80 / BD 4 Une femme mariée

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arsonfilms
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80 / BD 4 Une femme mariée

#1 Post by arsonfilms » Sun Sep 17, 2006 3:56 am

Une femme mariée

Image Image

Long out-of-circulation and unavailable on home video, Jean-Luc Godard’s 1964 masterpiece Une femme mariée, fragments d’un film tourné en 1964 en noir et blanc [A Married Woman: Fragments of a Film Shot in 1964 in Black and White] has, until now, represented the ostensibly ‘missing’ key work from the first, zeitgeist-defining phase of JLG’s filmography. The feature which bridges the gap between Bande à part and Alphaville, Une femme mariée is, nevertheless, a galaxy, or gallery, unto itself — a lucid, complex, profoundly funny series of portraits, etched with Godardian acids, of the wife that represents either a singular case, or a universal example, of “a”/”the” married woman, and the men in her orbit.

Macha Méril (later of Pialat’s Nous ne vieillirons pas ensemble, and Varda’s Sans toit ni loi) plays Charlotte — the title character. She’s married to aviator Pierre (Philippe Leroy, of Becker’s Le Trou). She sleeps with thespian Robert (Bernard Noël). She talks “intelligence” with renowned critic-filmmaker Roger Leenhardt, and takes part in a fashion-shoot at a public pool. The “fragments” of the film’s subtitle are chapters, episodes, vignettes, tableaux; Une femme mariée is a pile of magazines made into a film, and a film turned into a magazine — the table of contents reading: Alfred Hitchcock. Jean Racine. La Peau douce. A Peruvian serum. Nuit et brouillard. The “Eloquence” bra. The quartets of Beethoven. Madame Céline. Fantômas. Robert Bresson. A Volkswagen making a right turn. — A film shot in 1964, and in black and white.

Designed with Raoul Coutard’s breathtaking cinematography, Godard’s picture captures a moment in time — but all its mysteries, its truths, its beauty, comedy and grace, serve to resolve into a work of art for the ages. The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to present Jean-Luc Godard’s classic, Une femme mariée, in a magnificent new HD Gaumont restoration for the first time on Blu-ray anywhere in the world.

DUAL FORMAT RELEASE INCLUDING BLU-RAY AND DVD VERSIONS OF THE FILM

• Gorgeous new 1080p high-definition transfer of the film in its original aspect ratio
• New and improved English subtitle translations
• The original 3-1/2 minute trailer for the film, created and edited by Jean-Luc Godard at the time of the film’s original French release, in 1080p
• 80-PAGE BOOK containing: — A new “overture” by legendary French critic and filmmaker Luc Moullet (Les Contrebandières, A Girl Is a Gun, Les Sièges de l’Alcazar, Le Prestige de la mort). // A lengthy roundtable discussion between Luc Moullet; writer/critic and American correspondent for Cahiers du cinéma, Bill Krohn; and MoC’s Craig Keller — on the film, and its relationship to Godard’s oeuvre from the 1950s through the 2000s. // A concentrated investigation into the film by Bill Krohn. // A new statement about the film by star Macha Méril. // A transcript of Godard’s late-’70s lecture on Une femme mariée, originally presented in Introduction à une véritable histoire du cinéma, translated here into English for the first time. // Relevant excerpts from Jean Racine’s Bérénice, in the original French, accompanied by a new parallel English translation. // And many notes on the film, Godard, and modern DVD production.
Last edited by Anonymous on Sun Sep 17, 2006 6:23 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Oedipax
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#2 Post by Oedipax » Sun Sep 17, 2006 5:43 am

david hare wrote:Une femme mariée: Suite de fragments d'un film tourné en 1964

Apart from solent, I cant recall anyone mentioning this film.

Only available on an (expensive) Japanese Sony DVD. I had not seen this since January 1968 at a grind house in Madrid, when I was 18 with (yet again) a mix of raincoated gents and cinephiles. And Spanish subs (this might have been the movie that most forcefully encouraged my to learn French. And come to think of it how many life changing masterpieces have I seen in the very agreeable company of raincoated gents and cinephiles? My fevered brain now wandering into the terrotiry of La Chatte àdeux têtes.)

