A WOMAN IS A WOMAN, writer/director Jean-Luc Godard’s “subversive” color and Scope tribute to the Hollywood musical comedy, starring Jean-Paul Belmondo, Jean-Claude Brialy, and the director’s then-wife and muse Anna Karina, will run at Film Forum from Friday, February 7 to Thursday, February 20, in a new 4K restoration being shown for the first time in the United States.

“I want to be in a musical with Cyd Charisse and Gene Kelly… choreographed by Bob Fosse!” declares Karina, and she almost gets her wish in this first color, Scope, and partly studio-shot film by her then-husband, the second (following LE PETIT SOLDAT) of their seven and a half collaborations. Karina’s Angela — an afternoon dancer in the sleazy Zodiac Club – yearns for motherhood, but live-in boyfriend Brialy “isn’t ready yet,” while hanger-on Belmondo is more than happy to oblige.

“Festooned with enough eccentric musical moments to satisfy the most avant of gardists: a Charles Aznavour song almost arbitrarily rocketing on and off the soundtrack, Karina’s stripping ditties, Michel Legrand’s pre-UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG score thundering into split-second breaks in dialogue. Plus cinematic in-jokes galore: Belmondo not wanting to miss BREATHLESS on TV, a straight-to-the-camera nod to Burt Lancaster in VERA CRUZ, Jeanne Moreau in a bar being asked how JULES AND JIM is coming along, Truffaut star Marie Dubois miming the title SHOOT THE PIANO PLAYER, as a machine gun rat-tat-tats on the track. Plus plenty of anarchic humor: Brialy’s bicycle ride through the apartment, a silent bedtime argument played out via book jacket titles, the backstage quick changes effected by cheekily obvious trick photography, men in the street-shot vérité style-asked at random if they’d like to father Karina’s child, with 1961 Paris stunningly photographed by New Wave master Raoul Coutard (BREATHLESS, JULES AND JIM, etc, etc.).

A jeu d’esprit of the New Wave that won a jury prize from the Berlin Film Festival for its “originality, youth, audacity and impertinence,” while the enchanting Karina (in her first major role) was named Best Actress.”