Masculin Féminin (1966)

A romance between young Parisians, shown through a series of vignettes.

Director:

Jean-Luc Godard

Writers:

Jean-Luc Godard, Guy de Maupassant (stories)

Stars:

Jean-Pierre Léaud, Chantal Goya, Marlène Jobert

3 wins & 1 nomination.

Cast

Cast overview:
Jean-Pierre Léaud	...	Paul - un jeune homme instable
Chantal Goya	...	Madeleine Zimmer - une petite chanteuse
Marlène Jobert	...	Elisabeth Choquet - la copine d'Elisabeth
Michel Debord	...	Robert Packard - un syndicaliste
Catherine-Isabelle Duport	...	Catherine-Isabelle
Evabritt Strandberg	...	Elle (la femme dans le film) (as Eva-Britt Strandberg)
Birger Malmsten	...	Lui (l'homme dans le film)

Storyline

Paul is young, just demobbed from national service in the French Army, and disillusioned with civilian life. As his girlfriend builds herself a career as a pop singer, Paul becomes more isolated from his friends and peers ('the children of Marx and Coca Cola', as the credits announce) and their social and emotional politics.

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Plot Keywords:

singer | friend | french | france | politics | 

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Taglines:

Jean-Luc Godard's Swinging Look at Youth and Love in Paris Today!

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Genres:

Drama | Romance

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Certificate:

Not Rated

Details

Official Sites:

Rialto Pictures

Country:

France Sweden

Language:

French Swedish English

Release Date:

22 March 1966 (France)

Also Known As:

Masculin Féminin

Filming Locations:

Paris, France

Box Office

Opening Weekend USA:

$26,855, 13 February 2005, Limited Release

Gross USA:

$200,087, 4 September 2005

Company Credits

Production Co:

Anouchka Films,Argos Films,Sandrews

Technical Specs

Runtime:

110 min

Sound Mix:

Mono

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

The film was shot in Sweden. Ingmar Bergman, not being a fan of Jean-Luc Godard found out about the film, went to go and see it and called it "a classic case of Godard: mind-numbingly boring".

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Quotes

Paul: Man's conscience doesn't determine his existence. His social being determines his conscience.

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Crazy Credits

Contrary to what Paul and his friend decide in the laundry mat sequence, Godard points out just before the credits that the word "féminin" does in fact contain another word: "fin" [end].

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Connections

References The 400 Blows (1959)

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Soundtracks

Tu m'as trop menti
(uncredited)
Written by Jean-Jacques Debout
Performed by Chantal Goya
Editions de RCA

User Reviews

Anthropology of a decade

Possible Spoliers: Though not Godard's best, Masculin, feminin is in many ways the prototypical Godard film, exhibiting as it does both his characteristic virtues and characteristic vices. The plot is simple and barley manages to hold the film together; a young man (Paul) conducts a shapeless relationship with a singer (Madeline), works on a cigarette trick, engages in politically oriented graffiti, wrestles with only moderate energy with his own political views, watches two strangers get killed and takes scant notice, etc. Friends and acquaintances of the pair drift in and out of the film, to no great effect.

The film, like most Godard films, should be dreadful, and to many it will appear to be just that. But it manages to develop a rhythm, largely thanks to interesting editing choices, and keeps the viewer interested, if not exactly riveted. One hangs on with a Godard film in an attempt to discern the pattern at work-there seems to be no organizing principle as such, nothing particular the filmmaker wishes to communicate, but one senses a method, or a semblance of one, to Godard's madness.

Nearly 40 years on, Masculin, feminin appears very much a product of its time, though not without some claim to universality. References to the Vietnam War and to De Gaulle along with detailed, and dreary, political texts read aloud by the actors, do date the film somewhat, and yet a good deal of ground is covered; love and sex, birth control, women's rights, democracy and liberty, France vs. America, Bob Dylan, the Final Solution, German war guilt, union agitation, random violence, vanity, pornography. Trouble is, neither the characters nor the film reaches any particular conclusions about any of these things; many of them are mentioned in passing-themes stillborn. But perhaps that's part of the point. Godard seems to be acting almost like a

documentarian-at this point in time these kinds of things were discussed, but desultorily, as a part of the process of living, but not as its whole. Will this interest you, the putative viewer? Who knows. In my opinion, this is hardly a great film. Scenes drag on and lead nowhere; dramatic events happen but have no bearing on the rest of the film and thus we are not inclined to care; the sound of gunfire and titles break the film into chapters for no justifiable reason; Godard appears as confused as his protagonists as to the value of art, politics, and action. Still, the film has a wholly original texture, and that cannot be faked.