Masculin Féminin

"Jean-Luc Godard's Swinging Look at Youth and Love in Paris Today!"

1966 1h 45m FR

👍

7.2

SOLID

🔥

96%

CERTIFIED FRESH

💯

METACRITIC

⭐

7.4

IMDB

★7.2TMDB · 434🍅96%Rotten Tomatoes●93Metacritic★7.4IMDB · 18,464

DramaRomance

Synopsis

Spoiler shield

Paul, a young idealist trying to figure out what he wants to do with his life, takes a job interviewing people for a marketing research firm. He moves in with aspiring pop singer Madeleine. Paul, however, is disillusioned by the growing commercialism in society, while Madeleine just wants to be successful. The story is told in a series of 15 unrelated vignettes.

“Jean-Luc Godard's Swinging Look at Youth and Love in Paris Today!”

WhatsApp X Facebook Telegram

Where to watch · US

HBO Max Amazon ChannelSubscription

HBO MaxSubscription

Amazon VideoRent

Apple TV StoreRent

Google Play MoviesRent

Google Play MoviesBuy

YouTubeBuy

Fandango At HomeBuy

Cast

Jean-Pierre Léaud
Paul
Chantal Goya
Madeleine Zimmer
Marlène Jobert
Élisabeth Choquet
Michel Debord
Robert Packard
Catherine-Isabelle Duport
Catherine-Isabelle
Evabritt Strandberg
She (Woman in the Film)
Birger Malmsten
He (Man in the Film)
Yves Afonso
Man Who Kills Himself (uncredited)

Credits

Behind the camera

Director: Jean-Luc Godard
Writers: Jean-Luc Godard, Guy de Maupassant
Languages: English, French, Swedish
Countries: France, Sweden

Want more? Switch to Cinephile mode in the header for DP, composer, budget, box office, production companies, keywords, and release history.

Did you know?

Fun facts 🍿

1 / 8

ERA

Did you know

60 years old — a genuine piece of film history.

MoodPlayr · trivia#01

2 / 8

WORLD

Did you know

Dialogue crosses 3 languages: English, French, Swedish.

MoodPlayr · trivia#02

3 / 8

WORLD

Did you know

International production across 2 countries: France, Sweden.

MoodPlayr · trivia#03

4 / 8

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Directed by Jean-Luc Godard, shot by Willy Kurant. Note their partnership — DPs and directors often return to each other across a career.

MoodPlayr · trivia#04

5 / 8

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Original score by Jean-Jacques Debout. Worth a dedicated listen after — most great films lose half their impact without the score.

MoodPlayr · trivia#05

6 / 8

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Editor Agnès Guillemot shaped the rhythm. On an edit-heavy film, the editor does more to control your pulse than the director.

MoodPlayr · trivia#06

7 / 8

CAST

Did you know

Jean-Pierre Léaud and Chantal Goya and Marlène Jobert carry the top of the cast.

MoodPlayr · trivia#07

8 / 8

FACT

Did you know

Marketing tagline: "Jean-Luc Godard's Swinging Look at Youth and Love in Paris Today!".

MoodPlayr · trivia#08

Cinephile deep dive

The take

Jean-Luc Godard directs. Willy Kurant behind the camera. Jean-Jacques Debout scores. Agnès Guillemot cuts. Produced in France, Sweden. Dialogue in English, French, Swedish.

Trivia

Things worth knowing

160 years old — a genuine piece of film history.
2Dialogue crosses 3 languages: English, French, Swedish.
3International production across 2 countries: France, Sweden.
4Directed by Jean-Luc Godard, shot by Willy Kurant. Note their partnership — DPs and directors often return to each other across a career.
5Original score by Jean-Jacques Debout. Worth a dedicated listen after — most great films lose half their impact without the score.
6Editor Agnès Guillemot shaped the rhythm. On an edit-heavy film, the editor does more to control your pulse than the director.
7Jean-Pierre Léaud and Chantal Goya and Marlène Jobert carry the top of the cast.
8Marketing tagline: "Jean-Luc Godard's Swinging Look at Youth and Love in Paris Today!".
9IMDB entry: tt0060675 — still the authoritative cross-reference for credits and trivia.
10Classified under 14 themes, including "suicide", "paris, france", "students' movement", "politics".
11Released under 12 different titles around the world.

