Jean-Luc Godard’s body of work reminds me a bit of that of the late rock/jazz musician Frank Zappa. I was a big fan of Zappa in the 1960’s and 1970’s and own all of his first dozen or so albums. I was always amazed at how good his best stuff was and how bad the worst of it. I always felt that Zappa either didn’t recognize the difference between his high quality output and the junk – or else he just didn’t care. As a consumer, I sometimes felt cheated by the miserable quality of some of what he allowed to be marketed, yet I had to keep going back for more because of the greatness of his best material.

Godard was always open about the fact that he cared very little about what audiences or critics thought of his work: “I no longer believe that cinema should be aimed at the masses.” As a result, Godard mostly made movies that pleased mainly himself and let the chips fall where they may. Sometimes that resulted in bursts of creative genius unconstrained by public opinion or filmmaking conventions. Other times, it resulted in artless junk and, like Zappa, Godard seemed unable to tell the difference. Godard once announced that A Woman is a Woman was his first real film, where, in reality, it is no better than a pretentious trifle in comparison to his brilliant debut film, Breathless.

No doubt, A Woman is a Woman (Une Femme est une Femme in French) is innovative, but, as in his later film Weekend it is not successfully innovative. Godard was proud of breaking all of the rules of filmmaking: “I deliberately shot it in a manner that was the opposite from what it should have been.” The cameraman for this film, Raoul Coutard, who earned quite a reputation for himself over his career, stated that Godard would “automatically” do “the opposite of what has been suggested. Sometimes he even asks what should be done so he can do the contrary.” Most creative people learn early in life that reflex contrariness is just as senseless and unimaginative as routine adherence to convention.

Godard had convinced himself that the art of filmmaking could mimic the creative process inherent in painting: “What I try to do,” Godard said in relation to this film, “is to maintain the independence of the artist, of the painter who can leave his canvas to go get something to drink if he feels like it, or to seek inspiration for that matter.” According to the liner notes by Michèle Manceaux, “Most of Godard’s ideas are born either at four o’clock in the morning or else in the car that comes and gets him and drives him to the spot where the film is being shot. He scribbles down notes on a piece of paper, and he follows those indications religiously throughout the entire day’s shooting. Or else he doesn’t make any notes, and there is no shooting for that day.” And Godard adds, “In the end, I’m happy with it because I shot it in one sitting, as it were, just as I had written the scenario, two years ago, in a half an hour. Nobody has ever shot a film like that. It’s almost automatic writing.” Yet, every modality of art has its own inherent creative process and it makes little sense to style one after another. Composers of music and painters utilize essentially different creative tactics. Some arts depend more on craftsmanship than sheer inspiration. In his effort to protect the sanctity of his creative impulses, Godard sacrificed craftsmanship. It reveals a kind of arrogance – an assumption that his flashes of creative impulse were superior to another artist’s finely honed masterpieces.

Historical Background: A Woman is a Woman was Godard’s third feature film, after A Bout de Souffle (1960) and Le Petit Soldat (1961). The former, known in America as Breathless. made a big splash and established Godard as a New Wave auteur of tidal wave proportions. The latter was banned in France because of its take on the French Algerian War. After, A Woman is a Woman, Godard and Karina teamed up in a better effort in 1962, My Life to Live and many other films thereafter.

The Story: The story is straight forward enough. Angela (Anna Karina) suddenly wants to have a baby. She checks her fertility days and discovers today would be a good one. Her live-in boyfriend, Emile Recamier (Jean-Claude Brialy), is unwilling to oblige. He wants to wait a while because the exertion of sex might impair his performance in the up-coming bicycle race on Sunday. Besides, they aren’t married. Angela isn’t about to take “no” for an answer and suggests some other guy will do just as well. How about, say, Emile’s best friend, Alfred Lubitsch (Jean-Paul Belmondo)? Alfred has the hots for Angela anyway and will clearly be willing to perform the chore. Emile calls Angela’s bluff (or is it a bluff?). Later, Angela and Alfred do or do not have sex (it’s not particularly clear), Angela and Emile bicker (sometimes refusing to speak to one another and communicating exclusively through book titles), and finally reconcile. Emile does the dirty deed for her and, afterwards, she turns on the light. That’s about it.

