Godard’s Alphaville and Masculin Féminin: Love in the Cultural Wasteland of the Pepsi Generation
In his book The New Wave, James Monaco describes some of the distinguishing features of French New Wave cinema. He connects the movement to auteur theory: “…there are two corollaries of the auteur theory…first, it insists on a personal relationship between filmmaker and film viewer…second, auteurism leads naturally to a dialectical of the film process” (8).
It is true that the New Wave film directors want to personally connect with their audience, but they also want to surprise them. This idea of the film process as being dialectical is also interesting, because this suggests that film is constantly able to reinvent itself by continuing to question its purpose.
Alexandre Astruc, critic from the period, helped shape the discourse surrounding the New Wave with his writing for journals such as L’Écran français and Les temps modernes. Astruc remarked that “directing should no longer be considered simply a means of presenting a scene but rather become a ‘true act of writing’”(Neupert 49).
For the French Cahiers du Cinema critics who later became directors, linear and predictable film narratives felt extremely constricting, so they invented an alternate form of cinematic language.
These directors, (such as François Truffaut, Claude Chabrol and Jean-Luc Godard) were also film viewers by trade, thus their own work behind the camera often reflected their love for the view from the other side of the screen. These directors were both optimists and pessimists simultaneously; they were young and eager to change the world yet troubled by the current geopolitical state.
Whether his reputation is justified or not, Godard is viewed as one of the more radical of the New Wave directors. Godard was heavily engaged with the political causes of the 1960s and was not afraid to express those political views on film.
Although Godard’s direct link to Marxism did not come out until his film Weekend, his earlier films prove that Godard hated bourgeoisie consumerism and felt that the rest of the world prostituted itself to American capitalism (Roud 33). Brecht’s influence on Godard is also clear.
Godard viewed himself as a true artist, and often expressed the sentiment: “A film doesn’t exist. A painting exists” (Brown 48). What he means, of course, is that a film audience will always be watching a reproduction of the original celluloid print.
Godard did not like to shoot a scene from many different angles like most typical directors, but instead preferred to shoot a scene only once. He felt that this gave a more realistic quality to the shot, and for Godard, realism was the key (Brown 48).
He was one of the first to use the jump-cut in order to momentarily jolt us out of the action, and he perfected this technique in his first major film: À Bout de Souffle (1960). Godard also loved experimenting with light and sound effects, but without the use of fancy equipment. However, unlike other New Wave directors, Godard preferred to use professional actors instead of amateurs.
Godard employs many of his signature techniques in both Alphaville (1965) and Masculin Féminin (1966). While Alphaville takes place in the future, and in a fictional intergalactic city, Masculin Féminin takes place in 1960s France.
In his article entitled The Sign of the Sociologist: Show and Anti-Show in Godard’s Masculin Féminin, Joel Haycock compares the two films:
Unlike Alphaville, which projects itself into the future in order to speak of the present…Masculin Féminin insists on the present tense of its images, in much the way a documentary does…(55–56).
One of the most important aspects in both of these films is Godard’s use of intertext; he uses pop-culture mythology to breath life into his characters and furthermore to help demonstrate the suffocating alienation that these characters experience (Thiher 949).
Even though the main characters in Masculin Féminin fantasize about living in their own “ideal movie,”the characters in Alphaville are the ones who end up living out this fantasy.
Godard uses this special brand of pop mythology as a basis to explore male and female roles and relationships within these two films. The hero of Alphaville is a spy from the Outlands named Lemmy Caution (Eddie Constantine). Caution comes to Alphaville in order to combat the large computer that has brainwashed the city, the Alpha 60.
He soon meets up with the beautiful but robotic Natasha Von Braum (Anna Karina), who helps Caution along his journey and eventually falls in love with him. Natasha’s father is the ubiquitous Professor Von Braum, who actually turns out to be the mind behind the Alpha 60; the Wizard of Oz behind the curtain so to speak.
After much struggle and strife, Lemmy manages to override the Alpha 60 and rescues Natasha from its oppressive, electronic clutches.
