308 Masculin féminin
- BusterK.
- Joined: Thu Oct 26, 2006 9:44 pm
- Location: Montreal, Quebec
- justeleblanc
- Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2004 6:05 pm
- Location: Connecticut
Off the top of my head -- I couldn't find specific sources -- the Pepsi generation typically refers to a younger generation, since its the kids who drink Pepsi and the elders who drink Coke. The term "Pepsi Generation" was probably a coined phrase at some point, the "Coke Generation" is something completely different.BusterK. wrote:Apologies if this has already been brought up, but how come the official Rialto trailer of M/F is talking about the Pepsi generation? Isn't the movie supposed to be about les enfants de Marx et de Coca-cola?
If it's a mistake, i'd say it is a big one, perhaps with a check signed somewhere!
Pepsi Generation
- skuhn8
- Joined: Tue Dec 14, 2004 4:46 pm
- Location: Chico, CA
What a coincidence. I just watched this one again last night. There was a scene near the end where Madeleine is giving a teeny-bopper interview outside the recording studio and she is asked if she is part of the Pepsi Generation to which she replies "oh yeah, I love Pepsi" or something to that effect. I suspect the trailer is riffing off that. I don't know to what extent this was intended to rebuff the earlier text card commenting on les enfants de Marx et de Coca-cola.
- justeleblanc
- Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2004 6:05 pm
- Location: Connecticut
The title card comes from a quote Godard said once. I guess Godard equates the two drinks.skuhn8 wrote:What a coincidence. I just watched this one again last night. There was a scene near the end where Madeleine is giving a teeny-bopper interview outside the recording studio and she is asked if she is part of the Pepsi Generation to which she replies "oh yeah, I love Pepsi" or something to that effect. I suspect the trailer is riffing off that. I don't know to what extent this was intended to rebuff the earlier text card commenting on les enfants de Marx et de Coca-cola.
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- Joined: Sun Apr 05, 2009 6:58 pm
Re: 308 Masculin féminin
Going through the supplements of this, I have a few thoughts:
-Godard's response to the Swedish newscaster's question ('What is the meaning of your film?') is hilarious; shock, and then a wide-eyed, gentle reply laced with reproach.
-Freddy Bauche completely butchers Godard chronology, with an equally insipid analysis of Pierrot Le Fou's relationship to May '68; Dominique Paini's awkward reaction is fun to watch unfold. Does anyone know if A Letter to Freddy Bauche is available to view anywhere online?
-Jean-Pierre Gorin seems like such a genuine and charming smartypants. How many interviews has CC done with him? His interviews on the Marker double feature disc are the only ones I can think of off the top of my head, and they're as erudite and on the mark as his remarks here. I'd like to see more collaboration with him down the line.
Now it's time for the film, first viewing in a few years.
-Godard's response to the Swedish newscaster's question ('What is the meaning of your film?') is hilarious; shock, and then a wide-eyed, gentle reply laced with reproach.
-Freddy Bauche completely butchers Godard chronology, with an equally insipid analysis of Pierrot Le Fou's relationship to May '68; Dominique Paini's awkward reaction is fun to watch unfold. Does anyone know if A Letter to Freddy Bauche is available to view anywhere online?
-Jean-Pierre Gorin seems like such a genuine and charming smartypants. How many interviews has CC done with him? His interviews on the Marker double feature disc are the only ones I can think of off the top of my head, and they're as erudite and on the mark as his remarks here. I'd like to see more collaboration with him down the line.
Now it's time for the film, first viewing in a few years.
- SpiderBaby
- Joined: Wed Dec 15, 2010 6:34 pm
Re: 308 Masculin féminin
I'd like to see Criterion release the rest of the Gorin/Godard films in general.Mr. Ned wrote:Jean-Pierre Gorin seems like such a genuine and charming smartypants. How many interviews has CC done with him? ... I'd like to see more collaboration with him down the line.
