FRENCH NEW WAVE

During my research into French auteurs and arthouse films I found that most of these were from or heavily influenced by the French New Wave.

HISTORY
- group of French filmmakers of the late 1950s and 1960s, influenced (in part) by Italian Neorealism

- self-conscious rejection of classical cinematic form and their spirit of youthful iconoclasm. Many also engaged in their work with the social and political upheavals of the era, making their radical experiments with editing, visual style, and narrative part of a general break with the conservative paradigm.

- Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, Éric Rohmer, Claude Chabrol, and Jacques Rivette, began as critics for the famous film magazine Cahiers du cinéma.

- Co-founder and theorist André Bazin was a prominent source of influence for the movement. - - the auteur theory -holds that the director is the "author" of his movies, with a personal signature visible from film to film.

- Chabrol's Le Beau Serge (1958) is generally credited as the first New Wave feature. Truffaut, with The 400 Blows (1959) and Godard, with Breathless (1960) had unexpected international successes, both critical and financial, that turned the world's attention to the activities of the New Wave and enabled the movement to flourish.

- French New Wave was “in style” roughly between 1958 and 1964, although popular New Wave work existed as late as 1973. The socio-economic forces at play shortly after World War II strongly influenced the movement. A politically and financially drained France tended to fall back to the old popular traditions before the war.

- One such tradition was straight narrative cinema, specifically classical French film. The movement has its roots in rebellion against the reliance on past forms (often adapted from traditional novellic structures), criticizing in particular the way these forms could force the audience to submit to a dictatorial plot-line.

- New Wave critics and directors studied the work of these and other classics. They did not reject them, but rather found a new outlet for the same creative energies. The low-budget approach helped film-makers get at the essential art form and find what, to them, was a much more comfortable and honest form of production.

STYLE
- The movies featured unprecedented methods of expression, such as seven-minute tracking shots (like the famous traffic jam sequence in Godard's 1967 film Week End). Also, these movies featured existential themes, such as stressing the individual and the acceptance of the absurdity of human existence.

- Lightweight cameras, lights, and sound equipment allowed the New Wave directors to shoot in the streets, rather than in studios. This fluid camera motion became a trademark of the movement, with shots often following characters down Paris streets.

- Many of the French New Wave films were produced on small budgets, often shot in a friend's apartment, using the director's friends as the cast and crew. Directors were also forced to improvise with equipment (for example, using a shopping cart for tracking shots). The cost of film was also a major concern; thus, efforts to save film turned into stylistic innovations: for example, in Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless (À bout de souffle), several scenes feature jump cuts, as they were filmed in one long take: parts that didn't work were simply cut right from the middle of the take, a purposeful stylistic decision.

The cinematic stylings of French New Wave brought a fresh look to cinema with improvised dialogue, rapid changes of scene, and shots that go beyond the common 180º axis. The camera was used not to mesmerize the audience with elaborate narrative and illusory images, but to play with and break past the common expectations of cinema.

The techniques used to shock the audience out of submission and awe were so bold and direct that Jean-Luc Godard has been accused of having contempt for his audience. His stylistic approach can be seen as a desperate struggle against the mainstream cinema of the time, or a degrading attack on the viewer’s naivete. Either way, the challenging awareness represented by this movement remains in cinema today. Effects that now seem either trite or commonplace, such as a character stepping out of her role in order to address the audience directly, were radically innovative at the time.

Classic French cinema adhered to the principles of strong narrative, creating what Godard described as an oppressive and deterministic aesthetic of plot. In contrast, New Wave filmmakers made no attempts to suspend the viewer’s disbelief; in fact, they took steps to constantly remind the viewer that a film is just a sequence of moving images, no matter how clever the use of light and shadow. The result is a set of oddly disjointed scenes without attempt at unity; or an actor whose character changes from one scene to the next; or sets in which onlookers accidentally make their way onto camera along with extras, who in fact were hired to do just the same.

At the heart of New Wave technique is the issue of money and production value. In the context of social and economic troubles of a post-WWII France, filmmakers sought low-budget alternatives to the usual production methods. Half necessity and half vision, New Wave directors used all that they had available to channel their artistic visions directly to the theatre.

SPECIFIC FILMS -to be continued

HENRY-GEORGES CLOUZOT
Quay of the Goldsmiths - Quai des Orfèvres
The Wages of Fear - Le Salaire de la peur
La Vérité

JEAN COCTEAU
The Blood of a Poet - Le Sang d'un Poete
Orpheus – Orphée
Testament of Orpheus - Le Testament d'Orphée
Beauty and the Beast - La Belle et la Bête


BRUNO DUMONT
Twentynine Palms
Humanité

JACQUES DEMY
Lola
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg - Les Parapluies de Cherbourg
The Young Girls of Rochefort - Les Demoiselles de Rochefort

JEAN LUC GODARD
Breathless - À bout de souffle
Vivre sa Vie - It's My Life
Contempt - Le Mépris
Bande à part - Band of Outsiders
Pierrot le fou - "Pete the madman"

MICHEL GONDRY
The Science of Sleep - La Science des rêve

http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/directors/02/varda.html

AGNES VARDA
Cléo from 5 to 7 - Cléo de 5 à 7
Vagabond - Sans toit ni loi "without roof or law"
The Gleaners and I - Les Glaneurs et la glaneuse

