new wave and the auteur jean luc godard
le petit soldat 1963
my life to live 1962
^ early 60's is considered the birth of the new wave, hope to pin point key stylistic choices and technical choices that re scour through his films to determine whether or not godarrd is an auteur
CHARACTERISTICS OF A NEW WAVE FILM
Unlike all classical Hollywood films, French New Wave films tend to break the rules of continuity editing and using free editing style. The directors of French New Wave often drew attention from audiences by discontinuity, reminding them that they are watching a movie. For example, the editing style they always used is jump cut
The directors of French New Wave had admired the Neorealists especially Rossellini, and in opposition to studio filmmaking, they decided to shoot on location. They replaced the glossy studio light with natural and available light. Thus, the French New Wave films always look natural and casual. In addition, they also doing experiment of the sound. Unlike studio filmmaking which remixing the sound, French New Wave directors recorded the sound during shooting and did not do any correction. For example, in A Bout De Soufflé , the sound come after action an
After World War II, France undergoes an economic crisis. Thus, the amount of investment in filmmaking is very low. Many films were produces on low budget. To produce a film, French New Wave directors borrowed friend's apartment or yard, using the director's friends as the cast and crew.
While watching French New Wave films, we will discover some scene look very shaky and unstable. It is because the directors took advantages of the new technology which developed by Eclair company that was available to them in the late 1950s- lightweight hand-held camera. This hand-held camera allowed them to shoot on location easily and creating many long tracking shoot. In these films, often only one camera was used. The directors used the camera to follow characters walking along the streets, into cafes and bars, or looking over their shoulders to catch their point of view
In opposition to the classical filmmaking, the directors of French New Wave often shot their films with loose structure and open-ended storyline. They did not wrap their climax tidily, much of the story is made up very close to the time of the shooting. They did not plan well before shooting and the dialogue was often change or write the same day it was read. Sometimes, the actors are giving the general idea of the scene. Thus, the dialogue sometimes was not related to the storyline at all.
When we watch French New Wave films, the protagonist in these films were always marginalized, young anti-heroes, and alienated loners, they live with no family ties, behave spontaneously, and often act immorally. They frequently seen as anti- authoritarian. For example, the protagonist in A Bout De Soufflé was a car thief, he killed policeman, steal money from his girlfriend, and spent his time to avoiding capture. While in Varda's Cleo From 5 to 7 (1961), the protagonist run away from the roles others expected from her after she discovered that she have cancer, she decided to live her own life.
this blog post identifies all the recurring thematic and technical aspects of a new wave, essentially the fundamental characteristics of what makes a new wave film, the post also include a brief history of the technicality of the films, for example, how money limitations meant that the directors couldn't afford more advanced camera and lighting equipment, meaning that they had to resort to shooting on location, with natural lighting, i plan to use this blog post in my video essay as an introduction to the movement, and the defining characteristics of it
http://makeawave-frenchnewwave.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/history-and-development-of-french-new.html
After the occupation by Nazi, the American cinema is return back to screen.This exposure to Hollywood films was a formative influence on the young critics who would become the director of the New Wave in the late 1950s.For them,America film was more vital,more varied and considerably more exciting than the postwar productions of the French industry
A group of directors, Truffaut, Godart, Claude Chabrol, Jacques Rivette and Rohmer who had all worked as critics for Cahiers du cinema in the 1950s had a habit of attacking the most artistically respected French filmmaker of the day. Writing criticism didn’t satisfy these young men. They itched to make movies by borrowed money .At the end of the decade, they began to make films
this website identifies the socio and economic context in which the new wave was created from, it also references the young turks, the original four film critics in which the new wave was created by, i plan to use this as not only an introduction to the directors and auteurs of the movement, but also as a way to establish life within paris at the time
History and development of the new wave
The phrase “New Wave” (Ia Nouvelle Vague) refers to a group of film-makers who between the end of the 1950s and early to mid-1960s in France, momentarily transformed French cinema and had a great impact on film-makers throughout the world. Those directors who came to prominence through the New Wave and who have remained major names in the pantheon of European “auteur” director include Jean-Luc Godard, Francois Truffaut and so on. The term New Wave was coined by a journalist named Francoise Giroud who wrote a series of article on French youth for the weekly news magazine L’Express.(Nelmes ,1996)
They argued that the French cinema was similar to the literature, which expresses the same ideas that are depicted in novels and paintings. In other words, the artists at that time used movies to voice their thoughts. Some of the leading film producers, whose names are mentioned above, wanted to change it and this is the birth of the radical movement in the history of French cinema.