The opening scene of the film is an enigmatic mix of science fiction and noir; we are immediately drawn in but puzzled at the same time. The shot switches from a single flashing light to a dark city landscape as a mysterious frog-like voice speaks: “Il arrive que la realité soit trop complexe pour la transmission orale…” [It happens that reality is too complex for oral transmission].
Suddenly we see a war poster, hanging on a building, in which soldiers are pushing a tank over a ledge into the water below. Then the camera pans up and we see an even larger picture of two hands releasing a dove into the air.
Loud, overly dramatic music blares over the non-diegetic soundtrack. It seems that we are peering into some sort of future Orwellian state; citizens are being forced to speak a prescribed, restrictive language, and war is a thing of the corrupt past that needs to be forgotten.
We are immediately introduced to the hero of the film, Lemmy Caution, who makes a grand entrance in his legendary, American-made car (a Ford Galaxy a.k.a. Mustang) and suavely lights a cigarette. He is not handsome by any “normal” Hollywood standard; his face looks hardened from both age and experience, and he is dressed like a spy from a detective novel with his trench-coat, hat, and gun.
Just like Jack Webb from Dragnet, Caution introduces the scene in a monotone voice-over: “Il était vingt-quatre dix-sept heures Océanique quand j’arrivais dans les faubourgs d’Alphaville…” [It was 24 and 16 Océanique hours when I arrived in the outskirts of Alphaville}.
As viewers, we are instantly pulled into the action; Caution enters the film accompanied by dramatic suspense music and a look of purpose in his eyes. The camera follows his movements, but only from a distance; Caution walks behind marble columns, through doors and into a glass elevator, so our vision of him is always slightly obscured.
At the hotel desk, he gives a false name because he must keep his identity hidden at all costs. He is the lone hero; a John Wayne of spies who rides into Alphaville not on his horse, but in the present-day equivalent, his Ford Galaxy.
In his article entitled Postmodern Dilemma’s: Godard’s Alphaville and Two or Three Things That I Know About Her, Allen Thiher notes that even though this is a film with pure pop culture roots, Godard wouldn’t want us to take those roots too seriously:
It is evident that we are in a world of purely ironic pop mythology where Lemmy Caution, pop hero equipped with only his .45 as weapon against malevolent fate, is pitted against the absolute evil that pure logic and intelligence, endowed with no human qualities, generates with gratuitous malice (950).
As Thiher points out here, Alphaville functions as a harsh critique of American mass culture. Alphaville is, in fact, ironic even on the simplest levels: although the film might seem to fit into the science-fiction genre, the film is a political critique of contemporary Paris.
Alphaville is a serious film disguised as a campy “fluff film” instead of the other way around. Although the opening sequence of the film might seem particularly surreal; the events are actually logical to the citizens of Alphaville. As viewers we can only see from the perspective of Lemmy Caution because, like us, he is an outsider.
After having watched the first ten minutes of Alphaville, it is tempting to give up and write it off as a nonsensical dalliance into pretentious, experimental filmmaking. To do so would be unfortunate, I think.
In the first sequence, a pretty hotel clerk named Beatrice leads Caution (a.k.a. Ivan Johnson) down a long, maze-like corridor. They continually walk towards the camera without ever getting closer to it as she leads him to his room. Caution always walks slightly behind her in the shadows and he does not respond to Beatrice’s monotone “pre-recorded” speech.
The sequence turns from slightly bizarre to surreal when Beatrice lingers for an unusually long time in Caution’s hotel room, then casually takes off her dress and walks over to a jukebox. Caution, unimpressed, tells her to “get lost.”
The surrealism continues when Caution discovers an “enemy spy” in his bathroom and a fight breaks out between them. Even though we are witnesses to the violence, Godard does not allow us to hear the violence because the fighting sounds are masked by the pleasant jukebox ditty playing in the background.
The spell of the music is broken, however, by the sound of gunshots as Caution kills the mysterious enemy with his forty-five caliber pistol.
This is one of the most important sequences in the film– not because it is so strange– but because through its strangeness, the spectator is forced to shift perspectives. Like Lemmy Caution, we are outsiders to the city of Alphaville–our eyes must slowly grow accustomed to this new environment in which inappropriate behavior is acceptable and insanity is normal.
