Masculine-Feminine

written and directed by Jean-Luc Godard
based on the stories "La Femme de Paul" and "Le Signe" by Guy de Maupassant
starring  Jean-Pierre Léaud, Chantal Goya, Michel Debord, Marlène Jobert, Catherine-Isabelle Duport

            Having been born more than 10 years after Masculine-Feminine arrived in theaters, I cannot vouch for its relevance to '60s youth.  I can, however, accept the film's pertinence to my own generation 40 years later, the mixture of pop activism and apathy applying fittingly to the now grandchildren of Marx and Coca-Cola. 
           Despite Godard's self-awareness and reference to his own films as well as nodding to those of Truffaut, who regularly utilized Léaud as his onscreen alter-ego, this appears to be his most timeless if not most accessible picture.  Sure the clothes and music are of their own period but the conversations about sexual and political awareness still apply.  After all, one character states that they're living in "the era of James Bond and Vietnam" and the only difference between then and now is that another country fills the second slot.  My favorite moments involve the interrogation of beauty queen Catherine-Isabelle (Duport) by pollster Paul (Léaud) which showcases the extremes of hypocrisy in her ignorance and his pretention, both of which are quite familiar to me in the present. 
         Appropriately, I also appreciate a sequence where the film's four friends attend a movie that they aren't particularly satisfied with.  Paul mentions that it isn't the film he would like to make.  This is partially self-reference (Godard was a critic before he made films) but also represents how we all complain about the way things are without doing anything to change them.  Or how we are unable to.  The fact that Paul runs up to projection booth to correct the presented aspect ratio demonstrates what little power we have over our environment. 
        With today's movies being primarily profitable through DVD sales and therefore manufactured to suit home viewing, I dream that Hollywood could just bypass theatres and dump their shit to retailers so that those of us who do want actual films in actual cinemas might be given more reason to see classics like Masculine-Feminine.  God knows I don't do well with home viewing, especially with older foreign films.  But I enjoy seeing them on the big screen far more than I do any current releases.  Those films of the '60s, often referred to as the richest period for world cinema, can be as, if not more, meaningful to my generation just as the literature of that era significantly affects and influences today's youth more than ever.  If only I had the power necessary to have them shown and, more difficult, attended in every community.   I guess that my own equivalent of Paul's impeachment of the theater's projectionist is my public attack of new releases on this site.  I must leave it up to everyone else to actually make the better choices in their leisurely undertakings.