This post goes into depth about the directors who are symbolic with the birth of the new wave, this will prove useful as i begin to show my research on jean luck godard, and how he can be considered an auteur
This post goes into depth about the directors who are symbolic with the birth of the new wave, this will prove useful as i begin to show my research on jean luck godard, and how he can be considered an auteur
https://indiefilmhustle.com/french-new-wave/
French New Wave and Auteur Theroy
During the French New Wave movements, particular attention was paid towards the theory called auteur theory. As per auteur theory, the director of a movie is also the producer of it.
Therefore, the directors took necessary measures to add a personal signature to the film. The directors who lived in France at that time praised the films produced by Jean Vigo and Jean Renoir because they were pioneer figures who fought against this theory.
They were able to create few memorable films with the help of talented script writers. The participation of script writers helped them to stay away from adding their personal opinions and views into the movies that they created.
this website provided me with the definition and history of the auteur theory, which will prove invaluable as i determine whether or not Jean Luc godard is an auteur
https://www.slideshare.net/staceyhall/auteur-theory-5416218
auteur originates from france, which is a literate translation of author, which means that a film is a reflection of a directors creative vision
francois truffaut; "a true film auteur is someone who brings something genuinely personal to his subject instead of producing a tasteful, accurate but lifeless rendering of the original material
an auteur has full creative control over every aspect of his or hers film, from editing to cinematography to mise en scene, the auteur controls it all.
he or she will make calculated choices resulting in a signature style or theme that runs through one or all of there films
this website provided me with an article that linked the new wave to the auteur theory, and how author there was born out of the creative moment of the new wave
this is again a further explanation
this is again a further explanation
making waves- new cinemas of the 1960’s
geoffrey novel smith
studio based films around this time were fixated on making a profit, studios would make the lowest common denominator film that would appeal to a wide audience to maximise profits, other than make heartfelt personal films that appealed to a minority
the new wave was created by the young turks, after they felt a cultural shift in france, a generation impatient with the attitudes of its elders and eager to throw off many aspects of the legacy of the past
it is also fair to say that there was a wave of changing rippling through french cinema during the mid-50’s, french films, with few exceptions, continued to be nostalgic and ritualistic in their attitude to national life
https://theculturetrip.com/europe/france/articles/the-french-new-wave-revolutionising-cinema/
Perhaps the French New Wave’s most notable international figure is Jean-Luc Godard, a visionary of film both in France and abroad. In addition to being an accomplished screenwriter and director, Godard was also a highly respected critic of film.Admired for his inventive experimentation with both technical and thematic aspects of film (a passionate rejection of ‘traditional’ French cinema’s stories of the aristocracy), Godard’s film career started with his involvement with Cahiers du Cinéma as one of the publication’s first and most celebrated contributing writers. His full-length feature debut came with 1960’s À Bout de Soufflé (Breathless); a pop-culture inspired narrative told in a truly revolutionary style.
Breathless is a metropolitan romance (between a recent murderer on the run with a girl) set within the urban landscape of Parisian streets. The feature film introduced Godard as a truly innovative force within film. His films emphasize the presentation of story, more than the story itself,
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/23/movies/23scott.html?mcubz=0 - on godard and breathless
It was a burst of youthful, irreverent energy that was also a decisive engagement in the continuing battle to establish cinema as a serious art form.
And yet even as Mr. Godard and his cinematographer, Raoul Coutard, record the sights and sounds of Paris with documentary immediacy, the images are infused with an unmistakable nostalgia. This is not something a latter-day viewer — perhaps besotted by secondhand memories of vintage cars circling the Place de la Concorde or pretty young women selling The New York Herald Tribune in front of cafes — brings to “Breathless.” Rather, the film’s evident and self-conscious desire to tap into a reservoir of existing references and associations is a sign of its director’s obsession with other movies
“Breathless” was there first. Which is to say that it was already late. Seen from its most unflattering angle, it is a thin and derivative film noir. A generic tough guy steals a car, shoots a policeman, sweet-talks a series of women, hobnobs with his underworld pals and tries to stay a step ahead of the dogged detectives on his trail. His poses and attitudes seem borrowed, arising less from any social or psychological condition or biographical facts than from a desire to be as cool as the guys in the movies.
