Monsieur Godard and the Women

Something about Jean-Luc Godard never goes out of style. On the eve of a new critical biography (Richard Brody's "Everything Is Cinema: The Working Life of Jean-Luc Godard"), on Friday Film Forum will launch a five-week survey of the great French director's 1960s output.

In many ways, the programming is a valedictory lap: A lot of these classics have been revived here in the past year or two, all to predictable, if no less deserved, praise and a new-wave nostalgia that has become stale where the films themselves remain as fresh as ever. So in lieu of offering still more breathless praise of "Breathless" or a couple more things you may not know about "Two or Three Things I Know About Her," let's talk about another timeless element of the movies, in Mr. Godard's films as much as anyone's: leading ladies.

Though his movies are most often viewed through the prisms of aesthetics and politics, Mr. Godard's also lensed some of the most fascinating actresses of the decade. Here's a survey:

JEAN SEBERG

Film: "Breathless" (1960)

Role: Patricia, an American coed in Paris, who falls for Jean-Paul Belmondo's wannabe Humphrey Bogart — only to betray him.

Icon factor: Her boyish short hair made the transition from Otto Preminger's "Saint Joan" (1957) and gave Seberg the spritelike look for which she is always remembered.

ANNA KARINA

Films: "A Woman Is a Woman" (1961), "Vivre sa vie" (1962), "Le Petit soldat" (1963), "Band of Outsiders" (1964), "Alphaville" (1965), "Pierrot le Fou" (1965), "Made in U.S.A." (1967)

Roles: Mostly, Mr. Godard's muse — onscreen and off. They were married between 1961 and 1967. Ms. Karina was the embodiment of a kind of carefree glamour, whether she was playing a stripper, a prostitute, the singing-dancing pivot in a love triangle, the poetically sad consort to a B-movie gangster of the future, or a babysitter gone bad and on the lam with Mr. Belmondo.

Icon factor: The ultimate Godard actress. The Danish onetime model was pretty much at one with the 1960s, and juxtaposed a light-footed élan with pensive airs that gave a soulful quality to even the most brashly postmodern of Mr. Godard's conceits.

BRIGITTE BARDOT

Film: "Contempt" (1963)

Role: Camille Javal, the unfaithful wife of Michel Piccoli's conflicted screenwriter, who succumbs to the wolfish charms of his employer, the American movie producer Jeremy Prokosch (Jack Palance).

Icon factor: Ms. Bardot was already a legend, and the French heiress to the sex-kitten legacy of Marilyn Monroe. In true contrarian form, Mr. Godard initially declined to put a nude scene in the film, and only added one after the fact at the insistence of producer Carlo Ponti. He also had Ms. Bardot put on a brunette wig for part of the film, an homage to her character's inspiration: Ms. Karina. The director wouldn't work with another famous international star again until Jane Fonda appeared in "Tout va bien."

MACHA MÉRIL

Films: "A Married Woman" (1964), "La Chinoise" (1967)

Role: Charlotte, the married title character who struggles with the circumstances of an affair in her husband's absence.

Icon factor: Ms. Méril is on considerable display, often in extreme close-up, making love to the strains of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. Her subsequent career has been substantial, including roles with Luis Buñuel, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Agnès Varda, and Dario Argento.

MARINA VLADY

Film: "Two or Three Things I Know About Her" (1967)

Role: Juliette Jeanson, a dispassionate suburban housewife who turns an occasional trick to keep her wardrobe stylish.

Icon factor: Ms. Vlady wore the perfect look of modern boredom in the movie's best-known image — eyebrows raised at 45 degrees as she smokes a cigarette, a hand propped on her hip. The performer already had a Best Actress prize from the Cannes Film Festival (for 1963's "The Conjugal Bed").

ANNE WIAZEMSKY

Films: "La Chinoise," "Weekend" (1967), "Sympathy for the Devil" (1968)

Roles: Ms. Karina's successor in Mr. Godard's affections, Ms. Wiazemsky plays one of the revolutionaries in "La Chinoise" and the symbolic Eve Democracy in the Rolling Stones documentary "Sympathy for the Devil." She was a more significant presence in the 1970s, following the director into his radicalized "Dziga Vertov" period of Maoist-inspired agitprop.

Icon factor: The actress came to Mr. Godard already a star — she was Robert Bresson's 19-year-old discovery in 1966's "Au hazard Balthazar."

JULIET BERTO

Films: "La Chinoise," "Weekend," "Le Gai savoir" (1969)

Roles: Berto, who died in 1990, gets the most exposure in "La Gai savoir," as she carries on a political discourse with Jean-Pierre Léaud.

Icon factor: Though she has a moment as one of the gun-toting revolutionaries in "Weekend," Berto accrued greater renown as a key player in the theatrical exercises of Jacques Rivette, especially the fabulist masterpiece "Celine and Julie Go Boating" (1974).