Jean-Luc Godard - Une femme est une femme (1961)

With A Woman is a Woman (Une Femme est une femme), compulsively innovative director Jean-Luc Godard presents “a neorealist musical—that is, a contradiction in terms.” Featuring French superstars Anna Karina, Jean-Paul Belmondo, and Jean-Claude Brialy at their peak of popularity, A Woman is a Woman is a sly, playful tribute to—and interrogation of—the American musical comedy, showcasing Godard’s signature wit and intellectual acumen. The film tells the story of exotic dancer Angéla (Karina) as she attempts to have a child with her unwilling lover Émile (Brialy). In the process, she finds herself torn between him and his best friend Alfred (Belmondo). A dizzying compendium of color, humor, and the music of renowned composer Michel Legrand, A Woman is a Woman finds the young Godard at his warmest and most accessible, reveling in and scrutinizing the mechanics of his great obsession: the cinema. Criterion




Angela,a striptease artist, wants to have a baby and tries to persuade her boyfriend Emile to go along with the idea. Emile will have none of it so she goes after Emile's friend Alfred. (http://imdb.com/title/tt0055572/plotsummary)




One of the landmark early films of the French New Wave, director Jean-Luc Godard weaves a tale of desperation and deceit. Anna Karina plays a stripper determined to have a child in the hopes that it will better her life. She tries in vain to convince her rough, selfish boyfriend to father the child, but he refuses. In desperation and sparked by anger she turns to his best friend to father the child, setting off a new round of recrimination and betrayal. Une Femme Est une Femme is one of Godard's first films and essential viewing for fans of the Nouvelle Vague, to chart the beginnings of the detached mood and style that influenced a coming generation of films. (–Robert Lane - Editorial Reviews - Amazon.com)




This movie is often advertised as a musical. It's not. It's Jean-Luc Godard's world, filled with vibrant blues and reds, bogaurd cigarettes, and cinema fantasies, shown through the eyes of Anna Karina. Karina plays a stripper, but unlike the other girls, she dances and sings as if she were in a musical choreographed by Bob Fosse. Raoul Cotard's cinerama camera follows her through Paris as we expiriance her flirtation's with her lover's best friend (played by Jean Paul Belamondo who also costars with Karina in 'Pierette le Fou' and starred in Godard's first film, A bout de scoffule) and argues with her lover about whether they should have a child and how awful the opposite sex is. They love eachother deeply, but can't stand each other. In my experiance this IS love…or the closest thing humans can get to love. (http://imdb.com/title/tt0055572/usercomments)




Godard keeps us completley out of the film by constantly reminding us that THIS IS A FILM. Anna Karina winks at the camera, breaks into song, the actors are staged unrealistically. This is what makes Jean-Luc Godard great. No matter how hard he tried to obtain realism in his first film, it was still a film and this is one of Godard's subliminal messages to the audience. Fun, charming, cinematic, and beautiful–a woman is a woman is a fine piece of cinema. (http://imdb.com/title/tt0055572/usercomments)




Along with JULES ET JIM, Jacques Demy's LOLA and Godard's own BAND A PART, A WOMAN IS A WOMAN is the most energizing and uplifting of all New Wave films. Both gleeful and baffling, it is essentially summed up by Brialy himself, who towards the film's delightful conclusion declares: "I don't know if this is a comedy or a tragedy, but it's a masterpiece" (amazon.com)




Jean-Luc Godard's first film in color. (http://imdb.com/title/tt0055572/trivia)