Masculin Feminin. (15.)
Directed by Jean-luc Godard. 1966.
Starring Jean-Pierre Leaud, Chantal Goya, Marlene Jobert, Michel Debord and Catherine-Isabelle Deport. Available on Blu-ray/ DVD from The Criterion Collection from May 17th. Black and white. 104 mins.
One of the extras included on this Criterion disc is a conversation filmed in 2004 between a couple of old French film critics gesticulating wildly as they get quite overemotional about Godard and this film and its meaning and how they had totally failed to understand it on its release. And they are absolutely enchanting: like a mirror image Statler and Waldorf from the Muppets, so imbued with enthusiasm and passion and vitality that seem out of all proportion to the film they are discussing. Indeed, probably any film ever made. But after ten minutes I turned them off because by that stage I'd lost all track of what they were saying. Their emphatic windbaggery becomes self-sustaining irrelevance.
Which makes them an ideal accoutrement to Godard's whizz around the political and existential situation of the young Parisians in the winter of 1965. This comes after Alphaville and Pierrot le Fou so we're into post-narrative Godard, though still a few precious years away from the ideological and experimental tedium of his post '68 period. So it's dull in places but also carried along by a sense of carefree abandon and about as much fun as a movie can be which has Jean-Pierre Leaud as the leading man. He plays Paul, an earnest young man, just finished his military service and out and about in Paris engaged in revolutionary agitation with his gropey mate Debord and working as a magazine writer and market researcher. His girlfriend of sorts is adorable pop singer Goya. At points, the screen is filled with slogans, including his famous one about "The Children of Marx and Coca Cola."
55 years on it retains its casual, carefree revolutionary fervour even if some elements would earn censure today from the new model puritans. Of course, now most of its appeal is nostalgic. Ah to have been in Paris in the sixties when it was still black and white. Those were the days my friends, obviously they'd bloody end. It's nostalgia, but it isn't innocent. Any other film from this era we'd look at poignantly, pitying their youthful optimism like footage of smiling passengers boarding the Titanic but with Godard the disenchantment comes sown in. It brims with invention and possibilities and restless energy, but it's a self-extinguishing energy. Godard kicks opens doors but is immediately bored by what he sees inside.
Interview from 1966 with actor Chantal Goya
Directed by Jean-luc Godard. 1966.
Starring Jean-Pierre Leaud, Chantal Goya, Marlene Jobert, Michel Debord and Catherine-Isabelle Deport. Available on Blu-ray/ DVD from The Criterion Collection from May 17th. Black and white. 104 mins.
One of the extras included on this Criterion disc is a conversation filmed in 2004 between a couple of old French film critics gesticulating wildly as they get quite overemotional about Godard and this film and its meaning and how they had totally failed to understand it on its release. And they are absolutely enchanting: like a mirror image Statler and Waldorf from the Muppets, so imbued with enthusiasm and passion and vitality that seem out of all proportion to the film they are discussing. Indeed, probably any film ever made. But after ten minutes I turned them off because by that stage I'd lost all track of what they were saying. Their emphatic windbaggery becomes self-sustaining irrelevance.
Which makes them an ideal accoutrement to Godard's whizz around the political and existential situation of the young Parisians in the winter of 1965. This comes after Alphaville and Pierrot le Fou so we're into post-narrative Godard, though still a few precious years away from the ideological and experimental tedium of his post '68 period. So it's dull in places but also carried along by a sense of carefree abandon and about as much fun as a movie can be which has Jean-Pierre Leaud as the leading man. He plays Paul, an earnest young man, just finished his military service and out and about in Paris engaged in revolutionary agitation with his gropey mate Debord and working as a magazine writer and market researcher. His girlfriend of sorts is adorable pop singer Goya. At points, the screen is filled with slogans, including his famous one about "The Children of Marx and Coca Cola."
55 years on it retains its casual, carefree revolutionary fervour even if some elements would earn censure today from the new model puritans. Of course, now most of its appeal is nostalgic. Ah to have been in Paris in the sixties when it was still black and white. Those were the days my friends, obviously they'd bloody end. It's nostalgia, but it isn't innocent. Any other film from this era we'd look at poignantly, pitying their youthful optimism like footage of smiling passengers boarding the Titanic but with Godard the disenchantment comes sown in. It brims with invention and possibilities and restless energy, but it's a self-extinguishing energy. Godard kicks opens doors but is immediately bored by what he sees inside.
Interview from 1966 with actor Chantal Goya
- Interviews from 2004 and 2005 with Goya, Kurant, and Jean-Luc Godard collaborator Jean-Pierre Gorin
- Discussion of the film from 2004 between film critics Freddy Buache and Dominique Païni
- Footage from Swedish television of Godard directing the “film within the film” scene
- Trailers
- PLUS: An essay by film critic Adrian Martin and a 1966 report from the set by French journalist Philippe Labro.