Interlaced into this thin plot are some performances at a strip club where Angela works and the guys frequent. Then there are the usual abundant Godard references to his own films and those of his (then) pal Truffaut. There are allusions to Breathless, Who Shot the Piano Player, Jules and Jim, and Vera Cruz. There’s a rather weak attempt at parody of Broadway musicals. There’s the repeated breaking of the fourth wall as the actors look directly into the camera to address or wink at the audience. And for good measure, some irrelevant street footage is thrown in showing people walking along a street and, later, men being asked if they’d like to father a baby with Angela (“Pardon me, sir, would you like to get this young lady pregnant?” – to which one replies “Now there’s a stupid way to behave”, a second “Sorry, I don’t have time”, and the last “I’d be delighted to, but I’m sure the young lady wouldn’t want to.”) Oh, and there’s a little bit of satire on Hollywood character actors when two police inspectors bull their way into Emile and Angela’s apartment because a terrorist had struck nearby. All in all, a bunch of goofy irrelevant in-jokes which probably left Godard chuckling immensely but most of the rest of us fairly non-plussed.

Themes: In A Woman is a Woman, Godard appears to be trying to say something profound about heterosexual romantic relationships – how difficult they are in real life and how mysterious woman are in general. Mostly, this is the stuff of stereotypes in the manner of “Women are from Venus; men are from Mars.” Godard himself professed to not understanding women. What comes across, not surprisingly, is mainly his confusion rather than any profound insight.

Production Values – Strengths: Woman Is a Woman has been called a valentine to Anna Karina, who became pregnant during the production and was later married to Godard and starred in more than a half-dozen of his films. She is in nearly every frame of the film and the camera is certainly very kind to her. None of the three lead actors are really to blame for the mess that is this film. All three went on to prove their talent in many worthy efforts and even here there is much to admire in their performances. Belmondo’s insouciance is evident in abundance as is Karina’s perky beauty. According to the liner notes accompanying the DVD, “The actors never knew what they were doing, or where their various actions fit into the film.” This is supposed to be a good thing – allowing the actors to “play false situations in a realistic way.” Good for the actors, perhaps, but that left the status of the film entirely in Godard’s hands. He dropped the ball.

This was Godard’s first foray into color and the color scheme is interesting. The emphasis is on primary colors – blues and reds in particular. This rich palette is served well by the Criterion DVD restoration.

Production Values – Weaknesses: In the end, A Woman is a Woman has very little to say of any real interest. It is built out of highly improbable characters, poorly drawn, and a scenario that can hardly be qualified as a plot or story. The strip club in which Angela works must certainly qualify as the most gentile and innocent strip club in world history. The jump cuts that worked so successfully in Breathless to give it a vibrancy and pace are back again but far less successful in A Woman is a Woman. What little plot exists is simply rendered all the more disjointed.

The overblown musical score is another mess. It is disjointed and random, splicing together bits and pieces of pompous and inappropriate music along with long periods of silence. All of this is passed off as some kind of clever satire on musical comedies. The advertising for the film even has the nerve to suggest that it is a “neorealist musical” or a “musical comedy”, but it fails in all three respects. It is not realistic, not musical, and not good comedy. The only worthwhile part of the soundtrack was an interesting jukebox number about a woman “letting herself go.”

Bottom-Line: A Woman is a Woman is frequently cited as one of the most “accessible” of Godard’s films – which tend, on the whole, to be intellectual to the point of pedantic. Unfortunately, it’s accessible mainly because it is slight and wearisome. Although just 84 minutes in length, this film could have been cut to fifteen without losing any of its merit. I love art-house cinema but this is avant-guard of the most insufferable kind. At the end of the film, one realizes that one has watched some fine performances and innovative referential techniques, but the work of art itself has been pretty much a forgettable dud. You’ve been conscious of the artists but had no reason to take note of the art. A Woman is a Woman is in French with English subtitles.

Recommended:
No

Video Occasion: Better than Watching TV
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age