"A Woman Is a Woman" is Jean-Luc Godard's second feature film. The French New Wave pioneer once called it "my true film debut" in an interview, and for the most critics The praised "Exhausted" (1960) was not very satisfied: "I realized that "Exhausted" was my unconscious work. I used to think I knew what the film was about, but after a year or two after the film was completed, I realized I don’t know its content at all.” (1) In this work that many people regard as Godard’s most approachable and light-hearted, Angela, the stripper played by Anna Karina, becomes the absolute protagonist, and in a certain In this sense, Jean-Claude Briari and Jean-Paul Belmondo play between applause, quite feminist, which was fully developed in 1962's "As You Like It". The role setting of the film "Threesome" also vaguely bears the shadow of Godard's subsequent filming of "Outlaws" (1964) and "Close comrade" Truffaut's "Ancestor and Occupy" (1962). But unlike the above works and most other films of Gundam, the film has no violence, no guns, and no death. Among the colorful and brilliant colors, only the scarlet blood is missing.
Although the well-known Hollywood golden age song and dance stars Said Charles, Gene Kelly, choreographer Bob Foss and other names are all in Karina (note: the actor’s name is used to refer to the role in the following text) The parody scene is mentioned, but what Godard really wants to do is to subvert or reconstruct the Hollywood music film. The film uses a lot of real-life shooting, natural light, small choreography style dance moves seem casual and amateur, but it has a sense of realism and freedom that most traditional large-scale musicals can’t match: Karina asks Belmondo to do it with herself The same antics: ancient Egyptian squatting, one-legged upside-down, leaning back to push up buttocks, etc., while a couple is on the side and innocently affectionate; Karina asks Briali to clean the room, but her boyfriend pretends The "broom waltz" jumped up like golf; Briali sometimes had a lot of playfulness, riding his beloved bicycle and dancing around the apartment...
In addition to the casual and lively quasi-singing and dancing scenes, the film also has many funny and interesting sections. Briali and Karina competed with uvula, suffocating their breath and vying to show off their voices. Belmondo came to the apartment and competed with Briari with a clumsy performance. The former imitated a boxer and practiced a one-man show, while the latter "secretly" took out an egg from his pocket and slowly raised his hand to "transform" it. Briali deliberately started brushing his teeth when he was halfway through the conversation, groaning in his mouth so that people were completely puzzled. Karina also copied it as it was, like two quirky rascals. When the shower head failed, Karina found a hammer and knocked on the water pipe to act as a manual switch for the shower.
The most hilarious scenes may be etched in the minds of most viewers. How to continue arguing when you are angry with your partner and refuse to talk? I saw the two jumping up from the bed in turn, carrying a floor lamp, going to the bookshelf to pick books, and then covering them with their hands to highlight a certain phrase on the cover as a curse: "monster" "move your butt from here." "Go Out", "Hangman", "Peruvian Mummy", "Pseudo Artist", "Sardine"... After several rounds between you and me, the two couldn't help but smile at each other, as harmonious as ever. When this game that is both bickering and flirting, a bunch of weird and charming background sounds pierced my ears, like the rumbling sound of a certain machine running continuously, and like the thunderstorms that ignited in the summer, accompanied by Driving through the splashing raindrops with the enlarged wheels, knocked through the lonely and unbearable night. Godard combined these seemingly loose fragments of life together, highlighting the iconic characteristics of the French New Wave: spontaneity and improvisation. (2) Behind this feature lies an existential worldview, a "discontinuity" philosophy that is almost exclusively French. This philosophical concept is summarized in a refined and specific essay "A Film of Appearance" by Eric Rhodes and George Pearson. It is excerpted as follows: 1. A world in which all appearances are equally important. A world without continuity. The self is a series of events that are not clearly related to each other; its past and future are a series of actions, but now it is an emptiness to be explained by actions. Therefore, the self no longer appears to be stable. It does not have an inner core-no essence. 2. Other people also have no essence, because they are also a series of infinite appearances, which are always unpredictable. Only things—that is, things with "essence"—can be understood. People are always a mystery. 