A Woman Is a Woman

One could view A Woman Is a Woman (Une Femme Est Une Femme), Jean-Luc Godard’s second film, as a bold experiment in filmmaking or so much self-important hoo-hah.  I think it’s both.

Here’s the deal:  Godard’s first film, Breathless (written off here), was a huge success, marking him as a major innovator of the French New Wave of filmmaking.  I think the experience empowered Godard and compelled to keep innovating, to keep finding new ways of telling a story.  With A Woman Is a Woman, however, his new way includes silly, distracting tricks and unflattering cinematography of ridiculous people making poor decisions.

What kind of silly, distracting tricks?  Early in the film, the lead character (Anna Karina – more on her later) passes behind a pillar and undergoes an instantaneous costume change, one on which she comments.  Thereafter, we notice every time she passes behind an obstruction, waiting a beat to learn whether she changes again.  It pulls us out of the movie.  Later, Karina and her dumber-than-rocks boyfriend have an argument with a silly gimmick: they aren’t speaking, so they pull books off their shelves and show one another words from the covers to express their feelings.  Give me a break.

What kind of unflattering cinematography?  In his later Vivre Sa Vie (appreciated here), Godard uses black and white film to make star Anna Karina an epic beauty of endless fascination.  Here, his choice of garish color accentuates Karina’s nicotine-stained teeth and makes us recoil every time she smiles.

And what kind of ridiculous people making poor decisions?  I can’t even describe the plot of this film without sounding needlessly condescending, so you’re going to have to discover that for yourself, should you feel so inclined.  Let’s just say that I couldn’t believe that any sane woman would do the things Karina does in this film, and I’m not sure whether Godard expected me to.

So why call this a bold experiment, or even anoint it as hoo-hah, when it seems so obviously a failure?  I think we can do so because Breathless indicated a filmmaker capable of crafting a coherent and well-designed film, and Vivre Sa Vie indicated a filmmaker capable of crafting a masterpiece.  I think Godard was in control of his material, and I think he was feeling sufficiently self-important to try new ways of telling a story and showcasing characters.  Sometimes, experiments fail: A Woman Is a Woman was such a time.

Vivre Sa Vie

You know how, in most films, the camera remains unobtrusive?  Sure, it’s your magic eye into the lives of the people whom it observes, but you don’t notice it.  It’s just there.  In Jean-Luc Godard’s Vivre Sa Vie, the camera is practically a character.  It jostles for a better view of the proceedings.  It looks around when it loses interest in the actors.  At one point, it rat-tat-tats across a room when automatic gunfire stitches the background.  Watching Vivre Sa Vie makes us feel not like an omnipresent god sitting in judgment, but like an invisible sprite in the room.  Occasionally, people even look right at us.  People’s eyes wander, after all.  Why not in our direction?

This sprite the camera makes of us has an obsession: Anna Karina, star of the film and one of the most mesmerizing women ever to flicker on a movie screen.  It can stare at her for minutes on end.  It can stare at her profile, at her full face, at the back of her head while she speaks with someone else.  Occasionally, Anna stares at it, and us, and our secret gaze projects on her what we will.

Anna’s character, Nana, is a loathsome human being.  She’s selfish and stupid and, as near as I can tell, makes not a single good decision during the entire film.  We meet her as she’s meeting with her husband.  She looks at a photo of her child, then discards it.  She tells her spouse that there’s no point in her coming back: she’d just cheat again.  She’s bad at her job.  She’s behind on her rent.  She’s finding that beauty will only get her so far, and eventually it gets her on what we’ll politely refer to as a “walking street.”  With any other observer, perhaps with any other actress, we’d soon dismiss Nana.  But our invisible sprite loves her, weeps for her, never ceases in its fascination with her.  It pulls us in, focuses us so completely on her that we, too, begin to border on obsession.

And when the camera finally closes its eyes, unable to take any more, we’re left wrenched and lost and devastated.  In 1987, Wim Wenders made a film called Wings of Desire about the angels who follow us and love us and weep for us.  25 years earlier, Godard embodied that angel with a camera and made Vivre Sa Vie.  This is what it’s like to bear witness.  This is what it’s like to love without condition.  This is what it’s like to gaze with the angels’ gaze.

You must see it.  You must experience Vivre Sa Vie.  You must.

Alphaville

I fired up ALPHAVILLE feeling neutral. I'm not a Godard fetishist, but neither do I repudiate the man. I was ready to take what this movie had to give and give it, in return, a fair shot. ALPHAVILLE began by puzzling me. Who was this supposed reporter from "LeMonde / Pravda"? Who were these people he was interested in? Why did some guy burst into his hotel room and try to kill him, and why did our supposed hero proceed to unwind by playing a little William Tell with his handgun and a hotel prostitute?

After a while, ALPHAVILLE went from puzzler to fascinator, as it rolled into a water ballet from Busby Berkeley's most depraved fantasies. In the process, it evoked the constant, all-pervasive fear that comes of living under a totalitarian regime and drew me into its world and its hero, one Ivan Johnson (or, as we would later come to call him, Lemmy Caution). As Lemmy came to understand Alphaville, its government, and its people, so I came to understand what was going on, who was targeting whom, and what the heck Anna Karina had to do with anything. As Lemmy took action, the scenario grew simpler still, 'til I was cheering him on and hoping he'd find both what he'd been sent for and what he needed.

I may have come into ALPHAVILLE feeling neutral, but I came out of it feeling energized and excited. Here's a movie that's willing to take risks with the conventions of filmed narrative, and here' s a movie that wraps its thoughtfulness in pulp and never takes its eye off the ball of any sound film's first priority: entertaining its audience.

ALPHAVILLE is a winner.