Nouvelle Vague

1. Nouvelle Vague Realism or Formalism?

2. 1) Nouvelle Vague (New Wave) 2) Individualism and Innovation in Filmmaking 3) Realist or Formalist?

3. Nouvelle Vague • The style adopted by a number of highly individualistic French film directors in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

4. Nouvelle Vague • Young filmmakers in their 20s and 30s and Cineastes. • CinematequeFrançais (1936 - )

5. Their works were made under the influence of off-the-mainstream films – foreign language films, non-Western films, and American B movies.

6. Their works were made as a reaction to the carefully scripted and carefully filmed products of the French film industry.

7. With low budgets -- location shooting instead of building elaborate sets; contemporary drama instead of the historical one requiring period costumes; fresh young performers instead of stars. • Similar concepts as in Neorealismo

8. AlexandreAstruc • Impact of AlexandreAstruc, André Bazin and Cahiers du cinema. • Camera-Stylo (Camera-Pen) – Cinema must ‘become a means of expression as supple and subtle as that of written language’ Astruc • Filmmakers gain the status of authors. • Break away from the tyranny of narrative and develop a new form of audiovisual language.

9. Cahiers du cinémafounded in 1951 by André Bazin and Jacques Doniol-Valcroze • Personal authorship – filmmaker is the author responsible for the entire product, which reflects his personal thought and is made of his personal audiovisual style. André Bazin

10. François Truffaut • Film should ideally be a medium of personal artistic expression and that the best films are therefore those that most clearly bear their maker’s ‘signature’ – the stamp of his or her individual personality, controlling obsessions, and cardinal themes. François Truffaut, ‘Une Certain tendance du cinémafrançais’ (An Certain tendency of French Cinema)

11. Attack against the postwar ‘tradition of quality’ – ‘literary/theatrical cinema, the commercial scenarist tradition with heavy emphasis on plot and dialogue. • ‘Cinema d’auteurs’ against ‘Cinema de papa’ Jean Delannoy, The Hunchback of Claude Autant-Lala, The Red and Notre-Dame (1956) the Black (1954)

12. Nouvelle Vague • Common characteristics • Contemporary drama • ‘Non-narrative’ cinema with no or little plot • Experiments with visual style (portable hand-held 16 mm camera shots, and casual or no elaborate composition), and editing (fragmented and discontinuous montage or long take) • Combination of objective and subjective realism and authorial formalism.

13. 1959: the landmark year • François Truffaut’s Quatre cents coups (400 Blows) • Alain Resnais’ Hiroshima, Mon amour • Jean-Luc Godard A Bout de souffle (Breathless)

14. Quatre cents coups made by the 27-year-old Truffaut with $75,000, the loan from his father in law, is a lyrical but unsentimental account of a juvenile delinquent. • Refreshingly casual, artless (filming with natural light and synchronous sound recording) Typewriter scene

15. Quatre cents coups, truancy sequence

16. Hiroshima, Mon amour is about the relationship between time and memory in the context of two tragedies. • Resnais keeps the counterpoint between present and past by continually juxtaposing them and shifting between the objective and subjective narrative mode

17. Shot in four weeks for $90,000 by Godard, A bout de souffle was in many ways the most characteristic and influential film of nouvelle vague • It contains every major technique used frequently in nouvelle vague films.

18. Scenes shot by a shaky hand-held camera • Location shooting with natural light and direct sound recording on location • Improvised plot and dialogue Sidewalk

19. Some long takes and some short takes (no uniform editing tempo) • Elliptical editing • Actions are shown in a few brief shots rather than fully depicted. • From the opening scene in which Michel steals a car and the scene in which he kills a cop and runs away. • A section of a single continuous shot is eliminated and then what remains is spliced together – jagged jump cut.

20. Nouvelle Vague: First Films • Jules et Jim (1961) – Truffaut’s third feature film and about two close friends falling in love with the same woman and trying to live together in ménage àtrois after WWI. • Exquisite emotional lyricism achieved through the unconventional use of zoom lens, slow motion, fast motion, freeze frame, and anamorphic distortion. Race on the bridge

21. Realism or Formalism? • Some of the Nouvelle Vague films set ‘actions’ in real streets and among inhabitants. Dialogues are improvised on the spot. Paris nous appartient(Paris Belongs to Us, 1961) Godard

22. Realism or Formalism? • Les Cousins (The Cousins, 1959) – tells the story of two cousins, the decadent Paul and the naïve Charles who newly arrives at Paris. Charles falls in love with Florence, one of Paul’s many girl friends. • People, places, custom and ways of life in Paris are recreated as they are. All alone

23. Realism or Formalism? • Avoiding to become literary or theatrical cinema, nouvelle vague filmmakers based their work on original scripts rather than novels or plays, and resort to improvisation. • Eric Rohmer, La Boulangère de Monceau(Baker of Monceau,1962) tells the story of a man who hesitates between two women.

24. Realism or Formalism? • Self-conscious use of filming techniques unconventional style or stylistic innovation • Quotations from other films • Self-reference – nouvelle vague films are films about film, or films about filmmaking.

25. Realism and Formalism Realism - • Overall documentary feel of nouvelle vague films • Location shooting, natural light, direct sound recording, grainy photography, casual composition • Long takes Formalism - • Self-conscious overworking of film techinques • Their unconventional use • Violation of filmmaking ‘rules’