Masculin Feminin (1966) ***

 

Jean-Luc Godard just died, and while I was actually more surprised than anything to learn that he had still been alive all this time, his death provides an opportunity to watch one of his films and reflect on his film legacy. We had already seen his first film, "Breathless" as well as "Pierrot le Fou," so we decided to check out “Masculin Feminin,” a story of male/female relations.

We meet Paul, a self-serious socialist who divides his time between hanging out with his union activist buddy, Robert, and pursuing a beautiful singer named Madeleine (played by Ye-Ye pop singer Chantal Goya). Paul does not display a lot of charm, but he eventually insinuates himself into Madeleine's life, and the two become a couple. Paul and Robert run around Paris with Madeleine and her two attractive roommates, having long conversations and occasionally dancing, protesting the Vietnam War, and witnessing jarring acts of random violence.

If you look back to the first guy who mixed up some materials to invent paint and smeared it on a cave wall, his work probably isn't all that compelling, out of context. His innovation was not so much his drawing of a hand or an antelope, but the development of new tools that would lead future artists to greatness. I feel the same way about Godard and his fellow New Wave auteurs. The Godard films I have seen are not necessarily great in themselves. They are largely a series of sketches, lacking in story, plot, and sympathetic characters. He seems to thrive on disjointed stories about bored, emotionally-stunted men and the beautiful, pert-titted women who love them, and it is only the latter of these that make his films watchable at all. Godard allows his black-and-white camera to linger lovingly on the faces of his charming, young actresses, some of whom cannot really act. The rest is just experimentation with what you can do on film when you throw out all the rules. This rule-breaking made the world safe for followers like Arthur Penn ("Bonnie and Clyde") and Quentin Tarantino (“Pulp Fiction” and “Reservoir Dogs”).

So, what if you aren't a cinephile or an aspiring filmmaker? Should you watch “Masculin Feminin”? I would say, take a step back first and watch some of the films listed above, as well as movies like Jim Jarmusch's "Down By Law" and Richard Linklater's “Before Sunrise.” Check out some of Whit Stillman's movies, like "The Last Days of Disco". If you find yourself starting to dig movies with long tracking shots, handheld camera work, and jump cuts, and which allow the characters to have long, naturalistic conversations, THEN maybe you will want to go back and watch a movie like “Masculin Feminin” to appreciate how it all got started.

3 stars out of 5