Even though Caution never acts surprised by the extraordinary circumstances he finds himself in, he does not blindly accept the status quo. When he remarks: “Toutes les choses étranges sont normales dans cette putaine de ville” [all weird things are normal in this crappy town], it becomes clear that Caution must come from a world similar to ours, even if he is rather gruff and unlikable.
In his book The New Wave, James Monaco suggests that Lemmy Caution possesses: “an existential moral character that separates him from the inhabitants of a city that is marked by the total absence of ethics or love” (156). Not only does Caution symbolize the John Wayne-type hero arriving on horse to rescue the princess, he is also an allegorical figure–a symbol of the average, post-modern man who is lost in a new world of alienating technologies.
Natasha Von Braum comes in stark contrast to the common seductresses that infest Alphaville, like Beatrice. Natasha’s entrance into the film is remarkably poetic, in part because of it is modeled after a typical scene from a classic Hollywood love-story.
Natasha is introduced to us through the sound of her soft voice as she asks for a light. The camera quickly moves to a close-up of her face as Caution lights her cigarette. Natasha’s image is thus associated with the flame of the lighter; Natasha is an untamed force of nature, an object to be desired. Her image is also associated with a lilting, romantic melody that seems to announce her presence.
In The Desire to Desire, Mary Ann Doane comments on the use of exaggerated, sappy music in the Hollywood love-story. She suggests that music is often used in this context to isolate moments of significance and to express what the image alone cannot:
Desire, emotion — the very content of the love story — are not accessible to a visual discourse but demand the supplementary expenditure of a musical score (97).
Doane suggests that the heightened effect created by this type of musical score emphasizes the deficiencies of the images.
But it is precisely because Godard is so aware of these hackneyed Hollywood conventions that he is able to use them so skillfully. Natasha and Caution are by no means typical protagonists; Natasha does not even know what “love” is because she has been brainwashed by the Alpha 60, and Caution seems cold if not outright misogynistic.
Their story takes place in the ruins of a post-Hollywood wasteland in which old conventions can be used only as signifiers; they are lights to guide the now obscured way.
In his book The Material Ghost, Gilberto Perez expands on the idea that Godard’s film-making technique is heavily influenced by the Brechtian concept of “epic theatre.” Godard uses Brecht’s “alienation effect” in order to create a clear space between the actor and the character so that the spectator is never allowed to fully identify with the characters in the narrative.
Perez also makes the distinction between the A-effect in a play versus in a film. When we go to the theatre we are usually watching actors perform on a distant stage, which is, by its nature, a fictional space in a fictional world. On the other hand, watching a movie is a more “realistic” experience in the sense that we are able to see the actors in close-up and hence in more vivid clarity.
So, how does Godard create the A-effect in a medium that is so decidedly different from Brecht’s? Perez notes that Godard sets up a dialectic between fiction and documentary– the audience, in other words, can never really tell when the actor is being “real” versus when he is acting:
The camera knows no dividing line between the person and the impersonation. Godard draws such a line. He divides the actors from their characters by a twin emphasis on the reality of the actors and the fictionality of the characters they play (344).
Godard perfects his use of the alienation effect in the sequence that is arguably the most significant of the entire film: in a montage of flashing images, Caution and Natasha perform a ritualistic dance in celebration of their newfound love for one another as Natasha speaks in poetic language of her return to the world of human emotions.
This series of shots blurs the fine line between fiction and reality by calling the invisibility of the camera into question. At one point in the sequence, Natasha and Caution stand side by side and stare directly into the camera.
Suddenly we are thrown out of our voyeuristic comfort zone and are forcibly reminded that these are actors, performing in a film. The fourth wall comes down as we realize that just because we are gazing at them does not mean that they cannot gaze at us in return. Like Godard, Brecht also disliked the idea of the “passive spectator”, which is why the characters in his plays would often address the audience directly.
Natasha’s poem is also Brechtian in the sense that she speaks not only for herself, but for all of humanity. Her words attempt to relay a universal message that is actually quite simple: reach out to the one that you love and you will find happiness and freedom.
