Une Femme est une Femme [A Woman Is a Woman] **** (1961, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Anna Karina, Jean-Claude Brialy) – Classic Movie Review 6066

Jean-Paul Belmondo was reunited with Jean-Luc Godard for Une Femme est une Femme [A Woman Is a Woman] (1961) after the lead role in Breathless [À bout de souffle] (1960) made him a major star of the French New Wave.

When the French New Wave was still new, Jean-Luc Godard was young, carefree and in love with Anna Karina, Paris and the cinema. And so, in 1961, Godard shot A Woman Is a Woman, his first film using colour (Eastmancolor) widescreen stock.

Writer-director Godard communicates his infectious delight in his high-spirited 1961 romantic tale of a young French striptease artist, Angela (Karina). The stripper is desperate to become a mother but her reluctant boyfriend lover Émile (Jean-Claude Brialy) refuses to give her a baby. So she looks to his best friend Alfred (Jean-Paul Belmondo) to impregnate her instead, leading to inevitable complications.

For her tour-de-force portrayal, Karina won the Best Actress award at the Berlin International Film Festival in 1961. Godard missed out on the Golden Berlin Bear for Best Film but he won the consolation Silver Berlin Bear Special Prize. Karina married Godard soon after filming, on 3 March 1961. They divorced in 1967 and Godard married his new muse Anne Wiazemsky on 22 July 1967.

Godard really relishes enjoying the colour and wide screen formats for the first time, and his regular ace cameraman Raoul Coutard comes up with some startlingly imaginative images.

Nouvelle Vague icon Jeanne Moreau pops in briefly uncredited as Woman in Bar, and Marie Dubois also appears as Angela’s friend.

It is Karina’s film debut, though her first role is in Le Petit Soldat (1963), shot in 1960 but held up for three years because of the French film censors.

Belmondo was reunited with Godard for Pierrot le Fou (1965).

Adieu Jean-Paul Belmondo (9 April 1933 – 6 September 2021), RIP. His best known films include Breathless (1960), That Man from Rio (1964), and Pierrot le Fou (1965).

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 6066

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