Cheap A Woman is a Woman - Criterion Collection (DVD) (Jean-Claude Brialy, Anna Karina, Jean-Paul Belmondo) (Jean-Luc Godard) Price

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Customer Reviews of A Woman is a Woman - Criterion Collection

Seldom has the old cliché of the love triangle been filmed with such verve and innovation, and the movie is funny, tragic, happy and sad, and ultimately triumphant. The performances are wonderful. Brialy is fine as the boyfriend torn between his love for Angela and his stubborn pragmatism and Belmondo is typically cool, complete with customary cigarette permanently dangling from his mouth. Both male leads are peripheral however, for this is Karina's movie, as she examines the complexities of life and the difficulties of being a woman.

Technically, Godard is at his most playful, employing his usual array of stunning cinematic devises - there are visual gags galore, fluid tracking shots, Raoul Coutard's garish photography ( Godard's first film in colour ), a soundtrack of deliberately exaggerated big band music that seeming appears and disappears at any given moment, and the kind of referential cinema that Godard loves. There are nods towards Francois Truffaut and his films " Jules et Jim " and " Shoot the Piano Player " and at one point Belmondo mentions a screening on TV of " Breathless ", Godard's groundbreaking first feature.

Like nothing you've ever seen before, " A Woman is a Woman ", is a time capsule no doubt, but definitely a masterpiece for all time...

"I'm Not Without Shame. I'm a Dame!"
With the minor exception of the new english subtitles messing up this great final line, the Criterion Collection edition of Godard's "A Woman Is A Woman" is yet another outstanding release, on par with their "Contempt" and "Band of Outsiders" DVDs. Great picture/sound quality and great extras. An early short film (from 1957), "All Boys Are Called Patrick" is alone worth the price of the DVD. It's nice to see even in 1957, Godard had his style down; it's quite a funny bit of cinema. Wong Kar-Wai clearly liked this short-film, because there's a scene from "Chungking Express" lifted straight from it. Also included on this DVD is a 1966 French television interview with Anna Karina and she's enchanting as always (interesting to, because this comes right after her break-up with Godard), plus you see a bit of Serge Gainsbourg talking about Anna! If you're a Godard and/or Anna Karina fan, this is a must-own DVD. The movie itself, "A Woman Is A Woman", is one of Godard's most expiermental yet more accessible films. It's without doubt, his funniest film with several verbal and sight gags that will cause you to laugh-out-loud. And Raoul Coutard's camera work is amazing as usual. This film was definitely a few years ahead of it's time, seeming more in line with post-LSD flicks like Magical Mystery Tour and The Thomas Crown Affair than anything else form the early 1960s. Also, there's Michel LeGrand's outstanding, hyper-active score, which foreshadowed his Thomas Crown work.

There She Goes...
The New Wave has been assessed in every intellectual capacity, and using every aesthetic criterion imaginable, but what makes the New Wave the most beguiling of cinematic phenomenon is that, in essence, it is a declaration of the love of cinema, through cinema itself.

AWOMAN IS A WOMAN ("Une Femme est une Femme"), Godard's third film, is as much a milestone as his own "Breathless" two years earlier. The basic premise is effectively that of a kitchen sink drama; an exotic dancer's (Anna Karina) whim to have a baby is met with consternation by her boyfriend (Jean-Claude Brialy), who is further dismayed when she asks a mutual friend (Jean-Paul Belmondo) to act as a surrogate father.

But the neo-realist background gives way to a film shot in bold, giddy colours and synchronised to Legrand's harebrained soundtrack - A WOMAN IS A WOMAN is best described as a musical with no singing. Actors frequently affect choreographed like stances and positions, their conversations punctuated with overtly dramatic interventions from Legrand's score. Our heroine expresses her desire to appear in an American musical, "with Gene Kelly and Cyd Charisse", before adopting the relevant deportment for the approval of the audience, who are constantly consulted, bowed to, winked at and cavorted with by actors revelling in front of Godard's lens.

It is Godard's preference for the actor, in favour of the character, that makes A WOMAN IS A WOMAN an unparalleled experience in spontaneity. Filmed without a script, the actors wear their own clothes and concoct their own dialogue. Belmondo in particular frolics in the new-found fame gifted to him by Godard, expressing his wish to be present when "they're showing Breathless on television", and grinning at the audience as he namedrops new acquaintance Burt Lancaster. Later, he meets Jeanne Moreau in a bar, and asks her "how JULES ET JIM is coming along".

And it is with Truffaut's masterpiece that A WOMAN IS A WOMAN shares its essential raison d'être - the embodiment of femininity through a dazzling and formidable singularity, in this instance Anna Karina, whose whims, mood-swings and impetuosity are her right and privilege as a woman, as all women. "Women have a right to dodge issues, men don't", she tells Brialy, shortly after decreeing the stupidity of modern women, "these women who imitate men". A smile turns to a frown or a tear in the blink of an eye, and back again just as quickly, in an infectiously joyful and touching performance that is among cinema's most engaging. Karina, the new wave bride, worked with husband Godard on seven of his greatest films, but it is this wonderful and dizzying cinematic cocktail that is Godard's most translucent love poem to an extraordinary actress touched by an impulsive genius and unique beauty.

Along with JULES ET JIM, Jacques Demy's LOLA and Godard's own BAND A PART, A WOMAN IS A WOMAN is the most energizing and uplifting of all New Wave films. Ironic, gleeful and baffling, it is essentially summed up by Brialy himself, who towards the film's delightful conclusion declares: "I don't know if this is a comedy or a tragedy, but it's a masterpiece"