RECENT VIEWINGS: Ophüls + Godard

Lola Montès (Ophüls, 1955): That this film is tragically resonant in the TMZ era goes without saying. Scandalous Lola Montès is center ring in Ophüls' literal circus, a superificial object of lust and obsession by a nineteenth-century audience infatuated with her carnal celebrity. She is reviled, humiliated and celebrated--the rigorous routine of infamy.  As the disgraced mistress, Martine Carol is mostly blank. This should not be confused with, say, a Britney Spears and her "Circus", however.  This is Ophüls, after all, so the story is told through potent, precise camerawork and a decadant production that creates layers of visual communication. Lola is a cinematic whiteboard and Ophüls is armed with markers. And when the director provocatively places the viewer of Lola Montès into his carnival audience, the film becomes much less a courtesan biopic and much more an exquisite assessment of onlookers as participants in the spectacle.

A Woman is a Woman (Godard, 1961): A musical that becomes so excited in itself that it forgets itself with a wink and smile, Godard's warm, funny first color film is a delight. Anna Karina is the muse, of course, and the film is a love song to her even if that song never quite makes it to screen.  The idea of it does, however, and that is the stated intent of the director.  Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean-Claude Brialy are the men in Karina's Eastmancolor world and Godard drops the three into a Lubitsch operetta by way of cinéma vérité. Reflexiveness abounds in staccato movements, echoed in the Pop Art score from Michel Legrand. When Belmondo mentions his friend "Burt Lancaster" and breaks the fourth wall with a wide grin, the joy of A Woman is a Woman for a filmlover is undeniable.