Une Femme Mariee: The Masters of Cinema Series

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Une Femme Mariee: The Masters of Cinema Series
Review added by
David Beckett

AKA The Married Woman
Certificate: 15
Running Time: 81
Retail Price: £19.99
Release Date: 20/04/2009
Content Type: Movie

Synopsis:
Long out-of-circulation and unavailable on home video, Jean-Luc Godard's 1964 masterpiece 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] has, until now, represented 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, nevertheless, a galaxy, or gallery, unto itself — a lucid, complex, profoundly funny 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 Sans 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. The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to present Jean-Luc Godard's classic, Une femme mariée, in a magnificent new Gaumont restoration for the first time on home video in the UK.

Special Features:
• Gorgeous new progressive high-definition transfer of the film in its original aspect ratio
• New and improved English subtitle translations
• The original 3-1/2 minute trailer for the film, created and edited by Jean-Luc Godard at the time of the film's original French release
• 80-PAGE BOOK containing: — A new "overture" by legendary French critic and filmmaker Luc Moullet (Les Contrebandières, A Girl Is a Gun, Les Sièges de l'Alcazar, Le Prestige de la mort). // A lengthy roundtable discussion between Luc Moullet; writer/critic and American correspondent for Cahiers du cinéma, Bill Krohn; and MoC's Craig Keller — on the film, and its relationship to Godard's oeuvre from the 1950s through the 2000s. // A concentrated investigation into the film by Bill Krohn. // A new statement about the film by star Macha Méril. // A transcript of Godard's late-'70s lecture on Une femme mariée, originally presented in Introduction à une véritable histoire du cinéma, translated here into English for the first time. // Relevant excerpts from Jean Racine's Bérénice, in the original French, accompanied by a new parallel English translation. // And many notes on the film, Godard, and modern DVD production.