Une femme est une femme (1961) appears to be the film in which Godard solves the equation for Anna Karina. Holy shit! He didn’t know what to do with her in Le petit soldat (1961), had her hanging out in front of mirrors, brushing her hair a hundred strokes at a time while Michel Subor mouthed off passionate platitudes in frenzied pacings-about the room. She’d light a cigarette in silence and just sort of hang out in his drifting, hectic mist of mansplaining. She had no idea what to do with herself, her hands, her body, and Godard wasn’t giving her any suggestions… but she sure was trés fucking belle! We got THAT loud and clear, anyway!
In THIS film, however, they seem to have gotten their mutual act together. She does actual things with her hands and body, not just being pretty. Of course, she does plenty of THAT, undeniably, but she also does a lot of acting, incredibly graceful and centered Classic acting. Movie star acting. This is the style of acting in which you channel your own charismatic resources into every character you play, bringing them to life in a consistent personality that has already charmed the audience before they’ve even seen the film. That’s why movie stars used to be bankable: the audience knew exactly what to expect from the performance, and so if enough of them loved you, they’d show up for your movies. When actors are playing different types in every film, people get confused, and so maybe they’ll show up for you, maybe they won’t.
Having seen Une femme est une femme, I now understand how Godard was able to catapult himself to his cult, legendary status with a series of wacked out art films that would normally have just pissed people off: Anna Karina. I haven’t seen all of their collaborations yet, but she is absolutely the supreme vessel for his creative energies. She’s so GAME, she does exactly what she’s told with such a light and generous spirit, but she also brings this ineffable movie star magic to her performance, which is what I saw in possibly its most perfect form in Vivre sa vie. Her living essence just THRUMS vibrantly and consistently right on the surface where we can see it: the ideal film actor. She becomes this constantly shifting and fascinating field of movements, gestures, and facial tics, holding nothing back: she’s all there, and captivating for it. You can’t look away (and Godard doesn’t, he’s just as captivated as we are). Which explains how an audience can be content to endure Godard’s increasingly difficult and artsy techniques: they’ve been seduced by Anna. What a team! I can’t wait to see the rest of their stuff together!
I’m also intrigued by Godard’s situating himself and his art within the context of his personal friendships and “Nouvelle Vague” group identity. Fortunately, I watched several other French New Wave films recently, and so I was able to recognize at least some of the references to his buddies that are so liberally strewn about in this film. My antennae immediately sprang to attention when Angela, Karina’s character, works at a burlesque theater and rejects an offer to travel to Marseilles (home, apparently, to the burlesque Big Time), because that is one of the major plot points in Jacque Demy’s Lola (which I touch on briefly here) … and what do you know, halfway through the film, Angela and a friend explicitly mention their friend “Lola” who went to Marseilles! We have several Truffaut references: Jeanne Moreau shows up in a bar, and Jean-Paul Belmondo says Hi and inquires how the production of Jules et Jim is going, to which she shrugs and says Fine. Ha ha! There’s an exchange somewhere about what a great film Truffaut’s Shoot the Piano Player is, and then Jean-Paul Belmondo puts Charles Aznavour (who starred in that movie) on the jukebox at the cafe. (I’m guessing there must be other references to his fellow New Wavers whose loop I wasn’t in.) Irreverent stuff, it gives the film a carefree and charming lightness… and also gives the audience a sense of being “in on the joke,” active participants in the film-making, honorary members themselves of the New Wave.
Most of the film takes place in the couple’s apartment, a smaller domicile than the one in Contempt, to be sure, but the dynamics of the blocking and camera movement is essentially the same, the way the couple moves about interdependently within the space of the apartment and the camera tracks back and forth to whomever happens to be currently holding the reins in the emotional exchange. It’s a very in-the-moment technique, immersing you in the psychic energy crackling between them in the space of the household, the sensorium of their relationship.
I haven’t even mentioned the plot, there basically isn’t one. She wants to have a baby, and he doesn’t, so he cynically suggests she knock herself up with his best friend and even calls that friend over to make the proposal. Fairly ridiculous, just a pretense for conflict and exchange among the characters, and Godard skillfully squeezes every such possibility he can out of this premise… like when they silently hurl insults and ripostes at each other by holding up artfully obscured book covers. And the final pun of the film, which seems to be completely lost in the subtitles; you’d think the translator would’ve at least hinted at it. The boyfriend says “Tu es infâme,” and she says, with an exaggerated wink to the camera, “Non, je suis—une—femme.” (I don’t get most of the French, but I get that, anyway.) Godard LOVES puns; they seem to be the reason he was put on this earth.
Wow, I guess I’d say more, but I’m running out of steam. I was going to write about Le petit soldat, I guess, but what is there to say that I didn’t say up there in that earlier paragraph? It’s enjoyable enough, certainly, and the torture scenes are definitely fascinating. The torturers don’t even seem like terrible people. They hang out and laugh with each other personably, and when they get down to business for the torture sessions, it’s not out of malice but what they view as necessity: they’re trying to get information. Amazingly, it appears that Michel Subor was actually tortured for this film. These aren’t simulations. He’s even waterboarded! Right in front of us.
Oh, and lest we forget! Le petit soldat is the source of the famous Godard quote: “Photography is truth, and Cinema is truth 24 times per second.”
Ok, steam officially gone. I’m amazed I’m still writing these things.… I thought this practice would peter out by now, but there is something nice about writing up a film I’ve just seen; it cements the films into my consciousness to some degree, increases its psychical value. Maybe they won’t slip out of my memory so easily. It really IS like a dream journal, isn’t it?