Masculin Feminin (The Criterion Collection) |  | Director: Jean-Luc Godard
Actors: Jean-Pierre Léaud, Chantal Goya, Marlène Jobert, Michel Debord, Catherine-Isabelle Duport
Studio: Criterion
List Price: $29.95
Buy New: $25.95
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Format: Black & White, Closed-captioned, DVD, Special Edition, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
Languages: English (Unknown), English (Subtitled), English (Original Language), French (Original Language), Swedish (Original Language), English (Published)
Rating: Unrated
Region: 1
Discs: 1
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Running Time: 103 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 7.1 x 5.4 x 0.6
MPN: PMIDMAS180D
ISBN: 078003029X
UPC: 037429209226
EAN: 9780780030299
Release Date: September 20, 2005
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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Product Description
Special Edition of the Jean-Luc Godard film from 1966. Paul is young, just finishing his national service in the French Army, and dishillusioned with civilian life. As his girlfriend builds herself a career as a pop singer, Paul becomes more isolated from his friends and peers and their social and emotional politics. An excellent film, still as fresh as the day it was made.
Amazon.com essential video
Juxtaposing images of pristine, romantic innocence with ones of mute, meaningless violence, Godard's Masculin-Féminin first lulls with a hypnotic, disjointed story line and then stuns with scenes of tremendous depth and meaning. This outrageous film follows the somewhat ineffectual courtship of Madeline, an aspiring pop singer, by Paul, an erstwhile journalist and interviewer but mostly groundless searcher. As in most Godard films, plot mechanics are secondary to elements such as dialog (generally marvelous, but sometimes a bit too pointed), lighting (bizarre and oversaturated, but never less than fascinating), shot framing (extraordinarily thoughtful), and performance. Godard allows his camera to linger on single faces, without cutting, for what seems by modern standards to be extremely long segments--perhaps even excruciatingly long--but the remarkably subtle cast members never disappoint, particularly the fantastically adept and frequently hilarious lead actors, Jean-Pierre Léaud and Chantal Goya. The filmmaker has little to add to our collective understanding of the relationship between masculine et feminine writ large; in fact, most of the female characters are uncomfortably stereotypical, framed as either willfully oblivious to the world or subtly (or overtly) deadly. But as an examination of a young generation faced with the prospect of war in Vietnam and the vagaries of French socialism, Masculin-Féminin proves remorselessly and chillingly trenchant. A towering influence, it would seem, on Whit Stillman's similarly themed Barcelona--but while Stillman lacks the conviction to follow his instincts to their logical, violent conclusions, Godard faces his uncompromising story with elegance and courage. In French, with subtitles that are occasionally difficult to read. --Miles Bethany
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