A Woman is a Woman

Cambridge film-buffs should be especially happy to see the French New Wave pop out of the Brattle's thirteenth birthday cake. Instead of the usual 1920 masterpieces or obscure Japanese fare, we will be treated to six weeks of the best films by Godard, Truffaut, Resnais, and Papatakis.

Jean-Lue Godard's A Woman is a Woman, the first film in the aniversary series, seems highly atypical of the New Wave at first sight. The use of color and cinemascope depart from the amateurish, low-budget style of Breathless, and the large number of interior shots violates the New Wave maxim of "on-the-street" shooting. But these departures only point out the most important tendency in the New Wave movement: the willingness to experiment with any style, any technique, or any location. Godard uses his camera with the same abandon that characterized Breathless, and in his hands the conventional becomes anything but banal.

Godard obviously enjoyed making this film, and he lets you share his enjoyment. At times he flashes delicious notes on the screen to tell you how Anna Karina, will be very unhappy if she sleeps with Jean-Paul Belmonde, after her boyfriend, Jean-Claude Brialy, refuses to make her pregnant. The film soon becomes a joyous unbuckling of Godard's immense spontaneity as he plays with lights, editing, titles, and film speed. You leave the theatre stunned that anyone's mind could work so fast.

Lest you get bored with the long interior scenes, Godard has greased every pivot on his tripod so that the camera often wheels about the room. In fact, Brialy occasionally hops on a bicycle and rides around the dinner table. By contrast, Godard has inserted five minutes of candid shots on the Paris streets which, grasp their subject matter so naturally that you never think of him trudging about with a bulky cinemascope camera. The abundant use of jump-cuts keeps the films pace fast and your eyes blinking for the entire 90 minutes.

Belmondo seems to have enjoyed himself more in A Woman is a Woman than in That Man From Rio. This film permitted him to be much more relaxed and spontaneous, qualities very essential to his kind of humor. While A Woman is a Woman may not be Godard's best work, the film proves beyond dispute that outright comedy is well within the compass of the New Wave.