The “moment” approach when analyzing film is the idea that there is a moment in any film that stands out to the individual viewer or spectator. It is always subjective and often times, the viewer will have no idea what the moment means within the context of the film or why, at first, the moment has significance at all. Nonetheless, within the “moment” approach, the spectator will relate their moment’s significance to the rest of the film and then be able to use the film to explain or justify cinema as a form of art. I used this approach to analyze Jean-Luc Godard’s film “Masculin, Feminin.”
The “moment” hit me about 25 minutes into the film. There is a sequence of shots that I believe Godard manipulatively and masterfully set up in order to throw the viewer off track.
The first shot is of a train passing by an open window in an apartment. The shot that follows is of Paul cracking open the doors of a moving train and looking out and around. In the third shot we are back in the apartment where this time we see Madeleine walking up to the window to look at the passing train. And finally we see Paul closing the train’s doors and walking back toward the center of the train.
These first sets of shots are establishing for the scene that follows. In all, they comprise only 20 seconds of the film and yet this moment stood out to me.
When considering most of Hollywood’s productions of movies, the filmmaker-audience relationship is usually on a “what you see is what you get” basis. For the most part, camera angles and editing styles are clear and concise in a film out of Hollywood. So from the point of view of a moviegoer who is used to seeing Hollywood films, it would be safe to assume that Godard is using parallel editing to tell us that Paul is either just leaving from of just arriving to Madeleine’s home. But after watching the confusion of the first 25 minutes of this film, I questioned my initial assumption of parallel editing. Perhaps Paul is neither leaving nor going to Madeleine’s. Maybe Paul just happened to be looking out of the train doors and maybe Madeleine was watching a different train pass by her window. For all we know, these two events happened during different times that night or even different nights all together.
I believe this moment is significant to the rest of the film in that it reiterates the notion that Godard seems to be manipulating his audience. Throughout “Masculin, Feminin,” and many of his other films, the audience is thrown for a loop again and again. As soon as you think you have figured out Godard’s mind and method, he presents another obstacle.
On the whole, I think this film represents cinema as a form of art. Making and perceiving art is a subjective process. What one person may like another may hate and vice versa. However, whether or not you liked a piece of art is insignificant if the artist has effectively swayed your opinion. George Carlin famously said that when doing a comedy special, if the show was good, he was able to manipulate the audience into agreeing with whatever he said. So much so that when every single audience member was on his side, he would contradict himself and get them all to agree with his contradiction.