The wonder is that he surpasses them, and that “Breathless,” quoting from so many other movies (and shuffling together cultural references that include Faulkner, Jean Renoir, Mozart and Bach as well as Hollywood movies), still feels entirely original. It still, that is, has the power to defy conventional expectations about what a movie should be while providing an utterly captivating moviegoing experience
a review of breathless by the ny times, the review mentions how jean luck films are drenched in pop culture of the time, i hope to compare this to not only my notes made on his other films, but also against other reviews of the films
http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/le-petit-soldat-1960
Le Petit Soldat" was Jean-Luc Godard's second film, made in 1960 when "Breathless" was creating a sensation and the French New Wave made the cover of Time. It wasn't much of a success. Godard, it was said, had lost the light touch of his first film and gotten bogged down in politics. And his shooting and writing styles, alas, bordered on anarchy.
So "The Little Soldier" was dismissed by the critics, who were busy doing cartwheels for Truffaut's "Jules and Jim" and Resnais' "Hiroshima, Mon Amour." And Godard began a period of four years in which his films, one after another, were criticized for not fulfilling the promise of "Breathless."
Part of that relevance involves Godard's politics. Although "Le Petit Soldat" was attacked as "too political," it is refreshingly undoctrinaire in 1969 while "Hiroshima, Mon Amour" collapses into what Pauline Kael calls liberal soap opera. Godard, in 1960, making a film about the Algerian War, was portraying the sort of intellectual and moral confusion that good men have when they confront senseless events. And the 1960s have been full of them.
It becomes clear during the film that nothing the hero does is going to make much difference; forces are in motion that would just as soon kill him, but for no good reason. Photographs of previous victims are casually displayed, but without much feeling. The trouble with wars like Algeria and Vietnam is that death loses its significance
http://omarsfilmblog.blogspot.co.uk/2009/08/la-petit-soldat-little-solider-dir-jean.html
Godard’s second feature was made in 1960 and instantly banned by the French government for its controversial political content – hard to believe that this was the first French film to examine the protracted colonial war in Algeria. ‘La Petit Soldat’ was eventually released in 1963 but the prolific rate at which Godard was making films meant it became somewhat lost in the sheer euphoria of the nouvelle vague. Godard shot the film with his regular cinematographer, Raoul Coutard, in Switzerland. Coutard’s contribution to the formation of a new wave aesthetic of hand held camera work, location shooting and the use of natural lighting is simply impossible to ignore. The absence of any kind of formal training in the art of cinematography meant that Coutard was free to break from tradition,
http://sensesofcinema.com/2002/cteq/soldat/
Nominally a thriller, Le Petit Soldat is set in Switzerland and deals overtly with the socio-political tensions of the Algerian War – albeit with an ambivalence not usually associated with the polemical Godard. Its troubled hero, Bruno Forestier (Michel Subor), is an ambiguously motivated secret agent, based in Geneva, who carries out a series of contracts for a division of the French Government, all the while under constant threat of deportation and punishment for his desertion of the army. He receives orders to assassinate an extremist leader of the leftist Arab underground, but baulks at the cold-bloodedness of the task. As both factions, French and Arab, begin to close in on him, he desperately tries to arrange passage to South America, but is unexpectedly drawn into a relationship with Veronica (Anna Karina), a mysterious woman with unknown loyalties.
Unlike the fast-paced, energetic environment of Paris in À bout de souffle – which derived in part from Godard’s famous use of jump cuts – the cityscape in Le Petit Soldat is jarringly edited together via a series of whip-pans, with the restless camerawork often forcibly yanking our attention from Bruno to the watching figures of the agents in the streets around him. More intrusive still, perhaps, is the role of the soundtrack: whereas Godard’s first film featured a light-hearted, up-tempo jazz score, his second is set to Maurice Laroux’s deliberately oppressive atonal piano music.
Le Petit Soldat is structured around Bruno’s reflective voice-over, in which he muses bitterly about the oppressive roles foisted upon him and his social contemporaries: his most pointed reference is to actors, who remain inherently driven by the whims of others. With a disjunctive commentary track – one that often challenges the integrity of the action on-screen
Often bleakly pessimistic, yet at all times stylistically adventurous and original,
http://www.actingoutpolitics.com/le-petit-soldat-1963-jean-claude-godard/
an existenal love story, a romance broken by political authority
Psychology of Private Love Blended With Political Thriller and Cultural Criticism
Talented individuals with psychologically deeply rooted and rich and multifaceted personalities not only have social ambitions and professional dreams, but moral and intellectual ideals demanding realization. And this last factor makes them even more vulnerable to militant political organisations.