The words of the poem itself are powerful because they are also so simple: “Ta voix, tes yeux, tes mains, tes lèvres…nos silences, nos paroles…un seul sourire par nous deux…” [Your voice, your eyes, your hands, your lips…our silences…our words…one smile for us both].
Although Godard wrote these lines, the style is borrowed from the poems found in Paul Éluard’s Capitale de la Douleur (Natasha is holding this very book in her arms as she stares out the window in the next scene). Godard uses Éluard and surrealistic poetry in general to suggest that expressive language has the capacity to liberate the human soul from repression and thought-control (Thiher 955).
When Caution is trying to persuade Natasha to leave Alphaville, he reminds her to think of the word “love.” In the final scene of the film, as Natasha and Lemme drive out of Alphaville in his Ford Galaxy, we recognize that Natasha has been “cured” because she is able to form the sentence “je t’aime” [I love you] without any help.
Interestingly, Lemmy Caution is the only character to find himself in a successful position at the end of any Godard film (Thiher 953). This oddity can be explained by the fact that Caution is not supposed to represent a “real” person; instead, he is a comic strip hero who belongs to the world of surrealistic mythology.
Paul, the male protagonist of Masculin Féminin: 15 Faits Précis [Masculine Feminine: 15 Precise Facts] is the exact opposite of Caution in many ways: he is a “real” person living in contemporary France, he is young and naive, and he is doomed from the outset.
The plot of Masculin Féminin focuses on two characters: Paul (Jean-Pierre Léaud from Les 400 Coups) and Madeleine (Chantal Goya). Madeleine helps Paul get a job at the magazine where she works, and Paul falls in love with her.
Madeleine, on the other hand, is basically only interested in herself, and in building her career as a pop singer. Paul is heavily involved in leftist political issues, particularly since he had such a negative experience serving in the French military.
Unfortunately, Paul ends up getting Madeleine pregnant, and when things don’t work out between them, Paul falls off a balcony under mysterious circumstances and is tragically killed.
Godard intentionally shoots the film in a black and white, realistic style that is more similar to newsreel footage or a documentary than to a fictional piece of celluloid. In his article entitled The Sign of the Sociologist: Show and Anti-Show in Godard’s “Masculin Féminin” Joel Haycock notes that the word faits can mean many different things in French including “news items.”
Hence from the title of the film, we might think that Godard is preparing us to watch a series of real-life facts about men and women instead of a fictional story about fictional characters (Haycock 52). However, we can tell from the first shot of the first scene (a close-up of Paul’s face) that this is not the case– as much as Godard might want to feel as though we are watching a documentary, Masculin Féminin is an old-fashioned love story.
In this sense, both Alphaville and this film are similar because they are both “disguised” by the veneer of a stylized genre; the former “pretends” to be science fiction whereas the latter “pretends” to be a documentary. Genres, for Godard, are not static categories; they too can be deconstructed.
Masculin Féminin is a beautiful time-capsule of French counterculture in the 1960s. As the titles inform us, the characters in this film are “the children of Marx and Coca Cola;” attracted to high brow intellectualism on the one hand, victims of mass consumerism on the other.
The film is filled with references to 1960s pop-culture figures: the Beatles, Bridget Bardot, Marylin Monroe, Bob Dylan, etc. Chantal Goya (the actress who plays Madeline) was an actual pop singer of the time, and the character that she plays wants to be one as well.
Madeleine is more Coca Cola than Marx; she aspires to be a public figure that the masses will want to “consume.” She is only interested in her own brand of pop fluff, which becomes particularly evident when she gets angry at Paul for playing a classical record.
Paul, on the other hand, is the Marxist. He signs petitions, attends political rallies, and conducts opinion polls. Because Paul and Madeleine are constantly on different societal planes, they can never truly “find” one another and this is why their romance is doomed to fail.
Talking and flirting in the office bathroom, Paul asks Madeleine why she won’t go out with him, and Madeleine coyly rebuffs his advances. They also interrogate each other on personal topics, such as dating habits, sexual practices, and general world views.
