A Woman is a Woman

Jean-Luc Godard's 1961 feature A Woman is a Woman is an absolutely brilliant and playful takeoff of American musical/comedy. It takes all the stylistic signatures of the French New Wave movement-the use of actors from other films in the movement (or "family", as it could arguably be called), the reference of other films (specifically, again, those in the French New Wave movement), and a creative use of conventional film techniques or ideas (the biggest example here is the film's use of music), and coalesces them beautifully.

A Woman is a Woman is, then, a film that revels in the fact that it's a film. It makes no efforts to create an illusion of realism as many films do, yet with its use of vibrant color (used to a better effect here than even Le Bonheur) and scene enhancing music, it still manages to draw the viewer into its own world, albeit one that resembles a living cartoon. The actors are in on the gag, bowing towards the camera (and presumably, the audience) as they preform their charade.

So far, Godard's work doesn't take itself as seriously as some of the other New Wave directors do, particularly, from what I've seen, Bresson and Varda. Godard include elements of drama (wonderfully exaggerated by the film's great use of musical ques), but never forgets with the film really is-a film. He comes up with an experimental picture whose success lies in Godard's ability to take several different ideas out of their comfort zones and place them into something entirely fresh and new. Never too serious, never too goofy, A Woman is a Woman is fantastic.