Une femme mariée: The Masters of Cinema Series

Widely regarded as the one of the finest directors who ever lived, Jean-Luc Godard was a key figure in the Nouvelle Vague and compiled an astonishing body of work in his career.  Une femme mariée, fragments d'un film tourné en 1964 en noir et blanc (to give it its full title) came at an interesting junction in his development as a filmmaker, after such classics as À bout de soufflé, Une femme est une femme and Bande à part but before Masculin féminin, Alphaville or Tout va bien. 
 
Written and directed by Godard, who also narrates, Une femme mariée is a film about a love triangle, with Charlotte (Macha Méril) having an affair with an actor, Robert (Bernard Noël) and trying to decide whether to divorce her aviator husband Pierre (Philippe Leroy).  She happily spends time with Robert when Pierre is out of town on business but, when he returns, she plays the dutiful wife and mother.  However, an unplanned pregnancy with one of her lovers (she doesn't know which), further complicates matters. 
 

Une femme mariée is a fascinating film, an interesting look at women's obsession with their bodies - a thread runs through about the perfect bust and there are many shots of lingerie catalogues and billboards.  It is almost has a feminist perspective, with a woman having a choice of two men, when love triangle films are usually the other way round, Vicki Cristina Barcelona being the obvious and most recent example. 
 
The three main actors are superb, with Macha Méril particularly impressive.  Structurally the film is intriguing, separated into different chapters or vignettes, each with their own title and theme which sometimes just consist of a character talking about the given subject straight to camera.  Taken individually, they shouldn't work as a coherent whole but amazingly they do and that's what makes the film so enthralling and worth repeated viewings.  As the film is 'fragments of a film', some scenes are extremely short at ten seconds or less whereas other run at several minutes without a cut and you create the narrative.
  

The Disc

 
Extra Features
The disc only contains the original trailer, unusually created and edited by Godard himself but the set comes with a superb 80 page booklet which is up to, if not beyond, the standards set by the MOC.  The booklet is packed with essays, discussions and a fascinating transcript of Godard's lecture about Une femme mariée and Bergman's Persona - a film with which it is thematically similar.
 
The Picture
The Masters of Cinema series are almost the British equivalent of the Criterion Collection, remastering previously unreleased films or those with limited availability.  They have done sterling work here with a top-notch transfer, beautifully crisp and really showcasing the terrific black and white photography.  The film has many close-up shots and quick cuts - typically Godardian, I suppose - and they really look fantastic.
 
Presented in the OAR of 1.37:1, the HD transfer is a marked step up from the DVD as the Blu-ray format allows the remastered picture to be shown at the highest resolution possible.
 
The Sound
A crystal clear LPCM mono soundtrack with excellent optional English subtitles - the film is dialogue dominated and this is presented extremely well.
 
Final Thoughts
Une femme mariée is a challenging film with some extremely complex dialogue and references to Brecht, Molière and the 17th century French play Bérénice - it's not an easy watch and I'm not sure that I completely understood everything that Godard was trying to put across. Despite this it is an enjoyable film and a challenge to relish.

Though it is a shame there is no commentary nor any extras on the disc bar the trailer, this is a very good set of a film that any fan of Godard or the French New Wave should seriously consider buying.