- CSM126
- Joined: Thu Nov 04, 2004 8:22 am
- Location: The Room
- Contact:
Re: 308 Masculin féminin
Gorin is also interviewed on Salo and is all over the Pedro Costa boxset (including a shared audio commentary for In Vanda's Room with Costa).Mr. Ned wrote:-Jean-Pierre Gorin seems like such a genuine and charming smartypants. How many interviews has CC done with him? His interviews on the Marker double feature disc are the only ones I can think of off the top of my head, and they're as erudite and on the mark as his remarks here. I'd like to see more collaboration with him down the line.
- zedz
- Joined: Sun Nov 07, 2004 7:24 pm
Re: 308 Masculin féminin
. . . and he offers one of Criterion's all-time great extras on the excellent Boudu disc.
Plus (a running joke or running sore, depending on your perspective) Criterion are sitting on a box set of his three major solo documentaries which we can probably expect soon after the Eisenstein Silents box set.
Plus (a running joke or running sore, depending on your perspective) Criterion are sitting on a box set of his three major solo documentaries which we can probably expect soon after the Eisenstein Silents box set.
- Alan Smithee
- Joined: Mon Dec 06, 2010 11:49 am
- Location: brooklyn
Re: 308 Masculin féminin
For me Gorin's finest moment is A Pierrot Primer on Pierrot le fou.
- colinr0380
- Joined: Mon Nov 08, 2004 4:30 pm
- Location: Chapel-en-le-Frith, Derbyshire, UK
Re: 308 Masculin féminin
Of course there's also Tout va bien.
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- Joined: Sun Apr 05, 2009 6:58 pm
Re: 308 Masculin féminin
Well it's looks like I'll have to NF Boudu and the Pedro Costa set, and dust off my copy of Pierrot. As for my viewing, I have to admit I still haven't warmed up to M/F. I understand Godard's approach to the material and some things--the interview with Miss 19, for example--are brilliant and sadistically critical in their own right, but the film also lacks the not so latent aspects of self-discovery through form and experimentation that make JLG's earlier stuff so mesmerizing. M/F is an outstanding cultural document and sociological time capsule, but outside the title cards and Swedish film full of guttural expurgation it almost doesn't feel like a Godard film sometimes. Maybe it's because he doesn't have the same infatuated fascination with Goya and the girls as he does with Karina, or he's just using the film to experiment with different devices (the interviews are resemblant of the interviews with man, woman, philospher dinner guest and child in A Married Woman) to see where he wants his cinema to develop. That said, the ending is abrupt and disturbing after all the frivolous behavior we witness the entire film, as are all the other violent tangents, always off-screen; Paul narrates the best voice-over in the film, beleaguered of interview format and its contradictory approach to people's social behavior and beliefs, and all the sudden he's extinguished without word or warning. Good stuff, but I'd say this and Made in U.S.A. mark a brief lull in G's otherwise remarkable run in the '60s.
As for the Swedish film within a film: what do you think was Godard's reasoning behind this? Was it simply an acknowledgment the Swedish production company? A way to integrate cinematic experience into the Paul and Marienne's relationship? A jab at Bergman? It doesn't come off as terribly important by film's end, but of JLG went out of his way to go to Sweden and film the thing, I'd say he had some ulterior motive in mind.
As for the Swedish film within a film: what do you think was Godard's reasoning behind this? Was it simply an acknowledgment the Swedish production company? A way to integrate cinematic experience into the Paul and Marienne's relationship? A jab at Bergman? It doesn't come off as terribly important by film's end, but of JLG went out of his way to go to Sweden and film the thing, I'd say he had some ulterior motive in mind.
- domino harvey
- Dot Com Dom
- Joined: Wed Jan 11, 2006 2:42 pm
Re: 308 Masculin féminin
It was a contractual stipulation, wasn't it?
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- Joined: Sun Apr 05, 2009 6:58 pm
Re: 308 Masculin féminin
Brody book affirms: Godard needed something Swedish involved. Still, not as prickly as the "Oh, we're the Italian extras" snub in Weekend.
- colinr0380
- Joined: Mon Nov 08, 2004 4:30 pm
- Location: Chapel-en-le-Frith, Derbyshire, UK
Re: 308 Masculin féminin
Watching this again yesterday evening, I think I'm beginning to prefer this film to Weekend - it is just as dark and apocalyptic in its own way, and just as scathing about consumerism/commercialisation and youth selling their vitality to become famous, but it is still within that cinéma vérité style of in-the-street filming, compared to the controlled and colder absurdist abstractions of Weekend.
