A Woman is a Woman by Ryan Haberman

 

 Title/Year: A Woman is a Woman (1961)
Director/Birth Country/Year Born: Jean-Luc Godard, France, 1930
Budget: $160,000 est.
Gross:  $100,665
Synopsis: A French striptease girl really wants a baby, but when she asks her boyfriend he refuses. And to make things more complicated he instead asks his best friend to help her out.
Narrative and Visual Keywords: New Wave, Striptease, Pregnancy, Tension in a Relationship, French film
Characterization/ Dialogue: Small talk, argument, asides (to the camera)
Camera/lighting/editing technique: Lots of long following shots, long drawn out scenes, a lot of back and forth scenes, some quick jump cuts.
 Political/ Social Commentary: More independent women in society
Historical Relevance/ Recognition: This movie and its director was part of the whole New Wave movement. Features a whole new and different way of filming and editing and acting.
Notable Collaboration: Lead actress Anna Karina was married to Jean Luc-Godard

Random fact, Etc: Jean-Luc Godard’s first color film

1. I’m not sure how to answer this question for A Woman is a Woman

2. We can clearly see from this film, that the Romantic commitment is not there at all. Angela’s boyfriend hardly notices her and when she asks him for a baby, he attempts to give the task over to his best friend. It’s possible that Godard wants to show what a lot of relationships are actually like, instead of the people just thinking that everyone’s lives are just fine and dandy. As for political and religious commitment, I don’t remember anything specific.

3. After doing some research on the Director Jean-Luc Godard, I found that he always had resentment toward Hollywood and its clichés, and this is a common theme among his films. In a movie review of A Woman is A Woman by Robert Stanley Martin, Martin states that Godard is basically trying to satirize the “American Musical”. Since this is what the film is about, obviously that idea is going to come out in his characters. He tries to highlight the most obvious aspects of the musical genre, for example: in the peppy lightheartedness of the film, some of the absurd or oddball moments (as Robert Martin states) and the fact that no one actually sings, except for Angela one time, which was anticlimactic.

Sources:

Martin, Robert Stanley. “A Woman is a Woman”. May 6, 2011. Web.  23 January, 2012.

A Woman is a Woman, 2012. Web. 23^rd January, 2012. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0055572/

A Woman is a Woman, Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 23 January, 2012. Web. 23 January 2012.

Jean-Luc Godard, Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 23 January, 2012. Web. 22 January 2012.

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