What a fucking masterpiece! Anyone who then had the taste to open with a quote from the slow movement of Beethoven's third Razumovsky Quartet and then proceed to define the new cinema with a flawless and classically linked ref to the first (allegro) movement of the first Razumovsky Quartet while the discourse and the fragments move to a wide shot! I sat flabbergasted watching this again the other night. This Le Mépris, Vivre sa vie, Bande àpart, Une femme est une femme, and À bout de souffle struck me then as defining a future formal "classicism" of post-modern cinema. They still do (I have very different feelings about Godard after 1970.)

Isn't it criminal that this movie has never been given a DVD in R1?
It does have a R1 dvd, just not a very widely publicized or available one, but it can be ordered from Facets and isn't just a bootleg. From what I've heard it's not a bad transfer, maybe someone else can chime in.

I haven't gotten around to ordering it yet but I plan to soon. There's a great picture of Godard in MacCabe's bio where he's written down the titles of all his films up to the point. For Une femme mariée, you see where he's first written "La Femme Mariee" and crossed it out, a reference to the rather absurd censorship of the film's original title.

Scroll down on this link to number 20.

solent

#3 Post by solent » Mon Sep 18, 2006 7:37 pm

davidhare wrote:Caps posted of Une femme mariée on the Screencaps thread.
Sorry I can't do screen caps. The disc is good. I believe it is also available from MOVIES UNLIMITED. The subs are removable and there is an English dubbed track as well as the obvious French. I'm not sure how the NYFA did this. The image is clear but seems to 'flicker' during shots where the camera moves. [I think Godard used the same set up as on BAND A PART where Coutard did some movements thought by some to be only possible on hand held.] What I mean by 'flicker' is not that the image is ruined in any way but that it is not as fluid as on other DVDs. This only happens during camera movements when capturing the movement of actors. It's not off-putting to me but it is unusual and a minor thing. A worse DVD I have is both the R1 & R2 versions of Pinter's BUTLEY [with the late great Alan Bates]. Every time there is an edit the image wobbles. A R2 reviewer called this a "telecine wobble." Despite this I can still watch the film and ignore the glitch.

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arsonfilms
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80 / BD 4 Une femme mariée

#4 Post by arsonfilms » Sun Feb 15, 2009 9:47 am

Une femme mariée

Image Image

Long out-of-circulation and unavailable on home video, Jean-Luc Godard’s 1964 masterpiece Une femme mariée, fragments d’un film tourné en 1964 en noir et blanc [A Married Woman: Fragments of a Film Shot in 1964 in Black and White] has, until now, represented the ostensibly ‘missing’ key work from the first, zeitgeist-defining phase of JLG’s filmography. The feature which bridges the gap between Bande à part and Alphaville, Une femme mariée is, nevertheless, a galaxy, or gallery, unto itself — a lucid, complex, profoundly funny series of portraits, etched with Godardian acids, of the wife that represents either a singular case, or a universal example, of “a”/”the” married woman, and the men in her orbit.

Macha Méril (later of Pialat’s Nous ne vieillirons pas ensemble, and Varda’s Sans toit ni loi) plays Charlotte — the title character. She’s married to aviator Pierre (Philippe Leroy, of Becker’s Le Trou). She sleeps with thespian Robert (Bernard Noël). She talks “intelligence” with renowned critic-filmmaker Roger Leenhardt, and takes part in a fashion-shoot at a public pool. The “fragments” of the film’s subtitle are chapters, episodes, vignettes, tableaux; Une femme mariée is a pile of magazines made into a film, and a film turned into a magazine — the table of contents reading: Alfred Hitchcock. Jean Racine. La Peau douce. A Peruvian serum. Nuit et brouillard. The “Eloquence” bra. The quartets of Beethoven. Madame Céline. Fantômas. Robert Bresson. A Volkswagen making a right turn. — A film shot in 1964, and in black and white.

