Just wanted to know other peoples thoughts on women and the New Wave. In some films iv'e seen women are objects of desire but in others women are desiring objects. I liked this film because Cleo in some ways is both. She is very concerned with the way she is perceived, then there is a turning point and its as if she understands her self and the world around her more clearly.
Anyway Desiring objects or objects of desire? What do you think?
i think alot of times women in the new wave are underrepresented. its a shame this was Varda's only feature length new wave film.
In "Breathless" (a bout de souffe) women are really there purely to serve come type of stereotype gangster film role. and i think in "Lift to schaffold" their representation really isnt much better.
you have the women (her name escapes me) acting much as cleo did, but there isnt the same depth of character development even tho you do see her gain a sense of independance and responsability.
From what I've seen from the French New Wave which has mostly been Godard films, women were protrayed negatively as betrayers or selfish individuals. To be honest at first in the case of Cleo she comes across as a self centred woman who is vain when it comes to her appearence. Yet Cleo is also shown to be a victim of sexism within society for example being made to sing songs which lyrics make Cleo an object of desire. So in Cleo From 5 to 7 it shows women as being both shallow and vulnerable.
"I'd rather be hated for who I am, than loved for who I am not".
I always find it odd to continually see this opinion pop up because the men in Godard's films are hardly ever admirable people - I'd say they come off worse in general. I don't think women are portrayed any more negatively. "Betrayers or selfish individuals" isn't just a simplification but a misreading of what Godard does in most of his films (and in a film like Breathless, Godard is using genre tropes for very personal reasons; anarchistic film style, Belmondo, destroyed, perhaps necessarily/desirably, by traditional artistic authority, Seberg - but it's Godard, in a cameo spot, that sets the ball rolling on his own surrogate's death. Reading a film like Breathless as if it were the films it mimics, American crime dramas, won't yield much.)
The New Wave's problems in depicting women had more to do with the "otherness" factor or the "Mystery of Woman" thing rather than misogyny.
But as for Godard in particular, it's probably his tendency to associate men with intellectual pursuits and women with commercialism, fashion, etc. which IS a simplification but one which he uses with purpose and which plays out differently in the films than it reads on paper (and which isn't always a rule and is more confined to his sixties films than his later work.)
The New Wave's problems in depicting women had more to do with the "otherness" factor or the "Mystery of Woman" thing rather than misogyny.I can't comment on the New Wave but your comment is what underpins sexism. Women are the other to men and treated as an object apart, of mystery or desire or whatever. In fact we are not the 'other' but that is what has ocurred and what is used to sustain the illusions of essential differences used to justify prejudice.
Movement ends, intent continues;share
Intent ends, spirit continues
Judging from the comments on here, these people all have seen VERY little Jacques Rivette!!
He is the great "women-director" of the Nouvelle Vague. Go and have a look at Duelle, Bande des Quatre, La Belle Noiseuse and Celine et Julie vont en bateau! His rest is amazing, too. Secret Defense, Paris nous appartiant and L'Histoire de Marie et Julien are amazing as well.