Word: godard
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...spends most of its time playing with props, mainly to belabor the notion of space-age IBM barrenness. It wields them clumsily, perhaps because it can't decide whether to have fun with them, as James Bond does, or to use them with unnerving and inscrutable dead-pan, as Godard does in Alphaville...
...best thing about the magazine has been its departure from the traditional review-on-review format. In his first two issues, Silverstein has assembled an original play, and two long analyses of Jean-Lue Godard's recent films. Silverstein says that the future issues will contain more scripts and more reflective articles...
...most hopeful sign in the magazine to date is John A. William's article on Godard in the second issue. Williams writes so lucidly that he's sure to be bounced from the movie-crtics' union. He has synthesized aspects of four of Godard's movies well enough that his points are clear to a reader who has seen none of them, and interesting to one who has analyzed them...
...audience is not allowed to become overly involved; Godard's detachment sets up an impassable barrier. Since there is no real plot, one cannot predict what will happen next. The characters are seen so selectively that no conclusions about them can be drawn, let alone a moral. And the sexier scenes, which might arouse at least a biological response, are deliberately undercut: though extraordinarily explicit, the love-making is shown in a series of disjoined extreme close-ups that fade quickly in and out. A huge male hand rubbing a huge female belly for three seconds looks a lot less...
...have failed to mention two of the film's outstanding accomplishments: the luminous, plastic photography of Raoul Coutard. Godard's cameraman on his ten films, beginning with Breathless (1961); and the score, which owes its beauty to Beethoven's string quarters and its effectiveness to Godard's superb timing. I've also omitted the film's verbalism. Signs and the printed word play a key part in most Godard films, from the Bogart poster of Breathless to the flashing neon lights of Alphaville, and they crop up again and again in The Married Woman. But why they are used...