Masculin féminin

Godard's film Masculine Feminine filled with random scenes sounds off like the gun shots that appear at the beginning of each of the fifteen scenes. Although the film briefly explores the differences between women and men, Godard spends more time exploring the social problems of the 1960's and the difference between Capitalism and Communism, not to mention his endorsement against the Vietnam War.

Violence plays a role here, but a detached one. Two suicides, two homicides and an accidental death occur, but the characters act matter a fact about these occurrences. In fact, the characters react more strongly to events in a movie. It's almost as if the filmmaker is saying that people react emotionally to characters in movies, but remain detached at real life events.

On one hand, the pop vocalist character proclaims that she is a member of the Pepsi Generation, but her boyfriend, Paul who is a bit of a revolutionary makes the statement that if a person murders someone it's a crime, but if an army kills 1,000's of people, they're heroes. These two characters get along because they both live in his or her own world and neither tries to pursuade the other to see his or her views. So there is no outer conflict between the two characters.

What's most interesting about Masculine Feminine is the way the director shot his actors in single shots creating a documentary style as the characters interview each other about their views on sex, love and politics. Unfortunately only the men had interesting comments about politics while the women leaned towards Capitalism and materialism. I find this a bit sexist.

This film was part of the French New Wave and so it is respected for it's innovative departure from films that actually tell stories. However, by taking the camera and sound equipment to the streets, interesting ideas are presented here.

I respect Godard for making the films that he wanted to make and for leading the French New Wave Movement, but I wish that I knew the point to this film. I expected a more profound film.

It's strange this movie has not a single French comment.More than any Godard movie (I must confess I'm not a Godard fan,by a long shot),this one depicts a world now gone ,the world of the French sixties youth ,of the "Mademoiselle Age Tendre" magazine ,the world where a "pop" singer Chantal Goya used to sing "Si Tu Gagnes Au flipper" ("Should you win if you play pinball,then you've lost my heart ,'cause I know you've dated my best friend" exciting huh?).Every year the trendy girls used to elect their "Mademoiselle Age Tendre" and the winner had tons of presents and had the privilege of dining with Johnny Hallyday,Françoise Hardy and other "pop" stars of the era.Godard shows one of the lucky recipients and for once he displays some humor.Abortion and suicide did not exist in the sixties youth world they (magazines and radios) built for them,but in Godard's flick,they loom in the background.The director makes a tricky use of the words "féminin" and "fin".It's Marlene Jobert's first important part.

You had to be here ,I guess.For people who did not live in France in the sixties ,it is an honest time capsule

That alternate title for Masculin Feminin, The Children of Marx and Coca-Cola, is provided in the middle of the film. It is probably the most famous thing from it. It's actually a good title. Politics and pop culture mix in odd ways in the film, and the characters are uncertain about both of those aspects of their lives.

Truth be told, Masculin Feminin is a lesser work by Jean-Luc Godard. It was made during a difficult period in his life: his relationship with Anna Karina, his wife and favorite actress, star of many of his early films such as Le petit soldat, Une femme est une femme, and especially Vivre sa vie, was falling apart. Therefore, this particular film is very bitter and hopeless. Godard is also unsure of where he's going. The film stars Jean-Pierre Leaud, who is most famous for playing Antoine Doinel in such Truffaut films as The 400 Blows. His girlfriend is played by Chantal Goya, who was a pop star at the time (and she plays an up-and-coming pop singer in the film). The film loses track of its supporting players. They are omnipresent, but when they have scenes without Leaud or Goya, the film gets tedious. Godard doesn't know what he's doing with them. This is especially true of a long scene where Leaud's best friend tries to court Goya's best friend in a kitchen. He asks her many questions, but they are all very trite ones about her sex life. I swear, he asks the same three questions a dozen times each. It gets old fast, and the scene lasts forever. There are several good sequences, but nothing that really equals the best of Jean-Luc Godard. Perhaps its real value is in its editing. Godard's editing is always interesting, and Masculin Feminin shows us his skill with long takes. Also, there are a couple of great tracking shots. 7/10.

Possible Spoliers: Though not Godard's best, Masculin, feminin is in many ways the prototypical Godard film, exhibiting as it does both his characteristic virtues and characteristic vices. The plot is simple and barley manages to hold the film together; a young man (Paul) conducts a shapeless relationship with a singer (Madeline), works on a cigarette trick, engages in politically oriented graffiti, wrestles with only moderate energy with his own political views, watches two strangers get killed and takes scant notice, etc. Friends and acquaintances of the pair drift in and out of the film, to no great effect.

The film, like most Godard films, should be dreadful, and to many it will appear to be just that. But it manages to develop a rhythm, largely thanks to interesting editing choices, and keeps the viewer interested, if not exactly riveted. One hangs on with a Godard film in an attempt to discern the pattern at work-there seems to be no organizing principle as such, nothing particular the filmmaker wishes to communicate, but one senses a method, or a semblance of one, to Godard's madness.