3. Since a stable reality no longer exists, traditional moral concepts are no longer trustworthy. These concepts attempt to prescribe the nature and order of appearances, so that they can be foreseen, so that people cannot see their true situation in a discontinuous world, that is, complete isolation. Everyone has the responsibility to temporarily stipulate their own code of ethics; self-proclaimed as any kind of role, that is, to classify a person as a "robber", "pianist" or "intellectual" is a manifestation of evading responsibility. It becomes "dishonest". This kind of "dishonesty" degenerates and turns people into things. In the sense of existence, he is dead. 4. On the contrary, to avoid dishonesty, morality must be an endless and painful process of temporary decision. One no longer strives to achieve ideals like kindness and nobility, but strives to implement one's own new discoveries (this is the only remaining "moral goal"). Therefore, the behavior must be adapted to current conditions. 5. For this reason, every behavior is unique and has no social precedent, and it seems to others to be unmotivated, because there is no stable and unchanging self on which motivation can rely. This led to the seemingly absurd "unmotivated behavior" argument. 6. We are continuously reformed in every behavior. This is the condition for us to enjoy freedom. But such a continuous freedom requires us to take full responsibility for all actions in reality, the past, and the future. It is only theoretically possible to achieve this harsh ideal in life, so we try to abandon this ideal and become a passive animal willingly. For a person as a thing, the world is no longer a series of infinitely many appearances, it becomes a series of infinitely many accidental events. (3) This discontinuous worldview is not only presented in this film as a strong dramatic demand and lack of conflicts, the randomness and weak motives of the characters' actions, and the casual and impromptu plot, but also in the form ( There are multiple and complicated manifestations in audiovisual language. These experimental methods of slanting the front are all breaking the illusion of continuity and stability created by traditional narrative films, and revealing Godard’s unique "anti-movie" aesthetics. The field that ties form and content is language. Just as the 19th-century German poet Stephen Georg’s poem "words are broken, nothing can exist", deconstructing language is a powerful means to dispel the illusion of continuity. In the film, Karina, Briari and Belmondo have mentioned French grammatical problems several times, such as "If you put an adjective after a noun, will the meaning remain the same?" (The serious answer should be classified and discussed because there are few Some French adjectives have different meanings before and after the noun), "The predicate verb of'woman is the root of all disasters' can be singular or plural." etc. In a telephone quarrel between Karina and Briali in the latter part of the film, the director cuts the close-up shots of the two people back and forth quickly, so that the speech of the two sides gradually overlapped, thereby forcing the audience to work hard to identify the information in the dialogue. This kind of linguistic experiment is of great interest to Godard. Let me give you a few typical explorations during the New Wave period: There are a lot of errors in the translation texts of different languages in "Contempt" (1963), but there are many errors in the translations of different languages. The translation of the poems is not bad; in "Madman Pierrot" (1965), the seemingly linear plot is interrupted from time to time by the gradually separated and deconstructed diary pictures of the characters. The mouth shapes of the characters and the language heard by the audience Misplacement; "Weekend" (1967) allows the characters to continue to deliver long, unstructured talks to the screen. 6. We are continuously reformed in every behavior. This is the condition for us to enjoy freedom. But such a continuous freedom requires us to take full responsibility for all actions in reality, the past, and the future. It is only theoretically possible to achieve this harsh ideal in life, so we try to abandon this ideal and become a passive animal willingly. For a person as a thing, the world is no longer a series of infinitely many appearances, it becomes a series of infinitely many accidental events. (3) This discontinuous worldview is not only presented in this film as a strong dramatic demand and lack of conflicts, the randomness and weak motives of the characters' actions, and the casual and impromptu plot, but also in the form ( There are multiple and complicated manifestations in audiovisual language. These