Haycock mentions this scene only briefly in his essay; he comments that Paul and Madeleine’s conversation is typical of boy-meets-girl movie banter, and that their answers are rather banal (58). While this might be true on some level, I don’t think that Haycock reaches deeply enough into the scene in order to give it the credit it deserves.
There are several very telling moments in the conversation. For example, when Madeleine asks Paul why he wants to go out with her, he replies: “Parce que je te trouve jolie et à cause de la tendresse.” [Because I find you pretty and because of tenderness]. Madeleine is not satisfied with this answer because she assumes that Paul is only interested in sex, so she asks him what else he likes about her.
His reply does nothing to disprove her assumption: “Tous…les cheveux, les yeux, le nez, la bouche, les mains…” [Everything, your hair, eyes, nose, mouth, hands…] and later he compliments her breasts. This is one of Paul’s main problems; because he objectifies women, he ends up “coming on too strong.”
Meanwhile, Madeleine has her own set of issues. First and foremost, she is obsessed with her own image. Whenever there is a mirror around she checks her appearance, and in this scene she preens herself to the point of absurdity. She wants to know what Paul considers “the center of his world.” He replies “l’amour” and she says: “C’est drôle mais, j’aurais dit ‘moi.’” [It’s funny but, I would have said “me”]. Paul does not know how to respond, so he just smiles uncomfortably.
The scene is shot rather conventionally; the camera alternates between the two of them in an A, B, A, B, A, B arrangement which is referred to in cinematic terms as “separation.”
As Stefan Sharff notes in The Elements of Cinema, this technique can actually create a very powerful effect:
It has the ability to generate an intimacy of contact — a sort of electrical current — between the participants as the images of a separation sequence succeed each other on the screen (64).
This scene is like an exposé of two conflicting personalities; it places both Paul and Madeleine under equivalent microscopes and highlights their shortcomings. Their conversation is interesting because it is like an interview, and interviews are interesting because they momentarily allow us to access the thoughts of another human being.
Godard himself once said in an interview: “…reportage is interesting only when placed in a fictional context, but fiction is interesting only if it is validated by a documentary context” (Godard 192).
Godard has by no means abandoned his beloved “alienation effect” in Masculin Féminin. Paul and Madeleine are always placed at arm’s length. We aren’t able to wholeheartedly sympathize with them because Paul is a pretentious know-it-all and Madeleine is incurably self-centered.
At the beginning of the film, Paul is in a coffee shop, and he witnesses a customer ask the waitress where the stadium is located. A moment later, Paul gets up from his table and asks the waitress the exact same thing. His friend Robert questions him about it and Paul replies that he wanted to prove that “putting yourself in another person’s place” does not necessarily help you to understand that person better.
Through this rather casual dialogue, Godard seems to be suggesting that we, the spectators of this very film, do not necessarily need to identify directly with the characters in order to understand them on a basic level (Haycock 58). Paul and Madeleine are fictional characters, but at the same time they are meant to represent or document a very specific moment in history (France in the 1960s).
James Monaco makes the seemingly counterintuitive statement that Masculin Féminin is an optimistic film, despite the fact that the relationship between the two main characters is a failure:
There is a sense that the old movies and the life they described are dying and will be replaced by the new films of a new reality (172).
Even though Paul and Madeleine do not survive as a couple, their collective way of seeing the world rises above either one of them as individuals. Monaco’s reading of the film is specifically supported by the scene in which Paul, Madeleine and her two roommates go to the movies.
The movie-within-a-movie (which we see clips of) deals with quite unpleasant subject matter. A gruff-looking man is shown blatantly sexually abusing a woman who appears to be either his girlfriend or his wife. The woman does not put up much of a fight; in fact, she seems to give in to the man’s wishes at every turn.
The movie is disturbing not only because of the images it presents but also because of its lack of words. The only sounds that we do hear out of the people on screen are the woman saying “no” and the man grunting at her like a wild beast.
Meanwhile in the audience, Paul is disturbed not by the content of the movie he is watching, but by the fact that it is being projected in the wrong aspect ratio. Madeleine seems at least mildly intrigued by the film even though one of her roommates claims to be “disgusted.”
