A Woman Is a Woman

A Woman Is a Woman (Une femme est une femme, 1961) is an early Jean-Luc Godard film you can watch online on iFILM. Shot in bright color and stitched together like a half-remembered musical, it's a French New Wave comedy that keeps arguing with its own genre while it plays.

Angèle dances in a Paris striptease club and wants a baby right now. Her boyfriend Émile isn't ready, so she threatens to have one with his best friend Alfred instead. From that three-way standoff Godard builds something playful and sharp: Anna Karina, Jean-Claude Brialy and Jean-Paul Belmondo trade lines, songs and sulks inside one cramped apartment that turns into a stage one minute and a boxing ring the next.

This is cinema in love with cinema. Godard quotes Hollywood musicals, cuts the music mid-note, and lets the actors glance straight at the camera — all to sketch a woman who simply refuses to give up what she wants. Karina took the best actress prize in Berlin for it, and it remains one of the warmest doors into the New Wave. Stream A Woman Is a Woman (1961) online on iFILM.