A Woman Is a Woman
Even after 40 years I’m still not sure how I feel about A Woman Is a Woman (1961), Jean-Luc Godard’s third feature. The first time I saw it, as a college junior in New York, it was an unmitigated delight. But that had a lot to do with its arrival at a time when it seemed to validate ideas I and other cinephiles had about French and American film culture. It was the fourth Godard feature to open in New York (after Breathless, Vivre sa vie, and Contempt, his first, fourth, and sixth films), and the second in color and ‘Scope (after Contempt). The very notion of someone subverting the way big-budget Hollywood used canvas and palette while also taking pleasure in those elements carried an enormous charge (Contempt had been a bit too close to big-budget Hollywood to look like subversion). But the most recent time I saw it–the umpteenth time–was at a Chicago press screening, and it was one irritation after another. The historical resonance was entirely different.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
The dopey plot of A Woman Is a Woman concerns Angela (Karina), a stripper in Strasbourg-Saint-Denis who’s determined to have a baby with her lover and flatmate, Emile (Jean-Claude Brialy), who doesn’t want to be rushed into it. After extended spats and a Godardian duel of words using book titles they silently flash at each other like accusations, Emile goes out on a date with another woman, then visits a prostitute. Angela winds up sleeping with her and Emile’s friend Alfred (Jean-Paul Belmondo), who’s plainly smitten with her. Eventually the couple make up and go to bed.
Lamentably, the brazen plugs and simple hommages made the biggest impression on young Hollywood directors, rather than the visual critical references, which were harder to identify. Far more significant than the insertion of the name “Lubitsch” in the credits–or the claim by Godard in interviews that Lubitsch’s Design for Living (whose French title is Serenade a trois) bore some relation to his own menage a trois–is the use of Lubitsch as the surname of Belmondo’s character. It’s mentioned immediately before a peculiar gag in fixed long shot that shows him being called to the phone by a next-door neighbor, who has to creep around the narrow terrace outside their adjoining upstairs flats to reach him. A pointless and cumbersome maneuver in other respects, this is a reference to the elaborate crane shots and pans around the exteriors of buildings in Lubitsch’s more opulent comedies and musicals–one of his many ruses for exploring romantic intimacy among characters by remaining at a discreet and elliptical distance from them.
So I don’t mind much that A Woman Is a Woman fails as musical comedy–by which I mean as a musical and as a comedy. (It isn’t devoid of gags in the same way it’s devoid of musical numbers, but the laughs are relatively sparse and all too often the effort to be lighthearted is heavy-handed.) But I’d mind it less if its failure taught me something about musical comedies. The film does reveal a few things about what musicals do to one’s mood and nervous system, but what they do to one’s spirits–as illustrated so potently by the recent Down With Love, for instance–is only suggested: it’s a bit too programmatic about its ideas to let anyone’s instincts take flight for long.
