Things you buy through our links may earn Vox Media a commission. Later in that same interview, he admitted that the movie was an uneasy mix of influences. The production stole shots on the street amid the unsuspecting working-class pedestrians of StrasbourgโSaint-Denis, but Godard often used these images for absurd scenarios. The visual scheme is deliberately dissonant, with the bold primary colors of the costumes and the set dressing clashing against drab, gray, real-life backgrounds.
The director had completed two features before A Woman Is a Woman. In truth, things were just getting started. A Woman Is a Woman would establish Karina as a star. Originally from Denmark, she stumbles with French dialogue and pronunciation, and we can sense the awkwardness; Godard even includes a couple of blown takes. But what an incredibly tough position to be in as a performer. Breathless had started as a somewhat conventional project that Godard turned into an irreverent formal free-for-all; the noirish, plaintive Le petit soldat had enough genre elements to mistake it for something more traditional.
But A Woman Is a Woman seems to have been conceived by someone who sought first and foremost to demystify the filmmaking apparatus. It has the rhythms, gestures, and mood of a musical, often without the actual music. A song might start right before cutting out completely in the next shot. Direct sound clashes with expressionistic and sometimes just plain nutty audio choices.
An ostensibly serious scene starts with the actors curtseying to the audience. One night, Angela and Emile have an argument where they refuse to speak to each other, communicating entirely via book titles, each of which they pick out while lugging a giant floor lamp around for illumination. The most coordinated thing anyone does in the movie might be to gracefully and rhythmically brush the dirt off their feet before going to bed.
But beneath all this color and artifice and levity runs something deeper and more personal. Not long after the shoot ended, Karina would discover she was pregnant, and they would hastily marry; she would miscarry a couple of months later. Their marriage continued in increasingly chaotic fashion. They made eight films together, including a couple after their final separation and a couple in the middle of it.
