Saw Masculin Feminin (1966), a film by Goddard. It follows a teenaged boy as he gets a job, pursues a girlfriend, and dabbles in politics. In true Goddardian fashion, the film contains many perverse inconsistencies and incoherencies. It feels very abrupt and chaotic, both in style and in action. At one point a man sets himself on fire, only for the camera to stay stubbornly pointed at a brick wall, ignoring the action. Later, the main character interrupts a movie to lecture the projectionist on aspect ratios.
The film is intentionally ambiguous and vague, containing contradictions and inconsistencies, but I felt it was most concerned with the war of the sexes and how it echoes larger-scale struggles of the day (Vietnam, the cold war.) The teenage boy main chracter wants peace in Vietnam and the love of his girlfriend. He's surrounded in the film by the wreckage of other romances: old men reading pornography in public, men cheating on women, men describing being divorced. Nonetheless, our hero remains idealistic and hopes for a peace and love that looks doomed from the start.
In typical 60s fashion, the women are not treated very well. I think every single one comes off as shallow, indifferent, cynical, and exploitative. They are all on contraceptives and birth control and dangle their affection over the heads of men. The main characters all work in a magazine aimed at teenagers. They talk at their job about pop-political characters. Talking about their sales numbers in japan as they read Bob Dylan's lyrics. The commercialization of The Revolution is already seen here in its infancy.
It reminded me somewhat of Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains, which also deals with the commodification of teen rebellion and which is similarly ambiguous and self-contradictory. This film is a bit older however, a bit more subtitled, and bit drier. Typical of Goddard, it's a more interesting film to think about and interpret than to watch.
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