GSU Film 2700 French New Wave
Agnes Varda
is associated with the FNW (Left Bank) only because she was making movies (outside of the studio system) the same time that these other folks were revisioning film's future. Stylistically and thematically, Varda is quite different from Truffaut and Godard. Less radical in her stylistics yet fully into personal cinema, Varda saw filmmaking as a specialized ecriture process that can't be achieved under studio control using the "methods of many." We'll check out the opening clip from her film Cleo From 5 to 7 in class (Hulu). These folks have influenced every generation of filmmakers since. Look up any video on Scorsese or Speilberg or dePalma or Tarantino or Nolan or Anderson in which they talk about the cinematic influences on their work and you'll find these guys near the top. Indeed, by breaking from the classical forms, FNW filmmakers point to a more personal cinema, one that can reflect a director's personality or individual style more than the studio in which it was produced. The reasons you like the directors you like has something to do with their styles and stories (which you appreciate). Truffaut, Godard and others associated with the FNW prompted this call for a cinema of directors, sometimes referred to as auteurist cinema. Truffaut first writes on Auteur Theory in his article "A Certain Tendency in French Cinema." Andrew Sarris, an American film critic, establishes "the distinguishable personality of the director as a criterion of value."
Jean-luc Godard
was a bit more radical (our book calls him "more abrasive") in his politics than Truffaut and even more concerned with radicalizing (rather than "shifting" a la Truffaut) cinema's aesthetic possibilities. In this early scene from his first feature, Breathless, Godard introduces us to a radical use of jump cuts that disrupt viewing by making us constantly aware we're watching a movie. It's not that JLG "invented" this technique at all (remember Melies' trick films or Eisenstein's montage), but he brought its use into storytelling in a way that that others had not. Can you imagine why a film would want to call attention to its own construction like this? And, check out the film's ending, which we can tell is not interested at all in linearity or continuity or any attempt at the 'mannered' realism offered by typical studio products. Breathless Analysis. These techniques and styles often call attention to the director's power to manipulate the viewer (remember that all films manipulate; these guys just foreground it). Thus, some of them are meta-cinematic or self-reflexive, concerning the nature of filmmaking itself.
French New Wave History
Check out Chapter 12 in the book to read a nice, concise history of the film in the 1950s, a period that gives rise to some of the most influential filmmakers of the century. Throughout this section, you'll find a history of youth and vitality reacting against some very real-world forces (political, military, social, economic, cultural, media) that our filmmakers redirected toward new aims. Indeed, the history of FNW is nicely approached by understanding what was "new" and what was "old."
Screen before class - Cleo From 5 To 7
Cléo Victoire (played by Corinne Marchand) is having a tarot card reading with a fortune teller, who tells her that there is a widow in Cléo's life, who is completely devoted to her, but is also a terrible influence (her maid, Angèle). The fortune teller also sees that Cléo has recently met a generous young man, which she confirms, claiming that she doesn't see him too often, but he got her into the music industry. There is also an evil force in Cléo's life: a doctor. The fortune teller then pulls the hanged man card, meaning that Cléo is ill, potentially with cancer. She then proceeds to pull the death tarot card, and Cléo requests that the fortune teller read her palm. After examining her lifeline, the fortune teller remains silent before telling Cléo that she does not read hands, leading for Cléo to believe that she is doomed. While distraught from her visit to the fortune teller, Cléo reminds herself "as long as I'm beautiful, I'm alive" and that death is ugly. She meets her maid, Angèle, at a café and recounts the results of the reading she received from the fortune teller, claiming that if it's cancer, she'll kill herself. Cléo cries in the café, even though there are people around, including the owner of the café. Cléo and Angèle proceed to go hat shopping, where Cléo only pays attention to the black fur hats, despite Angèle constantly reminding her that it's summertime. The