  Yet you keep on partitioning this off from the rest of the film.  But come on.  It's called Masculine, Feminine, right?  I cannot say whether the male chauvinism in the movie is or is not a "fatal flaw," unlike you, who announce that it is not.  All I will say (again) is that it "makes Masculine, Feminine a wanna-be political statement that fails to materialize in the radical direction Godard tries to point it."

And since I'm taking you to task on this topic, you go so far as to say that "Godard's misogyny [is] an ongoing concern."  There is a difference - which I trust you will agree is significant - between the degrading treatment of women as inferior and the abusive hatred of women as the sexual Other.  On behalf of myself and Godard too, the ongoing feminist concern I am bringing to his films is about the former, which I sometimes see in his work, and not the latter, which I never see at all. 

Then - Ben

P.S.  I realize that this is not meaty, but having travelled from the self-stabbing scene to your suggestion that it foreshadows the death of the protagonist as a possible suicide, I still wonder about the latter and ask you to wonder with me.  Like I said before, I didn't notice that he was in so much pain, eh?  Did he at any time strike you as even potentially suicidal?  I suspect not, considering it was you who introduced the description of his death as "incomprehensible," and rightly so.

And Dan:

No, I did not see a self destructive streak in Paul. At all. So I'd have to go with his death being an accident. Of course, the coolness with which the two young ladies report his death casts some suspicion of the deed upon them. But I doubt that they're capable of murder, except in the most passive aggressive sort of way (withholding sexual affection, knowing that it might make Paul reckless or self-destructive.) Again, though, there is no evidence of this, and so I'm going with accidental death. Seems to me the main reason for Paul's death is so we can have the chilling moment when Madeleine calmly talks about giving herself an abortion with a curtain rod (apparently she wore and earpiece in this scene, and Godard dictated that line to her, which explains her detached demeanor. Undoubtedly exactly what Godard was going for. The bastard.)

You make some strong points regarding the film's central flaw. The key to my ability to continue to appreciate the film while also recognizing the problematic sexual politics is that, in this movie at least, I can understand why these young characters are not yet fully formed enough to realize their essential misogyny. I'm not excusing it, mind you. They're still radicals in theory only, reactionaries in practice (particularly when it comes to women). The lad's lack of sexual experience and confidence that contributes to this conservatism will be addressed over time, you'd have to hope. 

However, while this can be explained away as the shortsighted-ness of youth, it does not help us to understand Godard's own myopia. It will be interesting to see, as he becomes increasingly radicalized, if he also becomes aware of his own internal political contradictions on this matter. 

And finally, here is the trailer for Masculin Feminin:

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