A Woman is a Woman (1961)

 Jean-Luc Godard's "A Woman is a Woman"

With his 1961 film "A Woman is a Woman," Jean-Luc Godard continues to experiment with the medium of cinema. In this film, it almost seems like he is critiquing typical Hollywood musicals, along with their typical architypes and storylines. It also happens to be his first film in color. 

The film centers on an exotic dancer named Angela, who has reached a point in her line where she wants to have a baby. However, her lover Emile is not ready to either get married or have a child yet. The two spend the film arguing. All the while, Emile's friend Alfred is gently pursuing Angela and propositions her throughout the film as well. Finally, Angela decides to sleep with Alfred which forces her and Emile to reconcile and have a baby.

The film plays on the tropes and architypes of the American musical format. However, Godard really seems to like to ground his film in reality. He does this by using mobile camera, filming on the street, and other neo-realist approaches. However, this realism is aggressively mingled with the artifice that comes with the standard Hollywood musical, a la cheesy musical notes during conversations, singing in public, and stereotypical story structures. At one point, Angela and Alfred are having an intimate conversation full of depth and character and all the while, loud music plays over them. I found the loud music seemed to overwhelm the real human moments (intentionally). It seems as though Godard was making this musical artifice very apparent, which only serves as metatextual commentary to the format. 

So far in Godard's filmography, I've noticed how much he inundates his world with the metatextual world of film. Characters are named after fellow filmmakers, like Alfred Lubitsch. The characters directly talk about other films or actors, like when Jean-Paul Belmondo who plays Alfred, tells the other characters he's missing "Breathless" on TV. "Breathless" was Godard's first film and Jean-Paul Belmondo, whom delivers the line, was the protagonist of said film. Also, the way characters iterate their philosophies on life and in the case of this film, their opinions on genders roles, seem to be pulled from the typical narratives of film and art. It seems as though Godard is implementing a post-modern landscape into his film world and language. From my perspective, his films are demonstrating how film itself seeps into the fabric of human life and how the perspectives of our art reflect the human experience and, in a post-modern way, how our human experience reflects our art. While watching "A Woman is a Woman," I began to notice how inseparable human experience/behavior and our art are. They are so thoroughly woven together than it becomes impossible to untangle. This seems to be an idea present in this film, as the typical Hollywood musical and stereotypical American film seems to be present in the fabric of human life. The aggressive mixture of artifice and reality that Godard accomplishes iterates this exact point perfectly.

Overall, I very much enjoyed the film. It was not as explosive as his previous film "Breathless," but I noticed Godard trying out new things for this one. For one, his use of color is breathtaking. One thing I noticed about his use of color that directly separates itself from the typical color films is his enveloped realism. One direct result of this are the lens flares throughout the film. It was striking to see lens flare used so early in film. However, it also added to the 'documentary' realism that Godard likes to employ, while also directly contradicting this realism by making you very aware at all times that you are, in fact, watching a fabrication.