black hats all beckon her, but she eventually picks out a black, winter hat. Cléo wants to wear the hat home, but Angèle reminds her that it's Tuesday, and it's bad luck to buy something new on a Tuesday. They have the shopkeeper send the hat to Cléo's home, and Cléo and Angèle take a taxi home in time for Cléo's rehearsal with a female taxi driver, who the two women find to be an interesting character. On the ride home, one of Cléo's songs plays, and they listen to the radio, discussing current news including The Algerian War, rebels who have been recently arrested, the Vienna Conference, President John F. Kennedy of the United States, and even Édith Piaf's recent surgery. Towards the end of the taxi ride back, Cléo grows nauseous and attributes it to her illness. Upon returning home, Cléo cannot breathe, and Angèle tells her to do some exercise in response. Angèle helps her change into her clothes for rehearsal while Cléo is stretching out on a pullout bar. She then lights a cigarette and relaxes in her bed. Before Cléo's lover, the man who the fortune teller mentioned earlier, enters the building, Angèle tells Cléo to not tell him that she's ill because men hate weakness. Her lover, a very busy man, tells her that he only has time to stop by for a kiss and that he'll be able to take her on vacation soon. Cléo tells him that she's ill, but he doesn't take her seriously. Cléo thinks that she's too good to men who are all egoists, which Angèle agrees with. Once Cléo's lover leaves, Bob the pianist and Maurice arrive at her home for her rehearsal. Bob and Maurice pretend to be doctors once Angèle tells them that Cléo is ill, because "all women like a good joke." However, Cléo does not find their joke funny, because no one is taking her illness seriously but her. Bob goes to the piano, and they begin to practice some of Cléo's songs and Cléo's mood quickly darkens after singing the song "Sans Toi." Cléo feels like all that people do is exploit her and that it won't be long until she's just a puppet for the music industry. After saying that everyone spoils her but no one loves her, Cléo leaves everyone behind in her home. On the way to a café, Cléo passes a street performer swallowing frogs and spitting them back out on a huge wave of water. She then plays one of her songs at a jukebox and is upset when no one in the café seems to notice the music playing in the background. Instead of remaining at the café for longer, Cléo goes to a sculpting studio to visit her old friend, Dorothée, who is sculpting nude for an artist. Once she's finished, Dorothée claims that her body makes her happy, not proud, and Dorothée drives Cléo to her home in her car. Cléo tells her friend that she is dying of cancer, and breaks a mirror, which Cléo claims is a bad omen. However, on their drive the two women pass a crime scene where a man was killed, and Dorothée tells her that the broken mirror was meant for that man, not Cléo. Dorothée returns the car to her lover, who works with film, and they show Cléo the new comedy he's been working on, which jokingly shows a woman dying. Cléo and Dorothée then take a taxi to drop Dorothée off at her own home. Once dropping Dorothée off at her apartment, Cléo has the taxi driver take her to a park. By a bridge on a river, Cléo meets Antoine, a soldier on leave from the Algerian War. Antoine helps Cléo realize her selfishness, and asks that she accompany him to the station to return to the war if he accompanies her to the hospital to get her test results back. Before leaving, Antoine confides in Cléo about his thoughts on the war, and that in Algeria, they die for nothing, and that scares him. He also tells Cléo that girls always seem to be afraid to give themselves completely to someone and that they're afraid of losing something close to them, so they love by halves. Cléo realizes that that describes her perfectly. Antoine and Cléo go to the hospital by a bus, and the doctor who tested Cléo for her possible cancer isn't in, despite the fact that he told her he'd be present at 7 pm that day. Cléo and Antoine sit on a bench outside, as Cléo is still determined that the doctor will be there. While Cléo has come to terms with her illness and is able to face the test results with courage thanks to Antoine's help, the doctor rolls by in his car and tells her that Cléo will be fine and completely cured with two months of treatment. Cléo is relieved to hear this, and tells Antoine that they have plenty of time together before he leaves to go back to Algeria as a soldier. For the first time in at least two hours, Cléo is finally happy.