The technical file

Cinematography: Willy Kurant
Original score: Jean-Jacques Debout
Editing: Agnès Guillemot
Runtime: 105 min · 1h 45m
Aspect ratio (typical): 1.37:1 (Academy)
Status: Released
Original language: FR
Certification (US): NR
IMDB: Masculin Féminin (1966)
Rotten Tomatoes: 96% 🍅 Fresh
Metacritic: 93/100
IMDB rating: 7.4/10 · 18,464 votes
MPAA: Not Rated
US box office: $200,380

Awards

3 wins & 3 nominations total

Also by

Jean-Luc Godard

Stills · wallpapers

Selected frames

Full-resolution frames — open one to save it as a wallpaper.

Wallpaper

Trailers & featurettes

Watch the pieces

Community reviews

What people are saying

CRCulver2018-06-05
★ 8/10
In MASCULIN FEMININ, shot in the autumn of 1965, Jean-Luc Godard studies the perennial features of courtship and dating between young men and young women, and the particular way they worked out in the newly permissive and economically booming society of 1960s France. Paul (Jean-Pierre Léaud) is 21 and has just finished his national service. In a café, he strikes up a conversation with Madeleine (Chantal Goya), a friend of a friend, with the pretext that she might help him find work. They start dating, and the film then tracks their rocky relationship, where Paul is frustrated as the sole man among Madeleine and her flatmates/girlfriends Elisabeth (Marlène Jobert) and Catherine-Isabelle (Catherine-Isabelle Duport). He occasionally meets up with his chum Robert (Michel Debord), just as young but already a passionate union activist. But really, this is a lot more than a study in boy meets girl. Godard gives us a whole bucket of 1960s social, political, and cultural themes. Paul and Robert are both passionate members of the French Left, while the girls are more interested in the other side of the ideological divide, namely consumer society (pop music, clothes, cars). Their conversations reveal Godard's own unease at how the world was developing in the 1960s, his fears of political repression, dizzying technological progress, and a working class who had no time to enjoy all the stuff it could now buy. At several points in the film, the main characters overhear conversations in public places that are completely over-the-top in terms of sex and violence, but which reveal some of the tensions in society. In fact, in one of the film's most striking scenes, Godard without warning has Leáud interview a real young woman (Elsa Leroy) who had recently won a fashion magazine's "girl of the year" award, asking her about politics, war, and what she wants from life. In this six-minute scene where only she is visible on camera, clearly put on the spot, she seems totally oblivious to the war in Vietnam and other great issues of the day. Your reviewer is quite a passionate armchair historian about 1960s youth culture in Europe, and like many other books and films, MASCULIN FEMININ shows that many of the issues of the day are still very relevant for us in the new millennium. For this film, Godard's usual cameraman Raoul Coutard was unavailable, so he brought in Willy Kurant. While the two reportedly quarreled during the production, Kurant pulls off some remarkable long takes, again elevating a boy-meets-girl or boy-and-girl-have-rocky-relationship story into a delight for the eye. The use of sound (live sound from the cafés in which they shot, the occasional peal of gunfire) is also distinctive. MASCULIN FEMININ is perhaps less raved about than other Godard films from this time. It can arguably be called a minor effort in its recycling many elements from earlier productions while still searching for a way forward. That recycling isn't a bad thing, however, as the use of formal elements (division into tableau, a brutally abrupt ending) from Vivre sa vie, for instance (not to mention other earlier efforts), works just as well in the context of this story. I was initially baffled by the ending and how the film led up to it, but the more I look back at it, the more I'm impressed.

Production companies