Paul’s voice-over at the end of the scene articulates the restless feeling that he and Madeleine share as they watch films such as this:
On allait souvent au cinema, l’écran s’éclarait et on frémissait…Madeleine et moi étaient deçus…les images datés, sautaient et Marylin Monroe avait terriblement vieillie…on était triste…ce n’était pas le film dont nous avions rêvé…ce n’était pas ce film total que chacun de nous portait en soi…ce film qu’on aurait voulu faire, ou, plus secrètement sans doute, que nous aurions voulu vivre.
[We often went to the movies, the screen would light up and we shuddered…Madeleine and I were disappointed…the images were dated, skipped and Marylin Monroe had aged terribly…we were sad…this wasn’t the film that we dreamed of…it was not this total film that each of us carried with us…this film that we had wanted to make, or, more secretly no doubt, that we would have wanted to live].
Here, Paul seems to be speaking not only for himself, but for Godard as well. Perhaps Paul/Godard is implying that Masculin Féminin fails on some level as a film because it too cannot truly be “lived” by the spectator, as Joel Haycock believes (63).
However, like Monaco, I see elements of optimism hidden below the surface of Paul’s monologue. Paul expresses a true love for the “cinematic experience;” he trembles when the screen lights up in eager anticipation but is ultimately disappointed by the images that flash before him.
Similarly, Godard’s filmmaking is based on a certain type of idealism; because Godard is so in love with film, he constantly feels the need to revolutionize it and breathe life back into the medium as a whole. The first step in revitalizing a stale mode of expression is recognizing that there is a problem with the status quo.
The man and the woman in the movie-within-a-movie are older than Paul and Madeleine and so they appear to belong to a different cross section of society. They remain nameless and can barely utter words, which also makes them dissimilar to Paul and Madeleine who are portrayed as overly talky yet intelligent individuals with distinct personalities.
In the “fake” movie it is the woman who is being marginalized and abused by the man, whereas in the “real” movie, Madeleine is the one who treats Paul badly. However, both the couple in the movie and the couple in the movie-within-a-movie are similar in that they are both incapable of communicating on a basic level.
Unfortunately, neither Paul nor Madeleine can truly identify with the characters on the movie screen just as we cannot truly identify with Paul and Madeleine, and so there is an “alienation effect” within a larger “alienation effect.”
Paul longs to live out the film that he can only imagine in his dreams, and this is the film that Godard dreams about as well. Certainly this “ideal” film would be nothing like the one that Paul and Madeleine are watching, but it would not be like Masculin Féminin either.
In the introductory volume to The History of Sexuality, Michel Foucault cautions:
Sexuality must not be described as a stubborn drive, by nature alien and of necessity disobedient to a power which exhausts itself trying to subdue it and often fails to control it entirely (103).
Foucault believes instead that human sexuality must be viewed as a natural force that we can use to our advantage and there is no point in trying to suppress it.
During an important scene in Alphaville, Caution caresses Natasha’s hair and she responds: “Je sais ce que c’est…c’est la volupté.” [I know what that is…it’s sensuality]. Caution shakes his head and tries to explain: “Non, la volupté est une consequence. Elle n’existe pas sans l’amour.” [No, sensuality is a consequence. It does not exist without love].
But she is still confused: “Alors l’amour, c’est quoi?” [So love, what is it?] Natasha does not understand the concept of love because her mind has been brainwashed by the Alpha 60. She is only capable of recognizing Caution’s affectionate gesture as a demonstration of sexuality, and she doesn’t understand how sexuality can be a consequence of love.
Like Foucault, Godard shows us how society often attempts to demonize sex so that people will feel guilty about their own natural desires and will be ashamed of their bodies. But Godard also shows us that love and sexuality are forces that cannot easily be “swept under the rug” and forgotten about. Love cannot be controlled, and for Caution and Natasha, love ultimately triumphs.
Of course, for Paul and Madeleine this is not the case. While Natasha learns how to communicate and express her emotions, Paul and Madeleine have lost all ability to communicate with each other by the end of Masculin Féminin.
