{"id":21449,"date":"2016-05-25T19:23:27","date_gmt":"2016-05-26T02:23:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qgp.ykq.mybluehost.me\/cinephiled\/?p=21449"},"modified":"2016-05-25T19:23:27","modified_gmt":"2016-05-26T02:23:27","slug":"videophiled-jean-luc-godards-a-married-woman-and-new-editions-of-manhunter-and-buster-keatons-short-films","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinephiled.com\/videophiled-jean-luc-godards-a-married-woman-and-new-editions-of-manhunter-and-buster-keatons-short-films\/","title":{"rendered":"Videophiled: Jean-Luc Godard’s ‘A Married Woman’ and new editions of ‘Manhunter’ and Buster Keaton’s short films"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"marriedwomanBD\"A Married Woman<\/i><\/b> (Cohen, Blu-ray, DVD), subtitled “Fragments of a film shot in 1964,” is Jean-Luc Godard’s modern portrait of love and sex in the media-saturated sixties with Macha M\u00e9ril in a role that was clearly meant for Godard’s wife and longtime muse Anna Karina (they were separated at the time) and it channels Godard’s feelings at the time. Like Karina, M\u00e9ril’s Charlotte is beautiful young woman who is married to an older man and having an affair with an actor. The film opens on a montage where Charlotte is reduced to parts\u2014legs, arms, back, lips, midrift, isolated glimpses of the naked female suggesting those erogenous zones that could not be photographed in a mainstream feature film\u2014caressed by her unidentified lover. It’s shot in creamy cool black-and-white by longtime cinematographer Raoul Coutard and the strikingly handsome formality is both erotic and removed, suggesting a physical intimacy and an emotional disconnection even in even the most intimate scenes of lovemaking and pillow talk.<\/p>\n

Charlotte has no close friends (at least that we see), lives in a sleek modern apartment devoid of lived-in warmth, and shrinks from the touch of her pilot husband Pierre (Philippe Leroy). He’s an intellectual with a condescending attitude and she’s more comfortable living in the moment than grappling with history and memory, which becomes all too apparent in their uncomfortable post-dinner dialogue. In between the lovemaking and the conversations, Charlotte discovers she is pregnant. She doesn’t know which man is the father<\/p>\n

It is one of Godard’s most visually handsome films, even while it becomes a study in alienation and disconnection. Advertising images, logos, newspaper headlines, and scraps of text fill the film. Lingerie ads are found in every magazine she peruses and loom over her from massive billboards and the sides of buildings as she walks the streets, reducing women to their sexuality. She’s practically a commodity herself (the ideal of woman as seen in the ads) desired by her husband in a marriage disintegrating out of a lack of communication and her lover in an affair from which she is increasingly detached. She’s so alienated from her life that she does not seem to realize how unhappy she is.<\/p>\n

A Married Woman<\/i><\/b> has since been overshadowed by Godard’s more overtly political and confrontational films, such as Vivre sa vie<\/i> and Weekend<\/i>, and playful genre exercises like A bande a parte<\/i> and Pierrot le fou<\/i>, yet at the time it was a cause c\u00e9l\u00e8bre in France when the censorship board banned the film until Godard made minor changes and it became one of the most financially successful films of his career. Charlotte is a product of her environment, giving in to her consumerist impulses driven by the cacophony of advertising around her, but his feeling for Charlotte is genuine\u2014few of his movies evince such emotional sympathy\u2014and his criticism of consumer culture is part of her story.<\/p>\n