The essence of Jean-Luc Godard's La Femme Mariée is the transmutation of the dramatic into the graphic. The comings and goings of the characters, and the development of the story, are presented in the matter-of-fact way which is characteristic of Godard, and whose episodic nature reached its height in his film Vivre Sa Vie. The graphic elements in Godard's films are by no means new, they can be found in all of his work. What is new is the consistent movement into the graphic from the dramatic which is used as the basis of expression in this film, and which was only found in kernels in his other works…. Two of the film's title cards read successively: IN BLACK, AND WHITE, and it is between two contrasting poles that Charlotte moves, first searching at one, and then along a line to the other. The points on this line occur as encounters, which are strung together on the thread of Charlotte's movements over a period of two days. These movements are presented in Godard's almost throwaway style, and simply constitute the links between the important encounters…. By tracing, in this way, a complete line of Charlotte's activities during this period of time, Godard allows himself to be able to stop at certain points of importance, and to raise these, by use of graphic means, to a higher pitch than the line itself. These points of absolute ideas and emotions, presented as black or white, are not value judgments as to the good of one or the evil of another. They are of relief, or contrast, not of morality. Godard is a moralist because of his insistence upon carrying the eventualities of any choice to their furthest point. He is not, though, a traditional moralist because he does not choose beforehand which given choice is good. For Charlotte, as for all of Godard's women, choices involve the decision to follow one set of absolutes, or another. (p. 42)

For Godard, any printing is grist for the mill. Sometimes he breaks up signs which exist in the environment of his characters, such as the camera panning across the sign at Orly Airport: PASSAGE CINEMA, breaking PASSAGE into PAS SAGE, "misbehaving": a reflection on the secret meeting of Robert and Charlotte. (p. 43)

The name EVE, found in the word RÊVES, "dreams," is like DANGER, creating a symmetry in that EVE is exactly composed of all the letters between the first and last letter of the word. Eve too is an absolute, the first woman, and like The Married Woman. (The French censors got the title changed to Une Femme Mariée [A Married Woman], though this is contrary to the whole method of the film.) Eve is also a figure in mythology, and corresponds to Charlotte's cloudy, dream-like vision of an ideal, and absolute to follow. Godard has always been concerned with mythopoeic, transcendent values in man, but always measured against his actual being. And the tragedy in his films is the constant failure of his characters to find, and measure up to, the ideals which they seek. Because of his sternness and his uncompromising position he often seems a misanthrope….

[In Contempt], the dramatic presentations of "static essentials," especially in reference to the different interpretations of the Odyssey which come up in the film, are forerunners to the "static essentials" (the phrase is Pavese's) which are presented even more directly, especially in graphic form, in La Femme Mariée.

It is in the café sequence, when Charlotte overhears the conversation between the two girls, that the images, graphic and dramatic, and the sound track, dialogue, effects, and music, are intertwined with the most complexity. The girls' conversation is about the impending loss of virginity by the girl on frame right. Quite simply, she represents ignorance, and her friend represents knowledge. This situation is a microcosm of Godard's approach to the whole film. (p. 44)

[The] important points, ideas, and phrases … are printed in the center of the frame, an outline of the conversation, not a reproduction of it. In this abstraction from the dramatic situation we are shown the mechanics of the device, as well as the device itself. In this way we follow Godard's method of movement from the dramatic situation to the graphic representation of it. The bones of the method are laid bare by this very schematic presentation. This idea of the work itself evincing the process of its creation as an integral part of its form was born with the Action Painters, and is manifest in many fields of art. It is the illustration of the artist's confrontation of the material reality which he molds. It evokes a feeling of honesty in the texture and rawness of the materials which are not glossed over to hide their essential nature, simply to create a slick, and therefore lying, image. The constant references to film in Godard's works, the self-consciousness of each work, are there to keep the perspective that the work is subordinate to the creator.

We move completely into the graphic realm with the second part of this sequence. The magazine Charlotte is reading is full of stylized drawings which advertise women's undergarments, and photographs of the mid-sections of men showing form fitting clothing…. Comparison with Pop Art here is perfectly valid, for much of Pop involves simplicity of pattern, and the use of contemporary, stylized images. In other words, for Godard, this sequence is handled in exactly the same way in which one would handle a standard dramatic sequence cut into a film—a sequence involving the real world of people and their environment. This bringing of the graphic or imagistic world to the same level as the real world is clinched by the final shot in this sequence. It is a still frame of the drawing of a woman, in the same style as many we have seen in the sequence. But all of a sudden we notice Charlotte's head enter at the bottom of frame right and move along the frame line. It is a billboard, and its huge existence as an object moves us from the more abstract drawings in the magazine, back to Charlotte's movements in the more traditional pre-Godard world of things and people. But, for Godard's woman who is alive today, it is the image-as-object she must contend with, just as she does with other objects and people in her world. (pp. 44-5)

Rhetoric, even formal rhetoric, ends and gives way to unity in the three love scenes which occur at the beginning, middle, and end of the film. The act of love becomes a ritual celebrating life. And all value judgments such as sacred, profane, and adulterous give way to the celebration of this rite. Dialogue is gone; the lovers speak in unison, and the immoral is not a violation of conventional moralities, but any act which paralyzes the consummation of this love. Selection and emphasis also reach their highest point during these sequences. Godard's compositions are based on the fragmentation of the lovers' bodies to create patterns which are so powerful just because they do not deal with whole forms. Given the familiarity of the human form, perhaps the most familiar of all forms to us, Godard is able to fragment it, breaking it down to create new patterns because of the suggestibility inherent in not seeing the whole form….

Three times we see the lips of a character repeating "je t'aime" over and over again, without actually hearing the words. This, like the fade-in and fade-out, slows the pace, emphasizing both the activity of love-making and the visual patterning. By forcing the spectator to read the lips of the character (and it is a simple enough phrase for this) Godard draws him into being one with the speaker, as the viewer himself repeats the phrase over and over, in his own mind. (p. 47)

[When the film ends, Charlotte and Robert's] affair ends, because there is no more reality to the situation after Robert leaves. There is nothing for Godard to photograph. Charlotte's indecision was grounded in Robert's presence as an alternative to her husband. Her husband and her lover were the points, or poles, between which she encountered the emotions and ideas which structure the film. The material reality was the cause of her frustration. Her final acceptance of the end of the situation frees her from the hell which she has been experiencing.

But this is by no means either fatalism or a final answer to her question. It is only the elimination of the tension: the elimination of the immediate need to find her definition. Robert will return, and if she has not forgotten him, the problem may arise again. Other situations may, in the future, confront her with the need to take up the search again. Just as this film is called Fragments of a Film Shot in 1964, so is the total film only a fragment of life: a technique which could be called one of emotional and intellectual collage. Unlike works of drama in the past, which were based on characters in situations which changed their whole lives, this film is only the presentation of a momentary conflict or tension. This conflict gives birth to many kinds of emotions, "static essentials," which Godard orders so that we may understand them more clearly. It is a disturbance that for the time it exists consumes the total energies of Charlotte. All the more, because the film exists so much in and for the moment in its use of things contemporary, it is incisive. An instantaneous plunge into the fabric of the life of a character that lingers in the mind as a reality which is immutable, and constantly re-echoes there long after the film has been seen. (pp. 47-8)