The situation has become so bad that Madeleine completely ignores Paul when he comes to visit her in the recording studio. He attempts to get her attention first by waving, and then he realizes that there is a glass barrier between them, so he enters the room where she is singing and stands directly in front of her.
But Madeleine just continues to sing to herself softly; she doesn’t make eye contact with him nor does she even acknowledge his presence. Later, she pushes his hand away when he tries to touch her. Madeleine is only concerned with making sure she sounds good on the record and, in general, presenting a certain image to the world.
Madeleine is proud of the fact that she is the embodiment of “the Pepsi Generation,” the new consumer-driven generation in which everything is used once and then disposed of, and this is exactly what she does with Paul.
In his final monologue, Paul expresses skepticism about the usefulness of opinion polls, even though he continues to conduct them until the very end. He claims that the answers he receives to his questions about world events and current trends do not reflect the collective mentality, they deform it.
The last words that we hear from him are:
La sagesse ce serait si on pouvait voir la vie…vraiment voir. Ce serait ça la sagesse. [Wisdom would be if we could see life…really see it. That would be wisdom].
Indeed, Paul is never really able to see life from an outside, objective standpoint even though he desperately tries. In fact, Paul falls off the balcony to his death precisely because he is trying to photograph something from a “better,” more objective viewpoint.
But despite the fact that it all seems inescapably pessimistic, Godard does manage to sneak a hint of optimism into the ending. The film returns to its beginning by reprising the initial establishing shot of Paul in which he sits in a café, smoking and reflecting on life.
Haycock thinks it is not coincidental that Godard’s first film to analyze modern French society is linked with the director’s own need to start anew: “The return to the beginning carries with it the hope of a fresh start, unencumbered by false premises” (72). Thus, Paul can be seen as a sort of “martyr;” he is sacrificed so that further progress can be made.
Godard once commented in an interview that American script writers are superior to French script writers because they are more “real and natural,” and because they are not afraid to mix genres (Godard 194). In Godard’s view, the “departmentalization of expression” is a dangerous trend that is all too prevalent in French society, and he believes that it should be avoided at all costs.
It is therefore not surprising that Godard is such a fan of intertext and cultural references, and that he does not hesitate to scatter them throughout his own films.
Alphaville and Masculin Féminin are similar to one another in that both films pay homage to the postmodern pop wasteland while simultaneously criticizing it. Although both films relay similar messages through fictional narratives, Godard disguises one of them as science-fiction and the other as a documentary.
While there are optimistic aspects in both, Alphaville more blatantly exhibits this optimism with its “happily-ever-after” ending: Caution and Natasha riding off into the sunset.
It is harder to put a finger on the optimism in Masculin Féminin, but it exists “between the lines” nevertheless. When the police officer asks Madeleine what she is going to do now that Paul is gone, she replies thoughtfully: “J’hésite… j’hésite… j’hésite…” Perhaps Madeleine is uncertain about her future, but it is the dawn of a new day, and the world is brimming with possibilities.
Works Cited:
Brown, Royal S. Focus on Godard. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1972.
Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality, Volume 1: An Introduction. Trans. Robert Hurley. New York: Vintage Books, 1978.
Godard, Jean-Luc. Godard on Godard. Eds. Jean Narboni and Tom Milne. New York: The Viking Press, 1968.
Haycock, Joel. “The Sign of the Sociologist: Show and Anti-Show in Godard’s ‘Masculin Feminin.’ Cinema Journal, Vol. 29, №4, summer 1990, 51–74.
Monaco, James. The New Wave: Truffaut, Godard, Chabrol, Rohmer, Rivette. New York: Oxford University Press, 1976.
Perez, Gilberto. The Material Ghost: Films and Their Medium. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1998.
Neupert, Richard. The History of the French New Wave Cinema. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2002.
Roud, Richard. Godard. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1970.
Sharff, Stefan. The Elements of Cinema: Toward a Theory of Cinesthetic Impact. New York: Columbia University Press, 1982.
Thiher, Allen. “Postmodern Dilemmas: Godard’s Alphaville and Two or Three Things That I Know About Her.” Boundary 2, Vol. 4, №3, spring 1976, 947–964.