Nearly 40 years on, Masculin, feminin appears very much a product of its time, though not without some claim to universality. References to the Vietnam War and to De Gaulle along with detailed, and dreary, political texts read aloud by the actors, do date the film somewhat, and yet a good deal of ground is covered; love and sex, birth control, women's rights, democracy and liberty, France vs. America, Bob Dylan, the Final Solution, German war guilt, union agitation, random violence, vanity, pornography. Trouble is, neither the characters nor the film reaches any particular conclusions about any of these things; many of them are mentioned in passing-themes stillborn. But perhaps that's part of the point. Godard seems to be acting almost like a

documentarian-at this point in time these kinds of things were discussed, but desultorily, as a part of the process of living, but not as its whole. Will this interest you, the putative viewer? Who knows. In my opinion, this is hardly a great film. Scenes drag on and lead nowhere; dramatic events happen but have no bearing on the rest of the film and thus we are not inclined to care; the sound of gunfire and titles break the film into chapters for no justifiable reason; Godard appears as confused as his protagonists as to the value of art, politics, and action. Still, the film has a wholly original texture, and that cannot be faked.

ACTION: In many respects, Masculin / Féminin (1966) is a precursor to Godard's subsequent film, the radical and highly satirical La Chinoise (1967), with the spirit of political unrest, reaction and revolution suggested through a series of random and disconnected acts of violence that are contrasted throughout by a series of dialogues and discussions on the nature of everything from music and movies, to the battle of the sexes. It came from a period in Godard's career when he was moving further away from the ironic referentialism and playful subversion of American genre conventions that had featured so heavily in his earlier and more iconic works - from establishing films such as À bout de soufflé (1960) and Une Femme est une femme (1961) - and more towards the deconstructive, essay-based cinema of reaction that would follow on from the creative year-zero of the difficult masterpiece, Week End (1967). As ever, it is a film about ideas and a satirical look into the notion of "youth" within the context of mid 1960's Paris - with the hopes, dreams and aspirations of the characters cast against a backdrop of Dylan and The Beatles and the war in Vietnam - presented in such as a way as to question the integrity of this generation, without ever drawing any obvious conclusions.

REVOLUTION: In the hands of any other filmmaker, Masculin / Féminin could have easily descended into your average, run of the mill, teenage love story; focusing on two characters from the opposite ends of the social spectrum, thrown together in a courtship that is continually threatened by a number of external concerns, from political differences, career ambitions, jealousies and social divergence, and all devised within the environment of swinging 60's Paris, again, post-Beatles/post-Dylan. Nevertheless, the ever iconoclastic Godard does deliver these elements, but in his typically subversive approach, in which every element becomes a comment on the ideas and interpretations behind it. ...THE CHILDREN OF MARX AND COCA COLA: Even the subtitle of the film - which doesn't appear until right towards the very end - is a perfect summation of Godard's approach here; with his comment on the contemporary youth of 60's France being both celebratory, but also critical; in the way that he renders these characters as buffoons that spout and pontificate - as characters in Godard's films often do - to illustrate that behind the ideas and the ambitions there's an emptiness that is simply cosmetic.

VÉRITÉ: As with Godard's 1967 trilogy - comprising of the aforementioned La Chinoise, 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her and Week End - Masculin / Féminin invites us to spend time with these characters, to think about the things they say and do, and then to cast judgement on them. Once again, I think the problem that many people have with this film, and with many of Godard's work in particular, is that they assume the director is sympathising with his characters; presenting them as people that we should care about or identify with, when in actuality he seems to be showing them up as the fools that they clearly are. Again, recalling the presentation of Guillaume in La Chinoise, young actor Jean-Pierre Léaud portrays Paul as a likable enough young man, though one whose pretence of political action and Marxist belief is eventually revealed to be nothing more than pseudo-intellectual pontification and playful theatricality. Unlike his more motivated friend Robert, Paul is simply playing at political activism like he plays at being a lover; throwing out carefully rehearsed slogans and ruminating on segregation and Vietnam, while his true thoughts and feelings are wrapped up in idealised notions of marriage and romantic fulfilment, represented as sex.

POLITICAL FILM: You could perhaps argue that it isn't one of Godard's clearest of socio-political statements; with the film often going around in circles, suggesting questions that are never answered - or giving answers to questions that were never asked - as the director continually conspires to satirise and critique his subjects in a manner that goes against the usual preconceived conventions of narrative based cinema. DEFIANCE: If you're familiar with Godard then you'll expect such presentation, though even then, the end of the film, which wraps things up with a cruel joke, might seem contrary to the point of flippancy by many viewers who have taken the time to view the film and invest some thought into Godard's uncompromising ruminations. However, it's completely typical of the director to end his film in such a way; mocking his characters as shallow chancers ready to shrug off any situation, no matter how horrific, while never once leading the audience in their opinions. As the film ends, we're allowed to think about the actions that these characters have taken throughout the film, and make up our own mind as to whether or not these are negative attributes, or positive ones.

CINEMA: The presentation is familiar, with Godard shooting in low-quality black and white, with the early new wave reliance on disarming jump-cuts and Godard's continual interest in ironic inter-titles still used throughout. The camera is mostly stationary, or we have Godard using the tracking shots that his colour films were famous for; while a number of scenes are presented with documentary-like elements in the way that characters address the camera or are framed in order to undercut the action ironically. The machine-gun sound effects that punctuate the inter-titles would be used again in the more entertaining Made in USA (1966), while there's that similar feeling of rehearsed spontaneity familiar from all Godard's 60's films, giving us the impression of improvisation, when we now know how carefully planned the project actually was. GOD(AR'): If you're already an admirer of Godard's cinema then Masculin / Féminin is an essential, if not entirely successful work, from his most interesting cinematic period; even although it could be argued that it lacks the finesse or ingenuity of his more iconic films, it is still worthy of experiencing.