A little peace, love and activism

Legendary filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard is nearly as famous for being a world-class curmudgeon and contrarian as he is for his often oblique artistic output. Which makes it all the more surprising that his 1966 film “Masculine Feminine” included an intertitle that provided such a handy shorthand description -- “This film could be called The Children of Marx and Coca-Cola” -- that it would be quoted in nearly every review and article written about the film.

Opening Friday for a one-week run at the Nuart, the film is a precious snapshot of the intersection of pop and politics, and the ascendant youth culture as it follows the doomed love affair between an aspiring activist (played by the iconic Jean-Pierre Leaud) and an opaquely enigmatic pop singer (Chantal Goya).

Along the way the film overflows with witty asides, inside references and brief appearances by such notables as Brigitte Bardot and Francoise Hardy.

The new release is not a full restoration because one wasn’t needed, said Bruce Goldstein, founder and co-president of the boutique releasing label Rialto Pictures.

Having acquired the rights to the picture as part of a package deal, the Rialto team discovered that the best negative was safely stored in Pennsylvania.

“It was gorgeous,” Goldstein said in a telephone interview from his office in New York City, “hardly a scratch on it. It had obviously been used for the original release and then never touched again.”

The original French opening titles were spliced on, and, as Rialto does with all releases, a new translation was done for the subtitles.

Goldstein even went so far as to translate the lyrics to numerous pop songs (sung by Goya in the “ye ye” style of the day) that make up the film’s musical score.

“Especially in this movie,” he explained, “the songs and what they are saying, no matter how trivial they seemed, were important to the movie. They are a commentary on the action at times. To take an obvious example, she has a hit song called ‘Pinball Champ’ which plays while he is playing pinball.”

At the time Godard was making films at a prodigious rate, and “Masculine Feminine” was the third film he shot in 1965. Cinematographer Willy Kurant, working for the first time with Godard, says he felt like a “mistress” in relation to the director’s usual collaborator, the celebrated Raoul Coutard.

Speaking by phone from France, Kurant fondly recalled how the film, only his second as director of photography, helped put him on the map.

He recalled his introduction to Godard’s sometimes confounding working methods, and his own efforts to persuade the director to use a then-new film stock.

“Godard was not convinced,” said Kurant, “so he sent me with a camera and Jean-Pierre Leaud into the streets of Paris to shoot some tests. He saw some dailies, and he agreed to use the stock. When I saw the final edit I was so surprised that all the shots which were my tests were in the film.”

Kurant said that the frequent descriptions of the film as being shot with “natural light” are not entirely accurate. “We used minimal light,” he explains, “and by Hollywood standards or even independent film it was less than less.

“The film was shot with a white umbrella to bounce the light and two lights that were 650 watts each. Sometimes we were screwing more powerful bulbs into available sockets.”

Critic Andrew Sarris opened his review of “Masculine Feminine” at the time of its original release by calling it “the film of the season.” Sarris recently recalled the film’s “strange, dark power” and remarked that many were put off by the film’s seemingly haphazard construction, which masked its true complexities.

“There was a paradox to it,” Sarris says. “I think there was such an underlying seriousness to Godard. I think he had a feeling for film, but it was a fragmented feeling. He could dissect both film itself and the broader culture. He caught something at a certain time, he caught it and froze it.”

Goldstein echoes these sentiments when he says, “It has become my absolute favorite of Godard’s films. Every time I’ve watched it working on the subtitles, it’s really grown on me. I didn’t even know it was my favorite. I find it his most knowing film; it’s not about rehashed movie memories, it’s about something that’s real and he captures that.”

As much as the film is a portrait of its precise moment, there remains something beautifully timeless about it.

Many references are still eerily timely -- Mini Coopers and war in Iraq both rate a mention -- and it is hard not to feel the font of the happy-sad wispiness of Wes Anderson, or the pop-savvy of Quentin Tarantino, or even to note the girls’ flat shoes, rounded collars and big buttons from numerous recent collections by designer Marc Jacobs.

In putting a finger to why it is that “Masculine Feminine” -- equal parts freewheeling and melancholy, thoughtful and reckless -- still seems so young, vital, inventive and fresh 40 years on, Godard again proves himself to be uncharacteristically helpful.

At one point in the film, when the lead characters are about to watch a movie, Leaud leaves the theater to chastise the projectionist for using the wrong aspect ratio.

Leaud then delivers a monologue that might better describe the film he is in rather than the one he is watching, as he imagines “the movie of our dreams. ... that total film we carried inside ourselves. That film we would have liked to make, or, more secretly, no doubt, the film we wanted to live.”