This contrast between captured reality going on in the background and posturing and naïve youth in the foreground (really a feature of all these early Godard works, and I kind of consider the usually brief images of someone like a small, elderly woman bundled up in a coat and carrying shopping bags eyeing the camera suspiciously in the street scenes to be almost as key a figure in these Godard films as any elfin-like Anna Karina-figure skipping through the scene!) works really well here with the extra dash of dark and apocalyptic cynicism to come. The characters are still 'cool' here (compared to 'icy' in Weekend!), even when surrounded by corruption and death. I love the long digressive conversations about sex, society and the correct aspect ratio in which to watch Swedish films about sex and society, yet there is a constant undertone of intrusive, potential violence simmering away. Even if it is just the sudden explosion of 'real' street noise at the beginning of scenes or off camera voices intruding onto our main characters' conversations, or the interstitial spaces 'between' scenes with their punning intertitles punctuated by gunshots.
There are people all around the characters being killed off or committing suicide (more even than in Weekend, though that film seems more concerned with slaughter on a wider scale, in car accidents or war games, which makes petty plottings seem an irrelevance, or a symptom of some larger malaise, by the end) while our leads chatter away about this or that, pursuing their own pleasures while barely interacting with the world around them. Really it is kind of inevitable in retrospect that the ending of Masculin feminine brings that arbitrary death into the inner circle of the characters we have been following, with it causing a flicker of emotion but it being immediately brushed aside again.
In that sense (though I'm only just now as I am typing really thinking this through) I don't really see the ending as misogynist, although the final scene is about the lack of particular emotional impact the relationship appears to have had for either party, but about the callousness of the philosophy of 'life goes on' in general. The sheer lack of impact another human being can have on anyone (I get the impression that the loss of the record contract would have caused more than a flicker of upset than this slight inconvenience did), and the lack of support or empathy that would feed into the climax to Weekend too.
But then it is also as much about the arbitrariness of the film medium itself, needing a neat conclusion to tie everything up and add 'extra meaning' to the previous events, as anything deeper than that!
This contrast between captured reality going on in the background and posturing and naïve youth in the foreground (really a feature of all these early Godard works, and I kind of consider the usually brief images of someone like a small, elderly woman bundled up in a coat and carrying shopping bags eyeing the camera suspiciously in the street scenes to be almost as key a figure in these Godard films as any elfin-like Anna Karina-figure skipping through the scene!) works really well here with the extra dash of dark and apocalyptic cynicism to come. The characters are still 'cool' here (compared to 'icy' in Weekend!), even when surrounded by corruption and death. I love the long digressive conversations about sex, society and the correct aspect ratio in which to watch Swedish films about sex and society, yet there is a constant undertone of intrusive, potential violence simmering away. Even if it is just the sudden explosion of 'real' street noise at the beginning of scenes or off camera voices intruding onto our main characters' conversations, or the interstitial spaces 'between' scenes with their punning intertitles punctuated by gunshots.
There are people all around the characters being killed off or committing suicide (more even than in Weekend, though that film seems more concerned with slaughter on a wider scale, in car accidents or war games, which makes petty plottings seem an irrelevance, or a symptom of some larger malaise, by the end) while our leads chatter away about this or that, pursuing their own pleasures while barely interacting with the world around them. Really it is kind of inevitable in retrospect that the ending of Masculin feminine brings that arbitrary death into the inner circle of the characters we have been following, with it causing a flicker of emotion but it being immediately brushed aside again.
In that sense (though I'm only just now as I am typing really thinking this through) I don't really see the ending as misogynist, although the final scene is about the lack of particular emotional impact the relationship appears to have had for either party, but about the callousness of the philosophy of 'life goes on' in general. The sheer lack of impact another human being can have on anyone (I get the impression that the loss of the record contract would have caused more than a flicker of upset than this slight inconvenience did), and the lack of support or empathy that would feed into the climax to Weekend too.
