A Woman Is a Woman

Jean-Luc 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. 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.)