• One can view Jean-Luc Godard’s unprecedented run through the sixties as postmodern genre revisionism. He tackled the gangster film (Breathless, Pierrot le Fou), the musical (A Woman is a Woman), science fiction (Alphaville) and so on—the first that really sticks out from that mold is Masculin Féminin– Godard’s 11th. I think you could view it as the first in his new hybrid essay format- though the cutaway style still has much in common with Pierrot Le Fou from the year before
  • It has a very slow start. Jean-Pierre Léaud (in his first non-cameo collaboration with Godard- he’s in Pierrot and Alphaville) is making a speech in a café, and then there’s realism here as he tries to pick up Chantal Goya’s character. There’s just eight minutes of him chatting her up in the bathroom.
  • Léaud is of course best known for his work with Truffaut. He worked with Truffaut often but will be remembered for his work in The 400 Blows and the Antoine Doinel series.
  • Godard uses the cutaway here—his variation on Ozu’s pillow shot. For Godard much of the personality of the film is in the editing room.
  • You have to admire the writing from Ebert- “The curious thing about Jean-Luc Godard’s recent films is that (like good chili) they seem better the next day. This is particularly true of “Masculine Feminine,” which I like a great deal more at this instant then I did at any time while I was watching it.”  https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/masculine-feminine-1967
  • Godard shifts between voice-overs, Goya’s first at the 12-minute mark—Goya is no Anna Karina as an actor, but she’s cute, and playing herself here as a pop star. Goya herself would be a huge star (music, not movies) in the 1970’s
  • Godard’s postmodern reflexivity—pulling back the curtain and laughing at the artifice of filmmaking—chapters titles here for “3”, “4”, “4A” at one point and then like Pierrot we skip ahead at random—“12”, and “15”- haha
  • Editorializing (often political) cutaways with a gun firing sound effect
  • Paul (Léaud’s character) does a lot of Q & A or surveying with women— I wonder if this film influenced Mike Nichols’ Carnal Knowledge– but Nichols’ work is really superior in every way—the acting, the characters, the visuals
  • Godard’s use of Léaud is fascinating- both in comparison with how Godard uses Belmondo, and how Truffaut uses Léaud. Léaud here has this sort of uncool desperation that Belmondo doesn’t. Léaud gives off this sort of charmless arrogance—the scene where he’s whistling Bach when Goya’s giving him an autographed pop record. This is a compliment to Belmondo more than anything really
  • Another off-putting scene for Léaud’s character is the “dialogue with consumer product” surveying scene. Even off-screen, just asking questions, both Léaud and Godard come off as crazy arrogant—the grueling (and stylistically dormant and uneven) Q & A as they uncomfortably belittle a “Miss 19” about her ignorance.
  • Long stylistically quiet stretches—a long dinner conversation – the best reading of the film is for its statement on sexuality, relationships. It reminds me of a minor film – 2001’s 13 Conversations About One Thing
  • The great line “this film should be called ‘The Children of Marx and Coca Cola””
  • Recommend but not in the top 10 of 1966