Screen before class - Breathless/A Bout De Souffle
Michel (Jean-Paul Belmondo) is a youthful criminal who is intrigued with the film persona of Humphrey Bogart. After stealing a car in Marseille, Michel shoots and kills a policeman who has followed him onto a country road. Penniless and on the run from the police, he turns to an American love interest Patricia (Jean Seberg), a student and aspiring journalist, who sells the New York Herald Tribune on the streets of Paris. The ambivalent Patricia unwittingly hides him in her apartment as he simultaneously tries to seduce her and call in a loan to fund their escape to Italy. Patricia says she is pregnant, probably with Michel's child. She learns that Michel is on the run when questioned by the police. Eventually she betrays him, but before the police arrive she tells Michel what she has done. He is somewhat resigned to a life in prison, and does not try to escape at first. The police shoot him in the street and, after a prolonged death run, he dies "à bout de souffle" (out of breath). Closing dialogue[edit] Michel's death scene is one of the most iconic scenes in the film, but the film's final lines of dialogue are the source of some confusion for English-speaking audiences. In some translations, it is unclear whether Michel is condemning Patricia, or alternatively condemning the world in general. As Patricia and Detective Vital catch up with the dying Michel, they have the following dialogue: MICHEL: C'est vraiment dégueulasse. PATRICIA: Qu'est-ce qu'il a dit? VITAL: Il a dit que vous êtes vraiment "une dégueulasse". PATRICIA: Qu'est-ce que c'est "dégueulasse"?[3][4] In the English captioning of the 2001 Fox-Lorber Region One DVD, "dégueulasse" is translated as "scumbag", producing the following dialogue: MICHEL: It's disgusting, really. PATRICIA: What did he say? VITAL: He said, "You're a real scumbag". PATRICIA: What's a scumbag? The 2007 Criterion Collection Region One DVD uses a less literal translation: MICHEL: Makes me want to puke. PATRICIA: What did he say? VITAL: He said you make him want to puke. PATRICIA: What's that mean, "puke"?
Change from CHC
We've gotten a bit about what was "old" by understanding CHC as a system of filmmaking that taught the world what moving images can do, what they "mean" and how they're to be "read": a system of patterns (which make it "classical") and repeated themes, styles and stories told in highly functional (and highly predictable) fashion. We could refer to CHC as being highly "mannered" in this sense: tightly controlled mise-en-scene, camerawork and editing discouraged individual style and experimentation. Much French film of the period reflected the same systemization resulting from firmly established studio control. This way of making films ran in contrast to the new generation coming of age after WWII who saw a world in need of change and redirection (in terms of political, social and economic issues AND in terms of cultural, artistic products like film).
Defying the old
Writing in film journals (most notably in Cahiers du Cinema and see 216 in book) and hanging out in film clubs, a generation of loosely aligned people ended up making films that radically shifted what film could do, what stories it could tell, and how it could tell them. They sought to defy "old" industrial (studio bound) conventions by pointing the way to a more "personal cinema" that reflected the values, styles and media literacies of their generation by actively promoting "innovations in film form and style."
Of the classical style, they rejected:
mannered, controlled compositions 'perfect' camera angles and lighting, eg reliance on tight, logical editing reliance on montage and pure continuity editing controlled atmospheres created in studio filmmaking that limited individuality and self-expression Suture!
Francois Truffaut
sought to introduce newness to cinema by using film as a means of personal expression (a sentiment that ran counter to the dominant studio mode) that could also entertain.
They offered/promoted:
zest and spontaneity filming freed from (studio) styles used by 'everyone' else able to create individual mood and sentiment use of mise-en-scene and composition-in-depth instead of reliance on editing to tell story less "directorial" and more free flowing, open use of hand-held cameras instead of perfect compositions in studio filming improvised plot and dialogue rather than perfectly written/delivered lines often jarring editing (not linear) disrupts the illusion so sought in classical films ex: the "Jump-Cut" - Breathless, Royal Tennenbaums, Old Boy other ways to avoid the "manners" of studio films on-location shooting more unknowns and space for improv natural lighting less "perfection" than full studio lights direct sound recording and post-dubbing (the norm) closer to "real world" experience