Designed with Raoul Coutard’s breathtaking cinematography, Godard’s picture captures a moment in time — but all its mysteries, its truths, its beauty, comedy and grace, serve to resolve into a work of art for the ages. The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to present Jean-Luc Godard’s classic, Une femme mariée, in a magnificent new HD Gaumont restoration for the first time on Blu-ray anywhere in the world.

DUAL FORMAT RELEASE INCLUDING BLU-RAY AND DVD VERSIONS OF THE FILM

• Gorgeous new 1080p high-definition transfer of the film in its original aspect ratio
• New and improved English subtitle translations
• The original 3-1/2 minute trailer for the film, created and edited by Jean-Luc Godard at the time of the film’s original French release, in 1080p
• 80-PAGE BOOK containing: — A new “overture” by legendary French critic and filmmaker Luc Moullet (Les Contrebandières, A Girl Is a Gun, Les Sièges de l’Alcazar, Le Prestige de la mort). // A lengthy roundtable discussion between Luc Moullet; writer/critic and American correspondent for Cahiers du cinéma, Bill Krohn; and MoC’s Craig Keller — on the film, and its relationship to Godard’s oeuvre from the 1950s through the 2000s. // A concentrated investigation into the film by Bill Krohn. // A new statement about the film by star Macha Méril. // A transcript of Godard’s late-’70s lecture on Une femme mariée, originally presented in Introduction à une véritable histoire du cinéma, translated here into English for the first time. // Relevant excerpts from Jean Racine’s Bérénice, in the original French, accompanied by a new parallel English translation. // And many notes on the film, Godard, and modern DVD production.
Last edited by arsonfilms on Sun Feb 15, 2009 10:44 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Knappen
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Re: 80 Une Femme Marie

#5 Post by Knappen » Sun Feb 15, 2009 10:33 am

Great news. It's written mariée BTW.

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Awesome Welles
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Re: 80 Une femme mariée

#6 Post by Awesome Welles » Sun Feb 15, 2009 6:47 pm

The booklet sounds fantastic, I can't wait for this release now!
A graphical consideration (running the course of the book) of the role of DVD booklets in the modern film-viewing era
...sounds interesting.

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foggy eyes
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Re: 80 Une femme mariée

#7 Post by foggy eyes » Mon Feb 16, 2009 7:36 am

Wow. The booklet looks absolutely terrific, and like a real labour of love for Craig Keller (perhaps unsurprisingly). I'm very much looking forward to Moullet & Andy Rector's contributions. (Just a thought - how about reproducing some or all of the latter's Costa text/photo collage [ref] for Colossal Youth?)

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Yojimbo
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Re: 80 Une Femme Marie

#8 Post by Yojimbo » Mon Feb 16, 2009 3:11 pm

Knappen wrote:Great news. It's written mariée BTW.
as opposed to un homme marié (one 'e')

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Re: 80 Une femme mariée

#9 Post by evillights » Tue Feb 17, 2009 4:17 am

foggy eyes wrote:Wow. The booklet looks absolutely terrific, and like a real labour of love for Craig Keller (perhaps unsurprisingly). I'm very much looking forward to Moullet & Andy Rector's contributions.
We're really happy about the anticipation for this book and the release...!

One thing I want to say, unrelated to the DVD, but related to that link to the Senses of Cinema "Great Directors" piece: unfortunately, I kind of disown that essay. I'm happy if folks are able to get some use out of it as an introductory tool, and cull some general sense of the scope of Godard's work — I also like the fact that it emphasizes the post-'67 part of the oeuvre — but overall I think a lot of its ideas are pretty naïve and its assertions really pat. (And I absolutely hate the prose.) A great deal of it was stitched together from the contents of notebooks I kept when I was around 18 or 19, and was in college, and was discovering Godard. Given all that, it does retain some personal/sentimental value for me, but, like, y'know. — So: I've been meaning to ask Senses of Cinema to remove it from the site (Michelle Carey gave me the name of someone to contact to this end), but I would feel bad if I weren't able to replace it with a revised version and thus plug the resulting gap... sadly, I don't have the time to devote to a redux. In lieu of all that, I hope people are able to find some value in the more recent Godard-related pieces I've posted at my blog (and which can be found archive-wise in the contents index on the side).

