A Woman Is a Woman, Jean-Luc Godard (France, 1961)

(Une femme est une femme). Godard’s third feature was conceived “within the framework of a neorealist musical,” with nods to René Clair and Ernst Lubitsch. Anna Karina is Angela, an occasional stripper in a shabby club called the Zodiac. She is determined to have a baby and soon; when her lover Emile (Jean-Claude Brialy) won’t, she turns to his friend Alfred Lubitsch (Jean-Paul Belmondo), who will. Angela is a veritable White Rabbit, rushing around Paris with nowhere in particular to go, but always late; wanting “both”—and to be both—of everything at the same time. A drôle de fille in the screwball comedy mold is Angela. There is magic in this film, from actual hat tricks to the famous egg-frying gag to the mesmerizing traveling shots. Godard’s sense of woman-as-mystery is a part of that magic (even the title throws up its hands). The guy can’t help it.

—Judy Bloch

• Written by Godard, based on an idea by Genevieve Cluny. Photographed by Raoul Coutard. With Anna Karina, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Jean-Claude Brialy. (85 mins, In French with English subtitles, Color, ’Scope, 35mm, From Rialto Pictures)