experimental methods of slanting the front are all breaking the illusion of continuity and stability created by traditional narrative films, and revealing Godard’s unique "anti-movie" aesthetics. The field that ties form and content is language. Just as the 19th-century German poet Stephen Georg’s poem "words are broken, nothing can exist", deconstructing language is a powerful means to dispel the illusion of continuity. In the film, Karina, Briari and Belmondo have mentioned French grammatical problems several times, such as "If you put an adjective after a noun, will the meaning remain the same?" (The serious answer should be classified and discussed because there are few Some French adjectives have different meanings before and after the noun), "The predicate verb of'woman is the root of all disasters' can be singular or plural." etc. In a telephone quarrel between Karina and Briali in the latter part of the film, the director cuts the close-up shots of the two people back and forth quickly, so that the speech of the two sides gradually overlapped, thereby forcing the audience to work hard to identify the information in the dialogue. This kind of linguistic experiment is of great interest to Godard. Let me give you a few typical explorations during the New Wave period: There are a lot of errors in the translation texts of different languages in "Contempt" (1963), but there are many errors in the translations of different languages. The translation of the poems is not bad; in "Madman Pierrot" (1965), the seemingly linear plot is interrupted from time to time by the gradually separated and deconstructed diary pictures of the characters. The mouth shapes of the characters and the language heard by the audience Misplacement; "Weekend" (1967) allows the characters to continue to deliver long, unstructured talks to the screen.
As Godard's first color widescreen film, "Women is a Woman" may be regarded as pleasing in terms of color, but it is difficult to find the original use of color in subsequent works. The most eye-catching feature in the film is Anna Karina’s "blue, white and red" mix-and-match costume-blue hat, white coat, red skirt and blue stockings. The bright, large solid color dazzles the eye. With dazzling power, it also reflects Karina's willful and energetic personality. Undoubtedly, Godard’s ten-minute love for the French flag-style blue, white and red (respectively symbolizing freedom, equality, and fraternity) with pure colors, continued and deepened this in his subsequent masterpieces such as "Contempt" and "Madman Pierrot". One color configuration.
In terms of photography, Godard used rhetorical strategies such as slightly obtrusively oblique composition, solid stage light, and blur out of focus. The oblique composition mainly appeared when Karina and Belmondo walked home. When Karina danced a striptease, the red, blue, and purple solid stage lights alternately shrouded her. Since the effect is close to a pure color filter, I can’t help thinking about the red, white and blue of the opening of "Contempt" when Brigitte Bardot talks naked. The filter change and the alternate use of pure color filters of different colors in a single banquet scene in "Madman Pierrot" can be said to have a strong impact on the unity and integrity of the image space. When I watched it for the first time, I was completely stunned. . As for the unique blurring and out-of-focus effects in the film, it is reproduced in many bookstore scenes. The blurry focus in the foreground is not very obvious, but the books on the bookshelf in the background have serious double images, and everything is blurred, as if through The image of frosted glass gives people the illusion of being involved in a different dimension. Why is it only handled in the bookstore scene? Is there any reference? It is difficult for me to answer, and of course, I cannot rule out the photographer's mistakes or equipment problems in the unified shooting of the bookstore scene. Karina asked Belmondo to prove her love for herself. The "ugliest man in France" offered to hit the wall on the spot as a test, and then went out and hit the brick wall across the road. Godard showed this action with a degraded fast camera, which was accompanied by a sound effect similar to the slot machine starting to operate after coin insertion. Isn't this dislocation of the sound and picture another proof of Godard's arrogant imagination? The farther the distance between the sound and the picture, the more charming metaphorical gaps can be created. Thinking about it carefully, after the spark of love, how many people will persevere in it, sinking deeper and deeper like a gambling that cannot sustain themselves, and finally end up in a miserable situation of physical and mental exhaustion and even bankruptcy?