All that being said, though, the book that accompanies this release should hit the spot.

ck.

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Re: 80 Une femme mariée

#10 Post by foggy eyes » Tue Feb 17, 2009 5:27 am

Sorry, Craig! I guess this is one of the drawbacks of publishing online - anything that one (retroactively) wishes to slip into the ether is never less than a click away...

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Re: 80 Une femme mariée

#11 Post by der_Artur » Tue Feb 17, 2009 9:24 am

evillights wrote:... In lieu of all that, I hope people are able to find some value in the more recent Godard-related pieces I've posted at my blog (and which can be found archive-wise in the contents index on the side)...
The blog looks interesting. But I have to bitch a little bit. Can you change the layout a little bit, so only the beginning of a post is shown and fully accessed by clicking "more" - like it is done in most blogs? It really is difficult to scroll through that long thing in search of the next topic. (I visit it with firefox 3.0.6)

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Re: 80 Une femme mariée

#12 Post by kinjitsu » Sat Mar 07, 2009 10:12 pm

Specs updated.

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Re: 80 Une femme mariée

#13 Post by accatone » Mon Mar 09, 2009 10:24 am

A transcript of Godard’s late-’70s lecture on Une femme mariée, Bergman’s Persona, Flaherty’s Nanook of the North, and Rossellini’s Francesco giullare di Dio, originally presented in Introduction à une véritable histoire du cinéma, translated here into English for the first time
Sounds like a good release - (un)fortunatly this looks like the same transfer as for the more recent german release of the film (no engl. subs of course). Regarding the above quote - i find it quite irritating that the Introduction has no english translation yet!!! Its really great and could be described as a kind of blue print to the Histoire(s) - but then its much more…. It has been available in Germany since the early 80s by Fischer Publishing House under the title Einführung in eine wahre Geschichte des Kinos - it is based on the (trans)script of the lectures in Montreal and i was always wondering about the scripts original language…my guess was english…but now i see why this important release gets criminaly overlooked in most english language Godard books/reviews/discussions.

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Re: 80 Une femme mariée

#14 Post by peerpee » Sat Mar 28, 2009 6:39 pm

accatone wrote:Sounds like a good release - (un)fortunatly this looks like the same transfer as for the more recent german release of the film.
The MoC edition, out in April 2009, is an immaculate new HD transfer. We have encoded it progressively and the DVD9 disc is over 6GB.

Even though it is PAL, the soundtrack has been pitchshifted so it is the same pitch as 24fps film. All the music and voices are the pitch they would be in the cinema.

We have located Godard's longform (4 minute) trailer for the film and this is on the DVD and can be seen at the website here.

The 80-page booklet has been worked on for over 9 months and we're very happy with it.

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Re: 80 Une femme mariée

#15 Post by jsteffe » Sat Mar 28, 2009 9:54 pm

peerpee wrote:The MoC edition, out in April 2009, is an immaculate new HD transfer. We have encoded it progressively and the DVD9 disc is over 6GB.

Even though it is PAL, the soundtrack has been pitchshifted so it is the same pitch as 24fps film. All the music and voices are the pitch they would be in the cinema.

We have located Godard's longform (4 minute) trailer for the film and this is on the DVD and can be seen at the website here.
The 80-page booklet has been worked on for over 9 months and we're very happy with it.
I don't know whether you're Catholic, but is it OK if I nominate you for sainthood? You think of everything! I'm buying a copy of this for myself and for our library.

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Re: 80 Une femme mariée

#16 Post by ouatitw » Mon Mar 30, 2009 11:45 pm

I preordered my copy, keep up the good work. This is one of my favorite Godard films.

