Paris, 1960: Jean-Luc Godard directs one of the most influential movies of the last 75 years. Breathless popularizes the jump cut, self-referentiality, and distancing in cinema, to the point that the film itself no longer feels as revolutionary as it must’ve been when it came out (the Psycho conundrum). Of the 15 films Godard made from 1960 to 1967, from Breathless to Weekend, I’d rank Breathless last—perhaps because it’s been predigested by pop culture for over half a century. It’s hard to see the film for what it is rather than what it spawned. Weekend’s a bit shaggy and discussed to death as well; its pop art revolutionaries are relics, no longer peers. Still, these are the Godard films that’re talked about and screened most often, along with 1963’s Contempt and, to a lesser degree, 1965’s Pierrot le Fou (not even Quentin Tarantino’s enthusiasm for A Band Apart could lift it to the top tier of the canon).
Although not obscure, these Godard films nevertheless deserve a greater reputation: Vivre Sa Vie, Alphaville, A Married Woman, 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her. Again, these are some of the most famous films in the history of arthouse cinema, but no one is going to make a movie about the making of any Godard film other than Breathless (Richard Linklater’s Nouvelle Vague premieres at Cannes next month, and I hope it’s not a Wikipedia hack job like A Complete Unknown).
Why make a movie about the making of Breathless? Anyone with a passing interest in film knows the story. What about Godard in Greece making Contempt? Running around Paris shooting Alphaville without lights in January 1965? Perhaps the most chaotic production of Godard’s first seven years as a director was his second film, A Woman is a Woman, touring theaters now with a 4K restoration. Long since out of print, never released on Blu-Ray, A Woman is a Woman deserves to join the top tier in Godard’s canon: unlike Breathless, it’s brimming with ideas and an enthusiasm totally at odds with the grim fatalism of Breathless.
Godard had no idea what he was doing when making the movie. Richard Brody’s biography, Everything is Cinema, describes how the director exasperated technicians, his key crew, and his cast by regularly showing up to the set without a plan, without a script, and in a foul mood. By all accounts, he was spinning as many plates as he dropped; A Woman is a Woman is a movie made of gobs and gobs of paint thrown at the wall, and considering how rushed and nervy its production was, it’s remarkable how much sticks. Anna Karina, Jean Claude-Brialy, and Jean Paul Belmondo are in a love triangle—from there, it’s all riffing, by no means controlled, but mesmerizing still. A Woman is a Woman is also further evidence that Godard is far from the aloof intellectual he’s widely regarded as: this is a joyous film, not in love with itself, but the history of cinema. Sixty-four years later, the level of intoxication with the medium is overwhelming, and you can’t help leaving the theater with an ounce of contagious creativity.
—Follow Nicky Otis Smith on Twitter: @MonicaQuibbits