308 Masculin féminin

[therewillbeblus]

I'm really going to hesitate buying any future standalone releases from Godard, Kurosawa, Antonioni, etc. It seems like box sets could conceivably be in the works for all major/deceased "Criterion-heavy" directors.

Maybe, but this is one of Godard's very best films and to hold out for who-knows-how-long-if-ever just based on a hunch seems like some unnecessary self-deprivation to save $20 down the line. Plus if sales help will such a box into existence, why not contribute?

[therewillbeblus]

Adrian Martin's superb commentary from the Australian disc

I'm struggling to find a copy online, is the Madman release OOP (or if not, any idea where I might find it)? The only DVD option I'm seeing outside the Crit is a Korean disc

[domino harvey]

Based on the disc up on DaaVeeDee, it looks like Umbrella recently released a barebones version in Australia. The one with Martin's commentary was def Madman in their Director's Suite (here's a review with an image of the cover). I bought it many moons ago direct from Madman, so I'm afraid I can't help with tracking it down

EDIT It looks like just about EVERY Madman Director's Suite DVD is OOP now

[therewillbeblus]

Bummer, thanks for the confirmation though. Unfortunately the commentary isn't up on backchannels either- WTF Criterion

[Fred Holywell]

Unfortunately, it's not the commentary, but there's a 12 minute video essay by Adrian Martin (& Cristina Álvarez López) on the film's queer subtext on Vimeo. And there's a detailed review of the film on Martin's website.

[Scorseez]

I'm really going to hesitate buying any future standalone releases from Godard, Kurosawa, Antonioni, etc. It seems like box sets could conceivably be in the works for all major/deceased "Criterion-heavy" directors.

Maybe, but this is one of Godard's very best films and to hold out for who-knows-how-long-if-ever just based on a hunch seems like some unnecessary self-deprivation to save $20 down the line. Plus if sales help will such a box into existence, why not contribute?

Fair point. This has no basis in fact but I’m thinking that the subsidization of box sets and Criterion’s profitability in general is transitioning more towards high profile releases, particularly the new Netflix licensing deals, than older art house titles like Godard. So I’ll hold tight for now.

[ianthemovie]

This also feels like the key intermediate Jean-Pierre Léaud role - the 'teenage' role coming between the 'childhood' of 400 Blows and the 'adulthood' of The Mother And The Whore.

Now we just need a decent release of The Mother and the Whore.

[therewillbeblus]

Over the last five years or so I've watched this film about once a year, and even though it's always been a top-five Godard I become more and more confident that this is Godard's greatest film in a world where Pierrot le Fou doesn't exist. So why don't I say it's his second greatest film? Because while Pierrot le Fou is a culmination of every tone, idea, emotion, genre, [insert anything that comes to mind that can possibly be expressed] exploding onto the screen with heightened passion, Masculin féminin feels like a more introverted implosion that uses similar intensity to reflect a place more desolate and confounding within the swamp of both specific and timeless socio-cultural stimuli. It's like a funhouse-mirrored part B appendix with so much information it becomes a spiritual sequel of matched scope. I wish could share the spotlight as my other all-time favorite film, as it communicates all of the vast lingering philosophical and psychological experiences that the previous film, and I, didn't know were leftover through another milieu-made-playground for biopsychosocialspiritual projections.

Godard emulates the challenges inherent in navigating sexual politics and self-knowledge with any intimacy or dependable insight through surreal and dense expositions on saturating world politics and unpredictable human behavior, a familiar eclectic disorderly narrative and technical choices, and attitudes equal parts apathetic and fervent, but with no reciprocal space for the sought catharsis. The film is a stylistically-propelled disturbance by design, an artistic emesis of confusion, surrender, and will. Adrian Martin's essay says all this and more better than I ever could, but I think one aspect of both this film (and Pierrot) that he gets so right is how Godard is simultaneously judging his characters from an aloof position and also deeply empathizing with them. Martin also makes a point to note that this is the last Godard film to "employ a relatively conventional model of character psychology," and it's a testament to his genius that he was able to say and purge so much more through these methods of devastating vivacity following a transitional period post-Karina and Pierrot. Godard’s uses his extra life to double down and profess a second existential crisis captured on celluloid from a new vantage point, with the playful spirit of a man eagerly hanging on to life, for one last chance to provide a commentary with the methodology of surrogate characterization.