But then it is also as much about the arbitrariness of the film medium itself, needing a neat conclusion to tie everything up and add 'extra meaning' to the previous events, as anything deeper than that!
Last edited by colinr0380 on Sat Jan 16, 2021 5:24 am, edited 5 times in total.
- aox
- Joined: Fri Jun 20, 2008 12:02 pm
- Location: nYc
Re: 308 Masculin féminin
Nice assessment.
And for some weird reason, I assumed that CC had issued this on BD. I went to see if I owned it and wondered why not.
And for some weird reason, I assumed that CC had issued this on BD. I went to see if I owned it and wondered why not.
- colinr0380
- Joined: Mon Nov 08, 2004 4:30 pm
- Location: Chapel-en-le-Frith, Derbyshire, UK
Re: 308 Masculin féminin
Sorry aox, I didn't mean to get your hopes up!
This also feels like the key intermediate Jean-Pierre Léaud role - the 'teenage' role coming between the 'childhood' of 400 Blows and the 'adulthood' of The Mother And The Whore.
This also feels like the key intermediate Jean-Pierre Léaud role - the 'teenage' role coming between the 'childhood' of 400 Blows and the 'adulthood' of The Mother And The Whore.
- dvakman
- Joined: Thu Oct 23, 2014 11:12 pm
- Contact:
Re: 308 Masculin féminin
I would argue for Antoine et Collette myself, but I'm more of a Truffaut guy, so what do I know?colinr0380 wrote: This also feels like the key intermediate Jean-Pierre Léaud role - the 'teenage' role coming between the 'childhood' of 400 Blows and the 'adulthood' of The Mother And The Whore.
Setting the merits of the film aside and focusing only on Leaud's role, when watching M-F I can't help but be reminded of Truffaut's criticism of M-F's use of Leaud in his infamous letter to Godard, where he suggested (paraphrasing here) that the first scene with Leaud was directed by a man more motivated by entomology than friendship. I personally don't think that this film necessarily showcases Leaud's strengths as an actor, though I also concede (as Truffaut seemed to suggest) that this wasn't the directorial intention anyway.
- domino harvey
- Dot Com Dom
- Joined: Wed Jan 11, 2006 2:42 pm
Re: 308 Masculin féminin
A+ bait and switch
- domino harvey
- Dot Com Dom
- Joined: Wed Jan 11, 2006 2:42 pm
Re: 308 Masculin féminin
Looks like an upgrade is coming soon based on HD additions to this film's Criterion page! Hopefully they bring over Adrian Martin's superb commentary from the Australian disc like they did for Vivre sa vie
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- Joined: Sat Apr 18, 2020 1:27 pm
Re: 308 Masculin féminin
I sure hope it gets an upgrade. I've been waiting on this one for a while. I really love the soundtrack especially. It would be nice if a record label would reissue it, as the existing 7" is hard to find and goes for ~$100 on discogs.domino harvey wrote: ↑Fri Jan 15, 2021 12:32 pmLooks like an upgrade is coming soon based on HD additions to this film's Criterion page! Hopefully they bring over Adrian Martin's superb commentary from the Australian disc like they did for Vivre sa vie
- domino harvey
- Dot Com Dom
- Joined: Wed Jan 11, 2006 2:42 pm
Re: 308 Masculin féminin
Announced, but no new extras (nor ported ones)
- therewillbeblus
- Joined: Tue Dec 22, 2015 3:40 pm
Re: 308 Masculin féminin
Nope, the only addition seems to be an essay by Adrian Martin, almost a slap in the face for failing to deliver the commentary
- Ovader
- Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2004 1:56 am
- Location: Canada
Re: 308 Masculin féminin
His essay was indeed included in the original Criterion DVD edition.therewillbeblus wrote: ↑Fri Jan 15, 2021 2:57 pmNope, the only addition seems to be an essay by Adrian Martin, almost a slap in the face for failing to deliver the commentary
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- Joined: Fri Jan 15, 2021 4:04 pm
Re: 308 Masculin féminin
I'm really going to hesitate buying any future standalone releases from Godard, Kurosawa, Antonioni, etc. It seems like box sets could conceivably be in the works for all major/deceased "Criterion-heavy" directors.