Images of Women, Images of Sexuality: Some Films by J. L. Godard

Abstract

In the twenty years that Godard has been making movies one of the remarkable features of his work has been its closeness to the contemporary moment. Perhaps the most striking example of this is La Chinoise, apparently aberrant when it appeared, yet confirmed in its actuality less than a year later by the events of May 1968. But all his films are inextricably locked in with the moment of their making, existing on the sharp edge between observing the world taking and changing shape and, in giving it concrete form in representation, being part of the changing shapes.

Do you know, madame, that despite your very light brown hair, you make me think of a beautiful redhead. La Jolie Rousse is a poem by Apollinaire. ‘Soleil voici le temps de la raison ardente …’ Well, that burning-bright reason which the poet is looking for … when it does appear, it takes on the form of a beautiful redhead. That is what can be seen on a woman’s face, the presence of awareness, something which gives her a different, an extra beauty. Feminine beauty becomes something all-powerful, and it’s for that reason, I believe, that all the great ideas in French are in the feminine gender. (From Une femme mariée)

Are there objects which are inevitably a source of suggestiveness as Baudelaire suggested about women? (Roland Barthes)

Following this line of thought, one might reach the conclusion that women have escaped the sphere of production only to be absorbed the more entirely by the sphere of consumption, to be captivated by the immediacy of the commodity world no less than men are transfixed by the immediacy of profit. … Women mirror the injustice masculine society has inflicted on them — they become increasingly like commodities. (Theodor Adorno on Veblen)

Co-written with Colin MacCabe.