I'm also more convinced than ever that Goya's facial expression on the cover is perfectly suitable for the material, because the film makes a point to show and tell how it's the most raw, simple, physical exhibition of Godard's visionary worldview of ubiquitous contradictions. Her smile is both meaningful and meaningless, authentic and false, showing an impulsive truth and shielding a deeper sincerity from herself and others under a lie. In the final scene, which is anything but happy, Goya also smiles nervously- which is from where this cover photo is taken. When she answers "I don't know" the first time we sense it's a more honest and self-assured response- but only assured under the falsehood of the calm stoicism we hide behind to avoid digging deeper to confront uncomfortable questions. She takes a moment to actually pierce through this layer and her face moves between a half-smile and half-frown, as she mentally enters a purgatory of fear, disorientation, hopelessness, impassioned drive, intent for identity conservation and a paradoxical realization of the implicit barriers preventing her from accessing any identity to formulate, let alone conserve. The second "I don't know" is as brutal and real as any moment in any Godard film, a definitive ironic and earnest demonstration of Lacan's Real stripped down, and evokes pain and promise and everything in between in one of the greatest moments in cinema history. Per usual, I've only regurgitated some convoluted thoughts about one of my favorite films that can't be described- but since that's what the film is essentially broadcasting to me, it feels appropriate. So what else could the cover possibly be, to transmit this film's ineffable feeling?

[Rayon Vert]

My #1 and 2 are the same as yours TW, so I'm very happy about this upgrade.

[Ashirg]

Masculin Beaverin

[hearthesilence]

Masculin Beaverin

Man, that looks beautiful. A big improvement, from the detail to the film grain texture - exactly what I'd hope from a new 4K restoration.

This is also the first Godard film I ever saw projected in 35mm - since then I've probably seen at least a half-dozen (maybe a dozen) more Godard films that I've appreciated even more, but still love this one and definitely picking it up.

[domino harvey]

[Rayon Vert]

Catching up to the blu ray finally. Anyone noticed how nervous Jean-Pierre Léaud is in those early scenes where I think he's first talking to Chantal Goya, where the film cuts from him to her isolated against a white wall? Looking closely he's literally shaking a bit in some scenes. I gather these are some of the scenes where Godard was asking questions in an earpiece and getting spontaneous answers from the actors. (?)

[fiendishthingy]

Yes, I’m pretty sure that scene did involve an earpiece, from what I read or heard somewhere. I also remember Chantal Goya saying that she could feel him trembling in the scene where they’re in bed together, and Truffaut wrote to Godard in 1973 that Masculin féminin was the first time he had seen Léaud filled with anxiety instead of pleasure in front of a camera (though he specifically mentioned the café scene at the beginning). Apart from anything else, I believe it was the first time he had played a leading role after several years of behind the scenes work and a few bit parts/cameos.

[Rayon Vert]

Here's a short clip where just before or around 10 seconds you can see the trembling/twitching around the mouth. Probably a result also of either improvising answers to questions or having to recite answers given to him in the earpiece. Can be seen better in hi def though.

[therewillbeblus]

That's also just a very vulnerable age to be existing as a human being, so I'm sure it was a combination of factors (always found the Truffaut letter to be a bit much, and reminiscent of a coddling parent arguing with a provocateur). And yeah, I believe all or most shot/reverse shots between characters (certainly men and women) where the other is off screen involved the earpiece/responses to Godard. The scene in question is the main one where this occurred - I'm pretty sure Adrian Martin confirms this in his commentary too

[Rayon Vert]

Watching that scene, it's like the long waiting for Léaud to answer and seeming so concentrated is him intently waiting for Godard to speak in his ear! Part of the charm of the movie.

[therewillbeblus]

It's gradually moved into the slot of my all-time favorite film, partially because Godard captures the folly of youth so well. I think it's a tremendously compassionate examination, even when exposing and satirizing cultural and social phenomena - and if Godard demanded his actors faced discomfort to achieve Truth, and believed -as he did- that growth only forms through exposure (his favorite intervention being aggressive challenging) from other subjective and objective parties, then it was done in step with his ethos. I just don't think Godard and Truffaut agreed on a worldview and has different degrees of passion towards the utility of this growth.

