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Bertolt Brecht
Godard's engagement with German playwright Bertolt Brecht stems primarily from
his attempt to transpose Brecht's theory of epic theatre and its prospect of
alienating the viewer (Verfremdungseffekt) through a radical separation of the
elements of the medium (in Brecht's case theater, but in Godard's, film).
Brecht's influence is keenly felt through much of Godard's work, particularly
before 1980, when Godard used filmic expression for specific political ends.
For example, Breathless' elliptical editing, which denies the viewer a fluid
narrative typical of mainstream cinema, forces the viewers to take on more
critical roles, connecting the pieces themselves and coming away with more
investment in the work's content. Godard employs this device as well as several
others, including asynchronous sound and alarming title frames, with perhaps his
favorite being the character aside. In so many of his most political pieces,
specifically Week End, Pierrot le fou, and La Chinoise, characters address the
audience with thoughts, feelings, and instructions.
Marxism
A Marxist reading is possible with most if not all of Godard’s early work.
Godard’s direct interaction with Marxism does not become explicitly apparent,
however, until Week End, where the name Karl Marx is cited in conjunction with
figures such as Jesus Christ. A constant refrain throughout Godard's cinematic
period is that of the bourgeoisie’s consumerism, the commodification of daily
life and activity, and man’s alienation — all central issues of Marx’s
condemning analysis of capitalism.
In an essay on Godard, philosopher and aesthetics scholar Jacques Ranciere
states, "When in Pierrot le fou, 1965, a film without a clear political message,
Belmondo played on the word 'scandal' and the 'freedom' that the Scandal girdle
supposedly offered women, the context of a Marxist critique of commodification,
of pop art derision at consumerism and of a feminist denunciation of women’s
false 'liberation', was enough to foster a dialectical reading of the joke and
the whole story". The way Godard treated politics in his cinematic period was in
the context of a joke, a piece of art, or a relationship, presented to be used
as tools of reference, romanticizing the Marxist rhetoric, rather than solely
being tools of education.
Une femme mariée is also structured around Marx's concept of commodity
fetishism. Godard once said that it is "a film in which individuals are
considered as things, in which chases in a taxi alternate with ethological
interviews, in which the spectacle of life is intermingled with its analysis".
He was very conscious of the way he wished to portray the human being. His
efforts is overtly characteristic of Marx, who in his Economic and Philosophical
Manuscripts of 1844 gives one of his most nuanced elaborations, analyzing how
the worker is alienated from his product, the object of his productive activity.
Georges Sadoul, in his short rumination on the film, describes it as a
"sociological study of the alienation of the modern woman".
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