Long out of circulation and unavailable on home‑video, Jean-Luc Godard's 1964 Une femme mariée, fragments d'un film tourné en 1964 en noir et blanc (A Married woman: Fragments of a Film Shot in 1964 in Black and White) was, until recently, the ostensibly 'missing' key work from the first, zeitgeist‑defining phase of JLG's filmography. The feature which bridges the gap between Bande à part and Alphaville, Une femme mariée is a galaxy, or gallery, unto itself, a lucid, complex and amusing series of portraits, etched with Godardian acids, of the wife that represents either a singular case, or a universal example, of "a"/"the" married woman, and the men in her orbit.
Macha Méril (later of Pialat's Nous ne vieillirons pas ensemble, and Varda's Sons toit ni loi) plays Charlotte, the title character. She's married to aviator Pierre (Philippe Leroy, of Becker's Le Trou). She sleeps with thespian Robert (Bernard Noël). She talks "intelligence" with renowned critic‑filmmaker Roger Leenhardt, and takes part in a fashion‑shoot at a public pool. The "fragments" of the film's subtitle are chapters, episodes, vignettes, tableaux; Une femme mariée is a pile of magazines made into a film, and a film turned into a magazine the table of contents reading: Alfred Hitchcock. Jean Racine. La Peau douce. A Peruvian serum. Nuit et brouillard. The "Eloquence" bra. The quartets of Beethoven. Madame Céline. Fantômas. Robert Bresson. A Volkswagen making a right turn. A film shot in 1964, and in black and white.
Designed with Raoul Coutard's breathtaking cinematography, Godard's picture captures a moment in time, but all its mysteries, its truths, its beauty, comedy and grace, serve to resolve into a work of art for the ages.
Une femme mariée was released on UK DVD back in May of this year by Masters of Cinema, and it is they who have announced its first ever UK Blu-ray release, in a magnificent new Gaumont restoration, for 25th January 2010 at the RRP of £24.99. This Special Edition will feature a gorgeous and newly restored 1080p/24fps transfer of the film in its original 1.37:1 aspect ratio, new and improved English subtitle translations, the original trailer for the film (presented here in 1080p/24fps), created and edited by Jean‑Luc Godard at the time of the film's original French release and presented in its original 1.37:1 aspect ratio.
Also included will be an 80 page booklet containing: A new "overture" by legendary French critic and filmmaker Luc Moullet (Les Contrebandères, A Girl Is a Gun, Les Sièges de I'Alcazar, Le Prestige de la mort); a lengthy roundtable discussion between Luc Moullet, writer/critic and American correspondent for Cohiers du cinema Bill Krohn, writer/edtic Andy Rector, and release producer Craig Keller on the film and its relationship to Godard's oeuvre from the '50s through the '00s; a concentrated investigation into the film by Bill Krohn; an image‑essay by Andy Rector; a new statement about the film by star Macha Méril; a transcript of Godard's late-'70s lecture on Une femme mariée, Bergman's Persona, Flaherty's Nonook of the North, and Rossellini's Francesco giullare di Dio, originally presented in Introduction à une véritable histoire du cinéma, translated here into English for the first time; excerpts from Jean Racine's Bérénice, in the original French, accompanied by a new parallel English translation; an editorial preface on the role of Blu‑ray and DVD booklets in the modern filmviewing era; a short aside on the nature of "production stills" reproduced in Blu‑ray and DVD booklets, film books, and film magazines; The reproduction of a late-'70s collage by Godard on the subject of Alfred Hitchcock; a lengthy conversational ofterword by Craig Keller and Andy Rector.
You can read our review of the DVD release here. |
