LECTURE NOTES:FILM THEORY TWO//FRENCH NEW WAVE CINEMA//OUGD401

French new wave cinema of the 1950's and 1960's

Who were the new wave? –
Period of many “new waves”:
• Britain
• French movement most influential – focus on
Paris
– Group of French Filmmakers:
• Jean-Luc Goddard • François Truffaut • Claude Chabrol
• Jacques Rivette

La Pointe Courte (1954), by Agnes Varda – Starts off the New Wave

french wave- la nouvelle vague

influenced by Italian Neorealism and classical Hollywood cinema. 

french movement- focus on Paris

The French New Wave and European art cinema, post-1960

• Jean-Luc Godard, Breathless (1960)

• The French New Wave: Godard and François Truffaut
• 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 1950s-early 1960s)
• Henri Langlois and the Paris Cinematèque • André Bazin and the realist tradition
• Cahiers du Cinema
• From Critics to Auteurs
• Against the “Cinema of Quality”
• Discovery of American genre films
• Cinematic, rather than literary, values • Importance of personal expression

Truffaut at work (1964)

François Roland Truffaut (6 February 1932 – 21 October 1984) was an influential film critic and filmmaker, one of the founders of theFrench New Wave. In a film career lasting over a quarter of a century, he remains an icon of the French film industry. He was also a screenwriter, producer, and actor working on over twenty-five films.

• French New Wave: the “look”
• Shot on Location.
• Used lightweight, hand-held cameras.
• Lightweight sound & lighting equipment.
• Faster film stocks, less light.
• Films shot quickly and cheaply.
• Encouraged:
  • –  experimentation
  • –  improvisation.
• Casual, natural look;
• Available light;
• Available sound;
• Mise-en-scene – French landscape, cafés;
• Mobile camera – improvised & innovative. 
  
  
  REACTING AGAINST FRENCH FILMS OF 1940
  -AGAINST FILMS SHOT IN A STUDIO
  -AGAINST FILMS THAT WERE SET IN THE PAST
  -AGAINST FILMS THAT WERE CONTRIVED AND OVER DRAMATISED
  -AGAINST FILMS THAT USED TRICKERY AND SPECIAL EFFECTS
  -AGAINST LA TRADITION DE QUALITE
  
  
  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 and plotting Direct sound recording Long takes Many of these conventions 

  FRENCH NEW WAVE MOOD SHIFTS:

  
  

  Heroes are aimless, stylish, act silly.

  • Yet they are also cowardly, amoral.

  • Mood shifts: – Infatuation
  – Romanticism – Boredom

  • About death and betrayal.

  

   BREATHLESS

  

  
  

  

  Godard: Influence
  • Jump cuts
  • Elasticity of time
  • Montage, beyond Eisenstein
  • Relative independence of sound & 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 still contained the essential features of the New Wave films

  • shot in the day,
  • blackandwhite
  • 35 mm
  • using real locations
  • naturalistic light
  • Its particular feature is its use of real time. 

  

  
  

  

  

  

  Cleo is a flâneus, for most of the second part of the film
  

  • Beaudelaire’s masculine form flâneur
  • 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. 
  
  
  

  Other New Wave films

  
  

  • 1959

  • François Truffaut, The 400 Blows

  • Alain Resnais, Hiroshima Mon Amour

  • 1960

  • Jean-Luc Godard, Breathless

  • François Truffaut, Shoot the Piano Player 

  • 1961

  • Jacques Rivette, Paris nous appartient

  • Jean-Luc Godard, A Woman Is A Woman 

  • Alain Resnais, Last Year At Marienbad 

  
  

  Other 1960s European film
  • Ingmar Bergman (Sweden)
  – existential dramas
  – Persona (1966)
  • Luis Buñuel (Spain/Mexico)
  – returns to Europe with a refined version of his
  surrealism
  – Viridiana (1961, shot in Spain) – Belle de Jour (1967, France)