My Least Favorite Godard Film

Jean-Luc Godard's third film Une Femme est Une Femme which featured his wife Anna Karina was released as his second film since Le Petit Soldat was banned by the French government for its depiction of torture (a secret that the French had been using brutal torture tactics in the Algerian war was not to be exposed for years to come). Une Femme est Une Femme was described by Godard himself as a musical comedy or rather a comedy that uses music as part of its expressive means of making comedy. It is my least favorite Godard film even though the film displays many of the cinema"tics" that make Godard one of the greatest and most interesting filmmakers of the La Nouvelle Vague. What exactly is wrong with Une Femme est Une Femme? The cinematography by Raoul Coutard is in color and top notch. The performances by Anna Karina, Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Brialy are finely tuned and alternately hilarious and dramatic. Various sequences are comedic highpoints such as when Belmondo (Frederic) and a man he owes money to curse at each other (in jump cuts) as they cross the street, the domestic scenes between Brialy (Emile) and Karina (Angela) continue the New Wave tradition of torturously romantic intimate relationships, the strip club scenes are alternately repulsive and attractive and feature many of Godard's convention breaking editoral strategies- so what exactly is wrong with Une Femme est Une Femme? I believe that it is the story's premise that ultimately deflates Godard's cinematic souffle. Angela, a part time strip club performer, suddenly decides that she wants to have a baby -out of the blue- and when her live in boyfriend Emile is less than excited about the idea she asks his friend Frederic if he would oblige her request. Now granted, Godard is sending up the usually thin premises that most musical comedies as a genre are based upon, but here the immature nature of all three of his main characters are too weak to sustain such a "mature" idea as having a child. It seems strange to request from one of our most notoriously anti-narrative filmmakers that his story should be more plausible, but perhaps it is not so much the story as it is the characters that should be more plausible. Angela has no real motivation to be a mother (she's not married to Emile, they barely make enough money to live together, both still engage in various flings with other people). The premise of Une Femme est Une Femme is too implausible to sustain all of Godard efforts. It is this immaturity within his characters that make such a mature gesture of wanting a child seem contrived. It is too easy to dismiss Une Femme est Une Femme as un cadeau pour sa femme that is as Godard's gift to his beautiful new bride and to that extent it is simply a gift in color to Anna Karina and nothing more. As their real life relationship began to grow in its complexity, so also did Godard's films, from Vivre sa Vie onward through to CONTEMPT (a film more about their marriage even though Karina is not in it). It might also be interesting to speculate here that the impetus for the premise of the story within Une Femme est Une Femme is the fact that Karina had been nagging Godard to have a child in real life as well as creating a film that would showcase his wife's star potential. Colin McCabe in his recent biography, Godard: Portrait of the Artist at Seventy reveals that Karina had a miscarriage that resulted in the birth of a stillborn child that left her infertile inbetween- Une Femme est Une Femme and Godard and Karina's masterpiece, Vivre sa Vie. So the speculation as to the impetus for the story premise in Une Femme est Une Femme has some credence in my opinion given these real life events. Godard has always excelled when he is connected to an equally ambitious female (e.g. Anna Karina, Bridget Bardot, Anna Wiazemsky, Anne-Marie Mieville) and although Une Femme est Une Femme might be considered an interesting failure by some (myself included) it's critical and commercial failure upon the time of its release also points out the sevrity of the backlash against the New Wave in France at the time. It should be noted that Une Femme est Une Femme won awards at the Venice Film Festival and not at Cannes, just as Truffaut's second film, Tirez sur la Pianiste, was also a critical and commerical failure in France. But whereas Tirez sur la Pianiste is a re-discovered masterpiece because of the complexity of its narration and characterization, I don't know if we can consider Godard's Une Femme est Une Femme a masterpiece for such complexities are missing within it. I will close here by saying that I think that the actual second film by Godard, Le Petit Soldat is the real re-discovered masterpiece by Godard, despite the rather tepid overview given of the film in a recent book on the New Wave by Richard Neupert; Le Petit Soldat is an important film in Godard's career and a masterpiece of style, characterization and political counterpoint. The banning of Godard's second film and the critical and commerical trashing of Truffaut's second film are in my opinion symptomatic of a larger cultural backlash against the New Wave in France by those of the old guard. More on this later...