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Re: 80 Une femme mariée

#17 Post by MichaelB » Fri Apr 10, 2009 6:41 am

I suspect this will be far from a minority opinion, but the booklet is one of MoC's very best - maybe even the best. The amount of effort really shows: not only does it have a ton of fascinating information (essays, lectures, interviews, bilingual extracts from Racine's Bérénice, a roundtable discussion along the lines of the Buster Keaton set), but it's also been assembled according to convincingly Godardian principles, complete with asides querying the typography, the nature of production stills and even the distinction between a DVD "work" and "extra".

It's fabulous stuff, and almost worth the price on its own - though the DVD presentation is also top-notch. Nick's already mentioned the transfer (which is indeed pretty much flawless), but I also singled out the unusually conscientious subtitles for praise in my forthcoming Sight & Sound review. They make a real effort to translate everything relevant, even if it means some subtitles are only onscreen for half a second as they sneak in a translation of onscreen text mid-conversation.

This is hands down the best Godard release on the UK market, and right up there with Criterion's finest efforts.

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Re: 80 Une femme mariée

#18 Post by skuhn8 » Fri Apr 10, 2009 2:55 pm

My fancy is certainly tickled. MOC is the only company that manages to make a stellar DVD an 'extra' next to the book.

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Re: 80 Une femme mariée

#19 Post by TheGodfather » Fri Apr 17, 2009 6:18 pm

peerpee wrote:The MoC edition, out in April 2009, is an immaculate new HD transfer.
and @ MichaelB: that sounds excellent!. I cancelled my order at HMV and re-ordered it at blahdvd.com so I would have it faster (blahdvd is a lot faster than HMV) :D

I`m really looking forward to this one. Hope there`ll more Godard releases following.

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Re: 80 Une femme mariée

#20 Post by ellipsis7 » Tue Apr 21, 2009 6:18 am

Have this in my hand and on the deck... MoC are hitting new heights.... The booklet is superb (clearly a labour of love by Craig Keller), and it's a lovely transfer - I can only say "what's not to like?" about this release (and out with the truly awful NYFA disc)....

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Re: 80 Une femme mariée

#21 Post by Florinaldo » Sun Apr 26, 2009 2:58 pm

The booklet is indeed a beautiful object, with obvious great care taken as much to to content as to layout. I can't wait to find the time to deleve into it and judge if the contents does live up to these expectations. If so, then there is absolutely no reason to bemoan the absence of digital extras.

Congratulations are in order for everyone who worked on this edition.

As for the movie, I have only sampled a few chapters, but it appears to be a beautiful transfer. A can't-miss item for Godard fans (and another argument in favor of region-free players).

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TheGodfather
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Re: 80 Une femme mariée

#22 Post by TheGodfather » Mon Apr 27, 2009 6:40 am

Received my copy over the weekend. Indeed a beautiful package. The book is beautiful, a realy hefty one. Can`t wait to find the time to get into it.

Only really small minor is the rating logo on the cover. Too bad it needs to be on the cover. Other than that, no complaints what so ever.

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tubal
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Re: 80 Une femme mariée

#23 Post by tubal » Mon Apr 27, 2009 9:10 am

Seems strange that no reviews of this have surfaced yet. It has been out for a few days now.

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Re: 80 Une femme mariée

#24 Post by MichaelB » Mon Apr 27, 2009 9:12 am

I filed one with Sight & Sound - a total rave - but it won't appear in print till next week or thereabouts.

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GringoTex
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Re: 80 Une femme mariée

#25 Post by GringoTex » Fri May 01, 2009 12:31 am

The first and only previous viewing I had of this film was of a shitty 16mm print smack dab in the middle of a 35mm 60s Godard retrospective about 16 years ago, so this is my first real viewing of the film. And I was bored senseless. Karina should have been cast in this, because Godard completely overwhelms his three stars. There's nobody standing up to him. It's interesting because you see him making the transition to his late 60s period, but the whole enterprise is a Coming Attractions trailer.

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