Editing should not be underestimated. Godard's "Exhausted" became the first film to use jumpers on a large scale. Although jumpers appeared many times in this film, what really shocked the mind was a dizzying montage. The set of montages located between 54 minutes and 12 seconds to 55 minutes and 46 seconds of the movie successfully destroyed the illusion of the unity of time and space in the movie by inserting images that were not clearly related to the front and rear shots, and dispelled the continuity of this set of viewpoint shots. The shaking hand-held photography is always accompanied by the voice-over of Karina's chat with his girlfriend, and the focus is shifted from time to time, creating a sense of confounding panic. In a series of subjective shots, pedestrians kept passing by the camera and looking at the camera, as if Karina and his girlfriend became the most anticipated celebrities (or ordinary people who wore strange clothes, behaved and styled so differently). People), are constantly looking at each other with passers-by. In a daze, I seem to be returning to the streets of Paris in Agnès Varda's "Keo at Five to Seven O'clock" (1962), walking alone in the fear of death. This set of montage passages is interrupted by sudden camera changes from time to time. The complete sequence from front to back is as follows: Subjective shots looking at pedestrians (front and back shots)-to Angela's apartment and the blue sky Upside down shot-same front-high street view overhead shot-same front-medium shot double shot (Karina and his girlfriend)-slow ascent shot of part of the back side of the Arc de Triomphe-medium shot double shot-same front ——Mid-range double mirror (shaking hands and farewell) — 5 Karina close-ups in different locations quickly assembled — Mid-range shot with Belmondo in the bar (separated on the left and right sides), and the montage is over. This is a counter-examination of Eisenstein’s Soviet formalist montage theory. The connection between the lens and the lens is no longer a means of enlightenment with clear meaning or metaphorical color. There is no need to delve into the hard-to-find meaning. I seemed to hear the dull sound of time cracking apart, and my body was soft and completely unable to move.
Brecht's Verfremdung theory has a deep influence on Godard, and the new wave master has used the technique of alienation in almost every film of his. First of all, the characters in the film sometimes wink at the camera or insert a sentence or two to interact with the audience, thereby breaking the "fourth wall" and tearing off the illusion of the integrity and continuity of the film's time and space. I still remember that Godard once asked the actors in "Weekend" to face the camera and shout "It's a really bad movie, all we met are lunatics." Paradoxically, Briali in this film turned to the audience at the end of the film. The straightforward words are completely different: "I don't know if this is a comedy or a tragedy, but it must be a masterpiece." Secondly, this alienation technique of breaking the "fourth wall" can be further developed into directness. Exposing the camera and its related shooting procedures, revealing the media nature of the film as an "absent present." "A Woman Is a Woman" opens in this way: the film flashes through the close-up scenes of the three leading actors in turn, their names are overlaid on them, until the title of the film in red letters appears, at the same time, there are three sounds gradually. Voiceover: "Lights", "Camera", "Start shooting!" In "Contempt" two years later, Godard starts with two long shots that fully show the mechanics of the film. The camera moves gradually from the depth to the foreground and is aimed at the audience until It completely overlaps with the camera frame on the side of the audience, which is equivalent to opening the scene with two cameras "looking at each other" and then "kissing" the docking, arousing the viewer's reflection on the basic film machine. Finally, Godard is also keen to apply irrelevant shots that are interspersed in movies. These shots are often solid-color large fonts, and sometimes they are illogical pictures that interrupt the coherent narrative. These two tricks are the most avant-garde and the most obscure in Gundam. You can see all screens in "Weekend" that you understand. The film also inserts red, yellow, and blue characters in the beginning and end of the film, but these symbols have clear references, participate in the narrative process, and do not appear in the middle of the film, so the effect of alienation is not thorough enough, and the "Weekend" is repeatedly interspersed. It is meaningless title and date, which is very disturbing.