We see here how Veronica (Anna Karina) is saying “no” to Bruno, following his own joking suggestion, but neither she nor he knows that she is talking for their destiny and for her life.
Veronica is playful with Bruno without any intentions. They are like children in the world of adults. They don’t know that childish games of adults can have grave consequences
Bruno is a young man with a developed internal world and his own will able to act according to his personal intentionality, not according to orders and expectations of his political bosses. But the issue is – is to be culturally educated and a decent person enough to resist the grip of a repressive and militant organization and ideology with, indeed, impressive power over even so called democratic societies?
Bruno looks at the viewers without asking for advice or help nor condescending pity. His gaze is already acknowledging that he is trapped (like the majority of people kept by the throat by the necessity to succeed in the world belonging to masters-decision-makers), but somehow we feel in his eyes a mute appeal of somebody who is victim of the socio-political manipulation.
Bruno is psychologically yearning for freedom to resist the conventional society, but he is controlled by very developed manipulative strategies modern societies are equipped with. We live not in traditional or ideological monarchies, but under a political establishment with a mighty arsenal of seducing, corrupting and intimidating tools. And now it is much more difficult, than in older times, to resist, if you want to avoid personal martyrdom.
His feeling of resistance against being manipulated and exploited for the sake of somebody else’s interests Bruno perceives not existentially, but “philosophically”, as if, it is a problem of human individual and his particular destiny, and not that of people’s socio-cultural life in general
http://www.filmref.com/directors/dirpages/godard.html
My Life to Live is a highly stylized and extraordinarily unformulaic adaptation of a simple premise: a young woman, seeking the freedom and excitement of, what Federico Fellini calls La Dolce Vita, leaves her family to pursue an acting career, only to turn to a life of prostitution
we are introduced to the singular, iconoclastic vision that is Jean-Luc Godard. Stripped of expression and sentimentality, Godard, nevertheless, succeeds in creating a film that is visually stunning and full of pathos. We are drawn to Anna, not because of her seductive persona or compassionate actions, but because she ishumanity, lost and desperate, incapable of comprehending her misery nor articulating her pain
Godard's revolutionary camerawork transcends nouvelle vague novelty: it serves as a cinematic extension of Nana's soul. The awkward angles and long panning shots during Nana and Paul's conversations reveals the underlying tension and emotional distance between them.
Nana's conversation proceeds in silent film intertitles - reflecting her own suffering and innate desire to achieve greatness and escape the banality of her sordid life. The seamless camerawork following Nana as she dances uninhibitedly around the billiard room feels intoxicating, almost mesmerizing - a fleeting glimpse of the few brief moments of pure joy she has ever known. My Life to Live is a truly remarkable film: a synthesis of artistic vision and moral tale, suffused with haunting melody, the ballad of a contemporary tragedy.
https://filmcapsule.com/2014/11/19/godard-ism-constructing-philosophy-in-vivre-sa-vie/
Godard’s Vivre sa vie (1962), for example, is richly imbued with existentialism. In both form and content, this story of a woman’s descent into prostitution frequently seems motivated by the existentialism’s principals of self-formation, but the film’s judgement of this philosophy remains ambiguous. Is Anna Karina’s Nana indeed free to live the life she chooses, or is she instead defined by a conspicuous absence of free will? Is it individual autonomy, then, or the tendency to deny meaning that defines Vivre sa vie?
One of the principles of existentialism that haunts both the film’s form and content is the harmony between one’s teachings and one’s way of life, between words and actions. By this principal, Godard would surely be an admirable model for the cinephile of the 20th and 21st centuries. First as a devoted critic and theorist, then as a tenacious and prolific filmmaker, Godard practiced what he preached. His writings on the powers and politics of film were actualized in his work, just as his work itself exists as an extension of his own theory and philosophy.
Godard and Karina characterize Nana through her wells of emotions, as well as her inquisitiveness and naive thoughtfulness. For example, in one key scene Nana tearfully watches Carl Theodor Dryer’s 1928 The Passion of Joan of Arc. The emotional power of this profoundly silent scene depends on both artist’s precision in their handling of Nana’s deep, almost sublime emotional response, indicating her receptiveness of feelings, another tenet of existentialism. Another key scene in the film sees Nana attempt a philosophy of her own, but her subsequent conversation with real-life philosopher Brice Parain leaves Nana even more confused with her initial theory on life.
existentialism
- a philosophical theory or approach which emphasizes the existence of the individual person as a free and responsible agent determining their own development through acts of the will.
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