originally posted by Levi Dalton:
originally posted by Brad L i l j e q u i s t:
Une Femme est Une Femme
Levi, if you read this: what's your take? I liked it, but was expecting something a bit more straight like The Outsiders. But the Jean Moreau cameo makes the whole thing worthwhile.
Godard was one of the great digesters of American cinema. It seems like an odd thing to say, but it is true. Godard is famous for watching films day after day. It is said that at one point he watched 1,000 films in a year. Most of those films were American films, from Hollywood's Golden Age. When he was a film critic, he wrote several pieces admiring certain American directors. Many of those films were musicals, a form of filmic verse that was once more common. Godard makes a few references to musicals in his work from the early '60s. Remember the dance of three from Band of Outsiders, the dance in the cafe? That is a riff on The Pajama Game (most likely). Karina dances again in My Life to Live, also in a cafe. As Pierrot Le Fou makes clear, Godard's take on Karina is that she is a whirling dervish, an vital life force that he would like to be closer to but has trouble really communicating with on a spoken level. Dance would seem like the appropriate metaphor. Remember, Karina was associated before she met with Godard with commercials and pop. Not with Bresson films, like Godard's next wife. He saw her in a certain light. He didn't have to see her that way. Certainly Rivette didn't. But the filmic record is there. The picture of their relationship is pretty clear. And remember that Godard was much older than Karina. He was 30 when Breathless, his first full lenth feature, was being filmed.
This starts to get a bit tricky, but Godard does not see himself as the Belmondo figure in A Woman is A Woman, or the Arthur (Brasseur) figure in Band of Outsiders, although he is fascinated by that sort of character (who is based on the real life Paul Gegauff, an actor often associated with Chabrol and an infamous womanizer that was also a big figure of reference for Rohmer). He is the other guy. The guy trying to communicate with his wife through book titles. Much like the films of Woody Allen, who later Godard collaborated with, Godard left in a filmic legacy a portrait of his inability to communicate with his wife.
Let's take it from another angle. Godard is an pointed commentator on American society and American cinema. And he displayed a virtuoso talent much like Picasso in that he could do distinctly different styles in the same day, which is especially evident in the early '60s when he was working at a prodigious pace. What do I mean? For instance, in terms of commentary: we all know the Bogie/Hammett myth of the tough guy with the stone heart who the girls fall for. Godard knew it, too. He had seen it over and over. So what does he do? He makes a film like Breathless, which is actually a film about a guy trying so hard to follow in the lead of his movie heros in the tough guy image that he alienates the only person who he actually cares about and likes (more so than himself). It is BECAUSE he is trying to be like Bogie that Belmondo causes the girl in Breathless to equate her freedom with betrayal. That is a deep riff from Godard on a subject in American film that he knew, and it is a deep riff on his own developing relationship at that time with Karina. He said at the time that it was about Seberg, that it was the next chapter of Bonjour Tristesse and about regret. But it was only about Seberg in the way that watching a beautiful woman on the screen is about the woman. It isn't. It is about how that woman makes all the men, onscreen and off, feel. Basically, Godard, who as he said "came late to women," after a spell of experimentation saw something in the imitation of the tough guy myth that could lead to self-alienation (think about Arthur in A Band of Outsiders, and how he ends up). That is the kind of commentary that Godard can provide, that basically is unavailable anywhere else.
Godard knew that he could not produce a big budget, big cast of stars production. Those sort of means were not available to him. He took what he saw on stage and it came out in it's own way. Actually his riff on the musical in A Woman is a Woman, turning it into a song in a bordello, is echoed by other French directors. Think about Melville and Le Samurai. Or several others. There is usually a sense of loneliness there that is absent in the American original.
It isn't to say, well you liked Band of Outsiders, so you should see this other Godard film. As I said, his is a virtuoso talent. Themes repeat throughout the works (as simple as a pinball machine, or a talk with a philosopher/professor/older man, or as complex as a stylistic tic to show the outside of a building and then the inside before mirroring that with the outside of a face and then an argument about the inner thoughts), but he doesn't repeat himself. Band of Outsiders is the film that I think has the broadest appeal to young people. It is a thrilling ride. You might like Alphaville, but you might find it boring at times. You might like Masculine Feminine, which was an early favorite of mine and catches a youthful air as well. Everyone finds there own way in to Godard. Chantal Ackerman said that she saw Pierrot Le Fou, and that she then watched a thousand films after that, looking and looking for another Pierrot Le Fou, but never finding it. You might like Pierrot Le Fou. For me it was all Contempt. That was the snowball that started the avalanche for me.
To be honest, a lot of times I haven't much loved a number of Godard films on first viewing. The first time I saw Breathless I feel asleep. Since then I have seen it probably 15 or more times, and I think about it frequently. The same might happen to you with A Woman is A Woman. But maybe not. I will say that I think Belmondo is very tender and funny in it, and that it is one of my favorite roles of his. I actually think the man was made for comedy (Pierrot Le Fou is actually quite funny). And Karina is luminous and unattainable in that film. A picture of a woman who is loved.
And for me, when I first saw that argument with book titles, at about the time in college when I was surrounded by many books and few women, it was all there for me, right there on screen.
