Film and Theory 2 // 30th November 2011
Film and Theory 2 // 30th November 2011French New Wave Cinema of 50's / 60's
- The french new wave (La Nouvelle Vague) was the name for a group of french film makers from the 1950's and 1960's. The french new wave was influenced by Italian Neorealism and classical Hollywood cinema.
- Periods of many "new waves": Britain, FRench movement most influential - focus on Paris
- French new wave - group of french film makers: Jean-Luc Goddard, Francois Truffaut, Claude Chabrol, Jacques Rivette, Eric Rohmer. All these french film makers of the french new wave were once film critics and had a strong background in film theory. They also all wrote for Cahiers du Cinema.
- La Pointe Courte (1954) by Agnes Varda is the beginnings of the New Wave. La Pointe Courte had achieved a cult status in film history as, in the words of historian Georges Sadoul, “truly the first film of the nouvelle vague.” La Pointe Courte was the predecessor of the films that Claude Chabrol, François Truffaut, and Jean-Luc Godard would start making five years later.
- New Wave is an example of European art cinema. Despite never being a formal organisation they were closely linked to self-conscious rejection of classical cinematic form. Many engaged in the social and political disaster of that era.
- The French New Wave and European Art Cinema post 1960's: Jean-Luc Goddard Breathless 1960. This was Goddard''s first feature film and became one of the first and most influential films of the New Wave era. Goddard's innovative editing use of jump cuts, similar to in last weeks lecture when we looked at Alfred Hitchcock and his fame for cutting scenes. This process and style brought great attention to Goddard's new film along with it's bold and visual style.
- The french new wave: Goddard and Francois Truffaut.
Truffaut co-wrote 'Breathless' with Godard and introduced Godard to the producer who ultimately funded the film, Georges de Beauregard.
- Italy in the 1960s: Federico Fellini, Michaelangelo Antonioni, Pier Paolo, Pasolini.
- Other countries: Ingmar Bergman (Sweden), Luis Buñuel (return to France and Spain)
The french New Wave (late 1950's - early 1960's)
- Henri Langlois and the Paris Cinemateque
Henri Langlois was a pioneer of film preservation and became a french film archivist and cinephile. Langlois was a co-founder of the Cinematheque Francaise with Georges Franji and Jean Mitry. He later became the co-founder of the International Federation of Film Archives 1938. He also worked to preserve films and film history in the post-war era.
- Andre Bazin and the realist tradition
Bazin thought that abstraction and artifice were to be kept to a minimum. The materials in reality should be able to speak to themselves. This links back to earlier lectures with Richard where we looked at truth to materials. Bazin believed that reality was the most important factor in cinema and that the director must reveal reality throughout. He believes that cinema lies between the sprawl of raw life, and the artificially re-created worlds of the traditional arts. Film makers can also preserve actual time and space by panning, tilting, and cracking rather than cutting into specific shots.
- Cahiers du Cinema
Cahier du cinema is an authoritative film magazine founded by Andre Bazin in 1951. It developed from the earlier magazines Revue du Cinema and Cine-Club du Quartier Latin. Cahiers re-invented the basic tenets of film criticism and theory. I recently read some Cahier du cinema books from the local library following our lecture last week on Alfred Hitchcock.
- From critics to Auteurs.
Film criticism is the analysis and evaluation of films, individually and collectively. A film critic is someone who analyses the films - this is often very opinionated. An Auteur is a film maker, usually the director - 'the one that moulds the film'. Movies are characterised by the filmmakers unique influences (an Auteur).
- Against the "Cinema of Quality"
French New Wave was popular roughly between 1958 and 1964, although New Wave work existed as late as 1973.They were especially against the French "cinema of quality", the type of high-minded, literary period films held in esteem at French film festivals, often regarded as "untouchable" by criticism.
- Discovery of American Genre Films
- Cinematic rather than literary values
- Importance of personal expression
- Spontaneity and digression
- Truffaut at work (1964)
By the time he was shooting La Peau Douce (Soft Skin) in 1964, François Truffaut had changed cinema forever. This scene of Truffaut filming La Peau Douce is pure Nouvelle Vague: a lightweight camera, mounted onto a modified 2 CV and filming in daylight on the streets of Paris, as opposed to an artificially lit shoot in a studio, with a dolly on a track.
French New Wave: existentialism
Philosopher Jean Paul Sartre (1905-1980)
- Stressed the individual
- Experience of free choice
- Absence of any rational understanding of universe
- Sense of absurdity in human life
- In indifferent world, existentialist seeks to; act authentically, use free will, take responsibility for all their actions, avoid playing out roles pre-ordained by society.
- French New Wave: the "look"
- Shot on location
- Used lightweight, hand-held camera's
- Lightweight sound and lighting equipment
- Faster film stocks, less light
- Films shot quickly and cheaply
- Encouraged: experimentation, improvisation
- Casual, natural look
- Available lightweight
- Available sound
- Mise-en-scene: French landscape, Cafes
- Mobile Camera: Improvised and innovative
Reacting against french film of 1940's (cinema du papa)
- Against films shot in a studio
- Against films that were set in the past
- Against films that were contrived and overdramatised
- Against films that used trickery and special effects
- Against la tradition de qualite
La Belle et la Bete Jean COCTEAU 1946
The french 'La Belle et la Bête' is a 1946 French romantic fantasy film adaptation of the traditional fairy tale of the same name, written by Jeanne-Marie Le prince de Beautmont and published in 1757 as part of a fairy tale anthology. Directed by French poet and film maker Jean Cocteau.