[Rayon Vert]

Wow, no 1. Good choice! Probably my 2nd favorite Godard after Pierrot.

Watching the anti U.S. in Vietnam stuff, this was shot in Fall 65, Godard was pretty quick and on the ball there.

[colinr0380]

I would assume that it was because the US had finally 'officially' taken over the situation in Vietnam from the French who had been in a war of attrition in Indochina after a long and protracted colonial war there throughout the 1950s, a lot of it backed by the United States behind the scenes (where it was notoriously revealed in the Hearts & Minds documentary that the French Foreign Minister had two atomic bombs offered to him to 'resolve' the situation by the US Secretary of State), so it may not have been far from Godard's mind.

[therewillbeblus]

Wow, no 1. Good choice! Probably my 2nd favorite Godard after Pierrot.

Yeah, those two are always trading the top spot depending on which way the wind is blowing, and probably always will be

[Rayon Vert]

This would make a fitting double bill with La Chinoise. One thread of the film is male characters asking these polling questions to the female characters, which somewhat mercilessly reveals their political cluelessness and and naiveté (and potentially their ideological capitalistic/consumerism unconscious indoctrination - and oh how fresh and relevant this still feels!) (charges of sexism here would be fair). With La Chinoise we focus on youth again (more on the Marx side than Coca-Cola!), this time extremely ideologically "informed" and politically radical "children", and yet they betray the same innocence and naiveté!

In both films you get the sense that Godard both criticizes or maybe more accurately sociologically observes and analyzes these characters and yet has a sympathy and maybe affection for that innocence and naiveté. There is an important point near the end of this film where Léaud's character Paul as a narrating voice says he'd discovered that the polling questions themselves are ideological and reveal their being stuck to past and outmoded thought, and asks for a fresh and constant openness to life and experience instead.

(Makes me think also of Godard questioning the young children a decade later with similar questions, this time laughably above their heads (but again potentially revealing), in France/tour/détour/deux enfants.)

[colinr0380]

Although all that has to be weighed up with the final scene, which (characteristically for Godard) removes any shred of comfort with:

SpoilerShow

Paul arbitrarily dying (almost as if he has become narratively useless now that he has had his epiphany) with Madeleine barely reacting to this news, as she continues onwards without a flicker of emotion. In that sense the Teflon-coated, calculatedly superficial "Miss 19" figures (and the organisations who enable/exploit them) are the new members of the "Coca-Cola generation" where ideology, if it exists at all, is a changeable costume to wear all the better to sell products (and yourself) to the masses. That's all that is important in this world.

Masculin Feminin seems to be suggesting (and critiquing) the idea that being too wedded to anything in particular (from politics, to cultural trends, to even relationships) means stasis, stagnation and death. If you are too closely associated with a movement, you are trapped there once that moment inevitably passes into history for the next hot trend. Although Weekend rather pushes that argument forward to the next logical end of depicting what an entirely mercenary world of selfishly self-interested characters all isolated in their particular bubbles would end up looking like. I think I mentioned earlier in the thread that the characters are still 'cool' in Masculin Feminin, compared to 'icy' in Weekend, and I think that may be illustrating how Godard was moving towards a disillusionment with the popular culture for the masses, building up to the brutally cynical Weekend and his own opt-out move into private and insular spheres of political filmmaking with the Dziga-Vertov films.

[Rayon Vert]

That seems to me like a very perceptive and convincing reading colin!

edit: although it's actually the "Pepsi generation" that are the words used (despite Coca-Cola being brought up elsewhere). I was wondering for a minute if Godard came up with that before Pepsi did, but apparently that campaign was launched in 63!

[therewillbeblus]

Though I think Chantal Goya does a tremendous job at subtle emotional acting in that final scene, which I wrote more about earlier in the thread but is almost surely a similar kind of uncomfortable authenticity provoked by Godard rendering his subjects vulnerable. I don’t get the sense that she “continues onward without a flicker of emotion” - the emotional complexity in her final facial changes is everything! - but I do think that she’s attempting to resiliently repress that discomfort (being forced by Godard and this film and life in general, naturally intruding in to humble and disrupt us from that complacent ‘unemotional forward march’).