Woman is a Woman, Richard Brody wrote of Film Socialisme that it’s full of “human moments.” Here’s one of Godard’s first films: half a century ago. The boyfriend dusts off his feet before getting under the covers. Twice and photographed from two different angles. The couple argue through book titles, moving his bedside lamp through the apartment like a torch, humiliating and making up with covers. An unknown couple stand at the doorway our the main character’s apartment building, permanently embracing. The couple next door is always say ciao sweetheart. A stripper finds a new (cinematic) trick that fully clothes her and her co-workers. Some young boys in a magazine shop ask for something sexier than the picture book given to them. The boyfriend asks a woman how Jules and Jim is going (the shooting of): “so-so”. It all adds up to a pun and a cleverer-than-thou pose. Which is too bad. A great companion film would be Eyes Wide Shut. A couple bikers, fantasies are realized or not realized, and a conception is planned. Kubrick actively toys with the couple’s sense of sensuality and desire while Godard toys with the idea of film as biography, as diary, as commentary, as pastiche, as purposely-failed genre. This is probably a masterpiece, just as the film calls itself, but an important one, not a necessary and needed one.

Woman is a Woman,

Richard Brody wrote of Film Socialisme that it’s full of “human moments.”

Here’s one of Godard’s first films: half a century ago.

The boyfriend dusts off his feet before getting under the covers. Twice and photographed from two different angles.

The couple argue through book titles, moving his bedside lamp through the apartment like a torch, humiliating and making up with covers.

An unknown couple stand at the doorway our the main character’s apartment building, permanently embracing. The couple next door is always say ciao sweetheart.

A stripper finds a new (cinematic) trick that fully clothes her and her co-workers.

Some young boys in a magazine shop ask for something sexier than the picture book given to them.

The boyfriend asks a woman how Jules and Jim is going (the shooting of): “so-so”.

It all adds up to a pun and a cleverer-than-thou pose. Which is too bad.

A great companion film would be Eyes Wide Shut. A couple bikers, fantasies are realized or not realized, and a conception is planned.

Kubrick actively toys with the couple’s sense of sensuality and desire while Godard toys with the idea of film as biography, as diary, as commentary, as pastiche, as purposely-failed genre.

This is probably a masterpiece, just as the film calls itself, but an important one, not a necessary and needed one.