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| RETURNING MAY 25/26/27 SUN/MON/TUE, 2008, AS PART OF OUR GODARD'S 60s SERIES |
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“More acute, and more prophetic, than ever… Godard’s
insight into the moods “Godard’s classic seismograph of the 1960s youth quake… at
Film Forum in an
ineffably gorgeous new print. MASCULINE FEMININE taps into the brainwave
of dashing, dreaming, metropolitan twenty-somethings as they flirt with
commitment and ambivalence… While all of Mr. Godard’s trademarks
are
here-the movie is a glinting mosaic of titles, quotations, puns, gags,
digressions, didacticism, plastic epiphanies, and soundtrack
discontinuities-this is the most naturalistic of his 1960s films. There
is a
strong documentary impulse in the mise-en-scène, with its unmediated
street
scenes and verité swiftness…. With its warmth, immediacy,
and subtle
multivalence, it might just be the closest thing he’s ever made
to that
mythic total movie.” “The freshest, liveliest movie that’s opening in Manhattan this
week!” “Exuberantly inventive!” “A masterpiece! Who wouldn’t want to live in
the supercool, girl-pop world
of Godard’s freshest comedy? “That period known as the ’60s is one of the
richest in world cinema, “A classic of sex, politics and youth that's nearly
40 years old yet seems
ageless.” “Not to be missed... An inimitably impish contemplation
of 1965 Paris-- Click here to read David Denby’s review from The New Yorker (1966) In the film for which director Jean-Luc Godard coined his famous phrase “the children of Marx and Coca-Cola,” French New Wave icon Jean-Pierre Léaud (best known as Truffaut’s alter ego Antoine Doinel in The 400 Blows, Stolen Kisses, etc.) stars as a romantic young idealist and literary lion-wannabe who chases budding pop star Chantal Goya (six of whose real-life yé yé hits provide both soundtrack music and commentary). Despite markedly different musical tastes (he’s into Bach) and political leanings (he’s a communist, she’s clueless), the two soon become romantically involved and begin a ménage à quatre with Madeleine’s two roommates. Ostensibly basing his film on two stories by de Maupassant, Godard mixes off-the-cuff reportage and mise-en-scène to create a strikingly honest portrait of youth and sex (in France, it was prohibited to persons under 18 — “the very audience it was meant for,” griped Godard – while the Berlin Film Festival named it the year’s best film for young people), with Godard’s camera probing his young actors in a series of verité-style interviews about love, love-making, and politics. More than any other film of Godard’s heyday (it was his eleventh feature in six years), MASCULINE FEMININE is a time capsule of France and Paris in the ’60s, with references to everyone from Charles DeGaulle and André Malraux to James Bond and Bob Dylan, and — true to the Godard style — filled with jokes, puns and non-sequiturs, the story repeatedly interrupted by seemingly extraneous incidents: a woman blows away her husband; a scene paraphrased from LeRoi Jones’ Dutchman; Brigitte Bardot rehearsing the lines of a play in a bistro; a Swedish sex-cum-art-film-within-a-film, with Léaud stalking off just when things get hot on-screen — to deliver a lecture on aspect ratio to the projectionist! In her New Republic review (the very review which convinced The New Yorker to hire her), Pauline Kael called MASCULINE FEMININE “that rare movie achievement: a work of grace and beauty in a contemporary setting… a combination of essay, journalistic sketches, news and portraiture, love lyric and satire. The dance of the sex drawing together and remaining separate… MASCULINE FEMININE shows the most dazzingly inventive and audacious artist in movies today at a new peak. “ Léaud’s engaging performance won him the Berlin Film Festival’s “Silver Bear” for Best Actor. Showtimes:SUN/MON 1:10, 3:15*, 5:30, 7:35, 9:40 TUE 1:10, 3:15, 5:30 *3:15 SHOW ON SUNDAY INTRODUCED BY AUTHOR RICHARD BRODY | |||||||
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ABOUT THE FILM:
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