Homage to the French New Wave Titan: Jean-Luc Godard’s MASCULIN FÉMININ (1966)
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Masculin Féminin
Masculin Féminin is not Jean-Luc Godard’s best but it’s available on MUBI and other platforms. This 1966 film features François Truffaut’s cinematic alter ego Jean-Pierre Léaud as Paul and the singer/ actress Chantal Goya playing Madeleine. The pop politics of Paul is juxtaposed with the pop music of Madeleine. The film captures the preoccupations of the youth of the times: pop music, sex, Vietnam, socialism and revolution. Its politics may be dated but the film is a good example of Godard’s oeuvre. Masculin Féminin is a precursor of Weekend (1967) which anticipates the political climate that gave impetus to the Paris uprising in 1968. It’s rewarding to look at some of its salient aspects.
Structure
The full title of the film includes “15 Specific Events” which ostensibly indicates the chapter like organization of the film. Each chapter has a title which mostly appears with gun shots on the soundtrack. One of the chapters is titled “The children of Marx and Coca-Cola” which summarizes the film. Masculin Féminin attempts to cover the whole gamut of preoccupations of the youth of the times with revolution and pop music at the two ends of the spectrum. However, Godard deliberately avoids giving a coherent meaning to the film. Hence it doesn’t appear to have a structure. But, much more than other directors, Godard reveals his self-conscious mind at work that puts together various pieces in the film. The structure that emerges is that of a collage unified by Godard the narrator. David Bordwell has written that it is more appropriate to call it as spatializing the narration rather than as collage.
The film’s fragmentary and episodic structure is a departure from the classical narrative. “Godard suggested that only through systematic deconstruction of film grammar and syntax could films liberate themselves from the burden of nineteenth century literature and drama…[Robert] Stam’s suggestion that Godard’s decisive break in cinema is on par with Picasso’s in painting and Schoenberg in music is fully warranted. Picasso shattered perspectival realism and Schoenberg favored atonality and rupture over tonal and aural texture. Godard shattered the codes of visual depth and narrative coherence in a full-frontal attack on illusionist representation.” — Emanuel Levy
Foregrounding the Background
Satyajit Ray has written how in the first scene of Masculin Féminin in which the boy and girl are talking, a man and his wife quarrel in the background. The wife takes out a gun and shoots at the fleeing husband. Ray has pointed out that instead of the typical background of a waiter in the background of a restaurant scene, Godard has a murder taking place. In fact, it becomes the foreground action.
The Beauty of the Written Word
Dialogues in films are supposed to be in the realistic conversational style which is there in Godard’s films. There are also scenes in which a character reads out something written which takes the film to a higher plane. Good written prose has precision, depth and style which give its beauty. A film critic turned filmmaker, Godard used to write extremely well. No wonder he captured the beauty of the written word too in his films.
Suicides — Causeless and for a Cause
In Masculin Féminin there is a scene in which a young man approaches the protagonist with a knife in hand. Just when we fear the worst, it turns out to be the opposite. He stabs himself and commits suicide. The film doesn’t tell us abut the motive of the young man who appears only briefly in this scene. Later in the film another man self immolates himself for the cause of Vietnam.
Is Cinema Poetry?
While there are poetic moments in Masculin Féminin, there are also poetic lines used in the film as in this scene:
Love, love
In the man’s heart is solitude and on the face of my naked femininity, your face is mirrored
And my love is in the sea, in dreams and we are faced by death.
Cinéma verité style interview
There is a Cinéma verité style interview in Masculin Féminin in which a static camera shows a character answering questions as in this chapter. It’s titled “Dialogue with a consumer product” in which the protagonist as a pollster fires a volley of questions answered by a Miss 19. It uses improvisation and brings out the person beneath the surface reality. Even in some of the conversations this style is employed in the film.
Side by Side Conversation
Conversation scenes are usually done in “ping-pong” style in films. A medium shot of a character, who utters something, cuts to a medium shot over her shoulder showing the reaction and response of the person opposite to her. This combination of shots is iterated. In this scene in Masculin Féminin, by placing the characters side by side at a restaurant table, their conversation is dedramatized and realism is achieved by the long take.
Closing Thoughts
The words “masculin” and “féminin” in the title are analyzed in a conversation in the film. Paul’s friend divides “masculin” into two words: “masque” (mask) and “cul” (ass). This means that Paul chases after Madeleine’s ass. The friends say that the word “féminin” cannot be divided (making it masculin/féminin). Hence, they claim their dominance over women. But the film shows that “féminin” has “fin” in it. The women cannot be dominated after all. They have the last word in the film.
In the scene in a movie theater, as the protagonist watches the film within the film, we hear his narration: “This wasn’t the film we’d imagined…the perfect film each of us carried within…the film we would like to have made, or perhaps even to have lived”. It’s reminiscent of Godard’s concerns as a film critic for “Cahiers du Cinéma.” Masculin Féminin aspires to be that perfect film that captures the spirit of Godard.