JEAN VIGO
L'Atalante

FRANCOIS TRUFFAUT
Shoot the Piano Player - Tirez sur le pianiste
Jules and Jim
Fahrenheit 451
La Nuit américaine
The 400 Blows - Les Quatre Cents Coups

FILM RESEARCH

FRENCH AUTEURS

Jean-Jacques Beineix
Luc Besson
Robert Bresson
Henri-Georges Clouzot
Jean Cocteau
Bruno Dumont
Jacques Demy
Abel Gance
Jean-Luc Godard
Michel Gondry
Danièle Huillet
Agnès Varda
Jean Vigo
François Truffaut
Jacques Tati
Jean-Marie Straub
Éric Rohmer
Jean Renoir
Francois Ozon
Louis Malle
Chris Marker Georges Méliès
Jean-Pierre Melville
Marcel Carné
Claude Chabrol
René Clair

SHOCKING CINEMA

Bunuel and Dali's Un chien andalou (1928) remains one of the most shocking films ever made.


FILM AS A SUBVERSIVE ART - AMOS VOGEL

'Intending Film as a Subversive Art to profile the “accelerating world-wide trend toward a more liberated cinema, in which subjects and forms hitherto considered unthinkable or forbidden are boldly explored,” Vogel seized the opportunity to introduce these unfamiliar films and filmmakers to a broader audience than the societies and festivals could ever reach. Though a few who worked outside of conventional guidelines had established their own followings (notably Maya Deren, Kenneth Anger and Stan Brakhage), Vogel offered equal time to just about anyone whose films provided instances of truth and wisdom while subverting linear narrative structure and the limitations imposed by time and space—“a cinema of experience rather than entertainment” derived from “the subversion of consciousness.” '

- This book would be useful if I were to choose a question to do with the anti rules created and controversial issues dealt with in art film /'shokcing cinema' focussing on European art films
- OR the intentional detachments of art film / form conventions

ART CINEMA + AUTEURS

ART CINEMA
European cinema is predominantly art cinema

Teaching World Cinema: Kate Gamm p22

Susan Hayward:
‘A certain type of European cinema that is experimental in technique and narrative’

‘…in art cinema narrative codes and conventions are disturbed and the narrative line is fragmented so there is no seamless cause and effect storyline.’

‘these films are character rather than plot led […] this absence of heroes is an important feature of art cinema.’
Characters in art cinema
- who seen as most heroic/aspiring
- Does where we are from effect who we see as the hero? Actors may be stars in their own countries and not other –how does this effect?
- Do foreign audiences feel more distanced or empowered by freedom of interpretation which they have been given through art cinema? –contrast to viewpoints given by Hollywood films

‘Intentionally distances spectators to create a reflective space for them to assume their own critical space or subjectivity in relation to the screen or film.


AUTEUR THEORY
A director’s work which features a consistency of style/theme/approach
In world cinema auteur theory tends to be more prevalent

Lukas Moodysson, Swedish, Show Me Love
Claire Denis, French, La Haine
David Lynch

BFI: AUTEUR THEORY/AUTEURS

AUTHORSHIP + THE FILMS OF DAVID LYNCH


CASESTUDIES:
Swedish cinema: Show Me Love, Together, The Idiots, Lilya 4-Ever, Festen, Mifune, Italian for Beginners

French film: Amelie, La Haine, Code Unknown, Harry He’s Here to Help,
Art cinema -Beau Travail,

British: secrets and lies, all or nothing, Land and Freedom, Bread and Roses

Mexican/Latin American – Central Station, Behind the Sun, City of God, Y Tu Mama Tambien, Amores Perros, 21 Grams

WORLD CINEMA

MORE QUESTION IDEAS...

- Differences between World and Western cinema
culture and history
auteurism (a directors films reflecting their personal creative visions)
funding and distribution
exhibition and distribution

- British cinema as European cinema
- British cinema in contrast to European
- Diversity within European cinema
- hollywood representations of countries - contrast with own cinemathe anti
- foreign cinema as art cinema - stylistic features
- art cinema as shocking cinema
- the anti rules and controversial issues dealt with in cinematci new waves - British/ Danish -dogme 95, Mexican and Latin American -Chicano
- who are the audiences for foreign films

Femme Fatale + Film Noir

Film noir is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize moral ambiguity and sexual motivation.

One of the types of noir women: the femme fatale is an alluring and seductive woman whose charms ensnare her lovers in bonds of irresistible desire, often leading them into compromising, dangerous, and deadly situations.

USEFUL LINKS
No Place for a Woman: The Family in Film Noir
The Femme Fatale

High Heels on Wet Pavement: Film Noir and the Femme Fatale

The Femme Fatale Throughout History

EARLY IDEAS

I've narrowed down my choices to the two areas:

WOMEN + FILM

WORLD CINEMA

Potential questions for these are...

World Cinema
How a countries common values and beliefs effect the way they deal with certain issues in a film?
- this question in its current stage is too general. I need to specify which country these films should be from, a particular issue and look into reactions contrast this with.

Women and Film
- looking at the role of femme fatales in films -who plays them? conventional characteristics/actions? history?
- femme fatales in film noir