Masculin Feminin

There is no doubt that Godard changed the structural basis a film could have. Breathless was deft in challenges to norms of editing and story. I have issue with his later approaches of criticism to larger subjects. Each film he did seemed to have no bounds to what is referenced. The Vietnam War and gender studies are on display here. The story isn't a story as it is a march through different topics and situations. The relationship it has to a normal story is that the same characters appear through out. Godard handles numerous subjects with little focus on one situation or subject. Everything is a reference and it makes the material appear too thin. Richard Lester criticized the subject of World War II and atomic annihilation with an even lighter tone than Godard in How I Won the War, but because he really focused on those subjects he was able to be successful. Godard is in another realm of critical thinking. As Susan Sontag said in her defense of him in the 60s, everything in the world of Godard is worth referencing and equivalent to any high cultured reference. Thus the meaning of a flower is equatable to the meaning of a real war. These ideas died out in cinema, but it's ironic that critics like Roger Ebert will call films by Richard Lester outdated and films by Godard not even though much of his critical process is now truly extinct. Some say it lead to essay cinema, but it's a moot point even if his ideas are long gone. Susan Sontag went back on them and even Godard said his work in the 60s was "bourgeoise".