Masculin-Feminin (1966)

Juxtaposing images of pristine, romantic innocence with ones of mute, meaningless violence, Godard's Masculin-Féminin first lulls with a hypnotic, disjointed story line and then stuns with scenes of tremendous depth and meaning. This outrageous film follows the somewhat ineffectual courtship of Madeline, an aspiring pop singer, by Paul, an erstwhile journalist and interviewer but mostly groundless searcher. As in most Godard films, plot mechanics are secondary to elements such as dialog (generally marvelous, but sometimes a bit too pointed), lighting (bizarre and oversaturated, but never less than fascinating), shot framing (extraordinarily thoughtful), and performance. Godard allows his camera to linger on single faces, without cutting, for what seems by modern standards to be extremely long segments--perhaps even excruciatingly long--but the remarkably subtle cast members never disappoint, particularly the fantastically adept and frequently hilarious lead actors, Jean-Pierre Léaud and Chantal Goya. The filmmaker has little to add to our collective understanding of the relationship between masculine et feminine writ large; in fact, most of the female characters are uncomfortably stereotypical, framed as either willfully oblivious to the world or subtly (or overtly) deadly. But as an examination of a young generation faced with the prospect of war in Vietnam and the vagaries of French socialism, Masculin-Féminin proves remorselessly and chillingly trenchant. A towering influence, it would seem, on Whit Stillman's similarly themed Barcelona--but while Stillman lacks the conviction to follow his instincts to their logical, violent conclusions, Godard faces his uncompromising story with elegance and courage. In French, with subtitles that are occasionally difficult to read. --Miles Bethany Amazon.com essential video

Children of Marx and Coca Cola !

If there has been any other devastating and revealing film, capable to portrait with such magisterial realism, nostalgic uncertainness poetry and extraordinary vitality reflecting the contradictions between Marxist dialectic with such background as Paris of the 1960's , fears before Vietnam, and multiple concerns of a whole generation and starred by a sleepless young man (magisterially performed by Jean Pierre Leaud who deservedly won the Silver Bear as Best Actor in 1966), please be my guest.

Jean Luc Godard - one of the most irreverent filmmakers of the French New Wave - tells us a story through a perfectly achieved set of fourteen vignettes, in his accustomed journalistic and documental style, which conforms a work that in spirit still stands as the most powerful film of febrile anguish and active questioning of the emerging generation of the Post war.

A collector item, in few words.


October 28, 2008

Godard oddard, brilliant and more accessible

G......Masculin
O.....Feminin
D....
A...
R..
D. extrapolates cinematic boundaries once again, this time it's a little easier to decode. It seems he had some ideas, opinions, and irritations he wanted to vent, so he aired these thoughts out smartly within a strange love story. Well, forget venting, he seems more like he's politely and subtlely machinegunning the 60's youth culture. He challenges everyone to WAKE UP OR DIE! Although this is a provocative political montage, it's also a very charming, innovative, and appealing tale.

plot!@$*&@%)@$&@%^)*)&%#+summary

Paul is a struggling political activist, searching vehemently for some female companionship. He gets caught up with the enigmatic Madeleine, an emerging pop music singer. They are quite a mismatched pair, and a battle of the Sexes ensues. Like I said, this little romance is really just a backdpop for Godard's sociopolitical ideas. He takes shots at politics, Vietnam, pop culture, fashions, sex, birth control. It seemed to me that women are portrayed in this as being pretty clueless. Very intellectually inferior to the men. That might be a reflection of the time, region, or Godard himself.

^%%#))($#%@%&)*(_epilogue

This is a brilliant movie, one that can be enjoyed on different levels--as a simplistic but odd love story, or pondered inquisitively as a political/social melodrama. I liked this even more than Breathless or Band of Outsiders, and I understood it more than Pierre le Fou. Godard is amazing.
May 30, 2008

REGARDER!