- The new wave celebrated American film noir because they reflected contemporary urban life. Film Noir is a cinematic term which is used to primarily describe stylish Hollywood Crime Drama's. Hollywood's classic film noir period is generally regarded as extending from the early 1940s to the late 1950 - this is key as it was directly prior to the French New Wave Era in the 1950's and 1960's.
- Character in contemporary dress, speaking in the Vernacular.
- Breathless Jean-Luc Goddard 1930-
Jean-Luc Godard is a French-Swiss film director, screenwriter and film critic. He is often identified with the 1960s French film movement, French Nouvelle Vague, or "New Wave". His most celebrated period as a filmmaker is roughly from his first feature, Breathless through to Week End focused on relatively conventional works that often refer to different aspects of film history. This cinematic period stands in contrast to the revolutionary period.
Godard's Breathless (À bout de souffle), starring Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg distinctly expressed the French New Wave's style, and incorporated quotations from several elements of popular culture — specifically American Cinema. The film employed various innovative techniques such as jump cuts and breaking the eyeline match rule. Truffaut co-wrote Breathless with Godard and introduced Godard to the producer who ultimately funded the film.
- Reinventing film from the ground up
- Basis in American gangster films, but everything is deglamourised
- Location shooting, natural light, handheld camera
- Use of jump shots, mismatching, and other violations of continuity editing rules
- Self-reflexivity: Jean-Paul Belmondo and Bogart
- Jean Seberg: America/ France
- Use of digression and suspensions of action
- Reality of Story/reality of film
- Ambiguities of character, of identification and of ending.
- French New Wave: the editing style
- Free style
- Did not conform to editing rules
- Discontinuous
- Jump cuts
- Insertion of extraneous material
- Shooting on location: Natural lighting, improvised dialogue, plotting direct, sound recording and long takes.
The overall goal: to make the audience remember that they are WATCHING A MOVIE...
- French New Wave: mood shifts
- Heroes are aimless, stylish and act silly.
- Yet they are also cowardly, amoral.
- Mood shifts: infatuation, romanticism, boredom
- About death and betrayal.
- Goddard: Influence
- Jump cuts
- Elasticity of time
- Montage, beyond Einstein
- Relative independence of sound and image
- Focus on both Narration and Narrated
- Self reflexive cinema
- "Reality" of images (& sounds, & words)
Cleo 5 to 7 Varda (1963)
- Shot for $64,000 and financed by the New Wave producers Beauregard and Ponti through their Rome-PAris films company. Cléo from 5 to 7 is a 1962 Rive Gauche Film by Agnes Varde. The story starts with a young singer, Florence "Cléo" Victoire, at 5pm June 21, as she waits until 7pm.
-The film is noted for its handling of several of the themes of existentialism, including discussions of mortality, the idea of dispair, and leading a meaningful life. The film has a strong feminine viewpoint and raises questions about how women are perceived. The role of mirrors are prevalent to symbolize self-obsession.
- Cleo still contained the essential features of the French New Wave films;
- shot in the day
- black and white
- 35mm film
- using real locations
- naturalistic light
- it's particular feature is its use of real time
- Cleo is a flaneus, for most of the second part of the film; Beaudelaire's masculine form flaneur, coined the concept which is strongly masculine in its origins, being the idea of the invisible male who walks through the city and observes but does not engage with those about him.
- Sunglasses allow her to observe from a greater distance
Here are more still shot images from the film: Cleo from 5 to 7;
- Other New Wave films:
1959, Francois Truffaut - The 400 Blows, Alain Resnais - Hiroshima Mon Amour, 1960, Jean-Luc Goddard - Breathless, Francois Truffaut - Shoot the Piano Player, 1961, Jacques Rivette - Paris nous appartient, Jean-Luc Goddard - A woman is a woman, Alain Resnais - Last year at marienbad, 1962, Francois Truffaut - Jules and Jim, Agnes Varda - Cleo from 5 to 7, Jean-Luc Goddard - My life to live
- Other 1960's european films:
Ingmar Bargman (Sweden), Existential drama's, Persona 1966, Luis Brunuel - Spain/ Mexico, Returns to Europe with a rfined version of his surrealism, Viridiana 1967 France, Belle de Jour 1967 France, The discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie 1972 France
•French New Wave film Scources
•An example of what French New Wave were reacting against:- La Belle et La Bête (3/9) Jean Cocteau (1946) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9klyfMFyzF4&feature=related
•Preferred 1940s American Film Noir http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B76s0SF47xw
•Godard’s homage to Humphrey Bogart in À bout de souffle (Breathless) http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=154265816642125228#
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• Le Petit Soldat (1960), Jean-Luc Godard
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•Breathless - jump cuts
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•À bout de souffle (Breathless) - Jean Luc Godard - Car Scene http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KUVwKp6MDI
•Clip from Annie Hall showing Self-reflexivity
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•Jean-Luc Godard & Anna Karina in Cleo From 5 to 7 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuGTe_ZzGEQ&feature=related
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•Çléο de 5 à 7 (1962) 1/9
• A discussion about How Agnes Varda began the new wave
•Neupert, Richard, 2007, A History of the French New Wave Cinema, 2nd Edition, Wisconsin,
•Wisconsin University Press
•Greene, Naomi, The French New Wave. A New Look, 2007, Wallflower Press.
•Orpen, Valerie, 2007, Cléo de 5 à 7, London, I.B. Tauris.
•Smith, Alison, Agnès Varda, 1998, Manchester, Manchester University Press.