During the New Wave period, Godard and Trüfuchamp were close friends, accustomed to planting "ads" from each other's films in their respective works. The lines of this film include "Tonight's TV broadcast "Exhausted" (I propagate myself) and "How about Zu and Zhan?" The heroine of "Zu and Zhan" also played by Jeanna Moreau. A cameo. The most unforgettable is the sound and picture game that mimics Truffau’s "Shoot the Pianist" (1960): Karina’s girlfriend is smiling, with both hands in the air making the piano action, and the background sound is synchronized with the fingering. With the sound of playing, she immediately changed her gestures, pointed at Karina with a "pistol" and "fired" several shots. Accompanied by the sound of gunshots that were also true and illusory, it was like dreaming back to the sad and disillusioning ending of "Shooting the Pianist". It is infinitely embarrassing. This realistic audio-visual game using surreal sounds also appeared in "Madman Pierrot" later: a stack of parallel matches sandwiched between the fingers was used as a "bomb" to simulate the scene of the US military bombing in the Vietnam War. Realistic background sound effects of bombing. Another example of the sound experiment in this film is at the beginning of the film. In the passage when Karina walks on the street, the director switches the background sound between the off-picture soundtrack, the silence and the live environment noise in turn. In this way, every frame of the picture is immersed in a new wave of freedom and agility. "Godard is very interested in the mutual interference of this kind of sound. He often uses synchronized sound to record similar scenes (or recreate the same effect in the recording studio), which undoubtedly makes us realize that our ears must try their best to understand. What kind of news is being spread.” (4) In "As You Like It", Godard not only reproduced the interrupted soundtrack and the sudden silence technique, but also tried the "machine gun jitter jumper"-in response to the sudden rhythm of the machine gun , The camera panning to the right also fluctuates up and down rapidly, and it is a movement disguised by a jumper. These experiments laid the foundation for his exploration of more complex sound methods in works such as "The Name of Carmen" and "A Tribute to Mary" in the 1980s.
The breakthrough rhetorical strategy of subtitles is another space for Godard to extend the possibilities of film language. In the scene where Karina and Briali broke out, the camera started from Briali and moved from left to right, and the annotated subtitles gradually appeared from left to right: "Yimi followed Angela’s words, because he Love her", then went back the same way, panning from right to left, and the subtitles gradually revealed from right to left in the opposite direction: "Angela got stuck in because she loves him." After this action, I saw repetition again, the camera shook left, and the subtitles popped up from right to left: "For Angela and Yimi, because they love each other, everything seems wrong." Returning: "They all mistakenly thought , Their maturity and endless love will make them go further."
The mass-energy equation "E=mc^2" marked by neon lights was used repeatedly in Godard's dystopian sci-fi classic "Alpha City" (1965), which won the Berlin Golden Bear Award, as an insertive picture to break the coherence of the movie . The film has already taken a step forward. The words "Still has nice breasts" appearing in the middle and the words "FIN" at the end both use neon words as auxiliary subtitles and participate in the narrative link.
I feel that this blog should start with Godard and end with Godard. In an interview with Tom Milner in 1962, Godard talked about the purpose of the film: "Many people don’t like "Women Are Women" because they don’t understand what the film conveys. But in fact it doesn’t It doesn’t convey anything. If you see a bouquet of flowers on the table, do you think it conveys anything? It doesn’t prove anything. I simply hope that the film can provide pleasure to people. I hope that the film itself is full of internal conflicts, rich Yu Zhangli, there is both joy and sorrow. Of course, in real life we can’t do this, we can only do this or that, but I hope to do both in the movie.” 5) References: 1. "Interview with Godard", edited by David Street, translated by Qu Xiaorui, Jilin Publishing Group Co., Ltd., January 2010: (1) 47; (5) 49 2 . "François Truffau", Annet Insdorf, translated by Shen Yubing, Guangxi Normal University Press, March 2012: (2) 21 3. "Introduction to Western Film History", Shao Mujun, China Film Press, June 1982: (3) Quoted from 118~119 4. "Theory of Film Practice", Noel Birch, translated by Zhou Chuanji, China Film Press, September 1992: (4) 94 Footnote ⑤ 【All rights reserved, no reprinting】
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