There are many interesting aspects to the "story" told in "Masculin Feminin", but there seem many more interesting things about Godard's approach to form, seemingly perfected here. The exquisitely timed intrusions and jokes that are once cruel then again simply clever; the seemingly omnipresent quotations which recast the context of the scenes we are viewing; the acknowledgments of the medium which make this so appealingly post modern; the glimpses of a play within a film and of course the hysterically funny and troubling foreign film within the film. Not to mention the use of sound and of music, so completely distinct to Godard -- just consider the on/off shuffling of location sound, music and silence played out in the first few minutes of the film, making their own cinematic confession in a way as different as his single-minded and seemingly arbitrary use of a single, extended piece throughout the course of "Contempt".

All these refinements make "Masculin Feminin" a model of cinema and its potential. The ideas are so thick and rich that it's both difficult and incredibly pleasurable to track the free interplay of ideas and gestures; and the sheer enjoyment of watching such a work offers just the sort of "entertainment" capable of fully engaging rather than simply mollifying the viewer. And in retrospect it's easy to see Godard's profound influence on the work of other directors of the time, especially that belonging to Lindsay Anderson. The difference here being that Godard's technique feels very natural while some others feel self-conscious and quite strained. Compare this work to today's mainstream film culture and it's easy to make that case that cinema has lost its sense of play as well as its way. May 21, 2008

Mashed Potatoes and the Revolution of the Earth around the Sun

Maybe I am just a sucker for punishment. Over the last few months I have watched quite a handful of Jean-Luc Godard's films, but, besides a couple such as Breathless and Band of Outsiders, I have really not enjoyed my time delving into his films. I am by no means stating that Godard is a bad filmmaker for I respect the body of work that he has created overall and the changes that he made in film and his desire to use film as a tool to change society and maybe even spark revolution amongst his film viewers, but for the most part I find many of his films to be too "arty," in my opinion Pierrot le fou is a prime example of this, and this sense of art for art's sake detracts from the films often leaving them as little more than pedantic schlock.

Well then. After my introductory paragraph it might come as bit of a shock that I enjoyed the film Masculin, Féminin quite a bit not only the first time that I watched it but the second time as well. Masculin, féminin stars Jean-Pierre Léaud as Paul, a young man with literary aspirations and a very strong communist bent and the ye-ye girl Chantal Goya as Madeleine, a photographer who is embarking on her career as a pop singer. Like many of Godard's films there is no one underlying plot within this film, unless you consider Paul's desire to sleep with the lovely Madeleine as an underlying plot, so it comes off as being very episodic. We are treated to the typical anti-America propaganda that is common within Godard's body of work during this time period, but we are also introduced to Godard's disillusionment with socialist movements as well. These disillusions come out brilliantly within interviews conducted by Paul in which the "oppressed" are more concerned with the small bits of happiness than can be found in life and not in some vague socialist plot that offers fewer concrete awards than the America based capitalist system. Outside of political agenda, one of the most enjoyable aspects of this film is the music. Throughout the film we are treated to French ye-ye girl songs, Chantal Goya, of course, and they definitely give the film a bit of energy where it is lacking in several other Godard films.

Another aspect of the film that should be mentioned is the sexuality within the film itself. There, of course is no hardcore or even soft-core action, but the topic of sexuality is quite prominent and the characters continuously talk about their love making episodes in relation to love and it even the subject of birth control is prevalent. This, of course, seems tame by today's standards, but at the time this content was racy enough to give the film an eighteen and over ranking.

Masculin féminin was created the same year that Godard also created Alphaville and Pierrot le fou. The former two often garner more praise, but in my opinion this film shines in comparison to the other two. May 23, 2007

Not good.

Most of the time I love French films. 400 Blows, Breathless, etc. This one caught my eye so I bought it. Waste of $$. Horrible. I never did really get the plot becuase there was not much of one. It was just like a homemade movie with really bad sound. I looked around the room and the other two people watching it with me had fallen asleep. March 12, 2007

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