FRENCH NEW WAVE + VSV CONTEXT
POST WAR FRANCE
CAHIERS DU CINEMA + FNW
JEAN LUC GODARD
Post WW2 and Nazi occupation, it was a time of shellshock and economic deprivation for the country
Charles de Gaulle was elected in 1958 to quickly and cheaply rebuild France's infrastructure, like low-cost housing and tower blocks. It worked: France experienced a huge economic growth after these constructions were made
Algeria gained independence from France in 1962 after a bloody 8 year war. Many refugees from Algeria and other French colonies fled to France, and the overall conflict was an era of civil unrest in France and it's colonies
Youth culture, protest and independence exploded in the 60s
This was down to the aforementioned low budget reconstruction projects and the fact that there was no war to fight compared to their parents
“You don’t know how lucky you are” - UK PM Harold Macmillan
There was far more liberation in the arts and media because of the counter culture and rebellios period in time, including breakthroughs in sexual scientific, like the pill and abortions
After the war, the French government called for mainstream films to be similar to Hollywood's tradition of quality
They would likely be conventional adaptations of classical literature, and films that focused on the French identity
The youth felt unrepresented with those films, criticising them as being too script reliant and lacking artistic integrity. These "tradition of quality" films gained the nickname "cinema du papa"
Many critics from French film magazine Cahiers du Cinema took matters into their own hands, by making low budget and unconventional films that spoke to the youth of today, using techniques designed to oppose the tradition of quality - this movement became known as the French New Wave
Many FNW directors took influence from epic theatre writer Bertolt Brecht, with his techniques known as the V effect (short for the verfremdungseffekt).
This technique is using unconventional techniques to shock the audience, alienate them, and snap them out of their state of false consciousness
In VSV, some Brechtian techniques include title cards that spoil what happens, the jump cut along the gunshots, uncomfortable silences, the camera having it's own agency, being very observation and verite, and the obsessively long takes
Cahiers du Cinema popularised the auteur theory, which is the idea that a film can have an "author" with their own distinctive styles in each film, instead of simply being subservient to the script
Hitchcock was initially seen as a commercially successful director but lacking in artistic merit, but was glorified by CDC: their praise of Hitch shifted public perception of him into one of the greatest filmmakers of all time
A wide range of films were influenced by the FNW, from Italian neorealism to classical Hollywood cinema. They were able to find screenings of the broad range of films through screenings of them at cinema clubs instead of studio owned screens
QUOTES
JLG QOUTES
“We are trained by the American way of moviemaking to think we must understand and get everything right away. But this is not possible. When you eat a potato, you don’t understand each atom of the potato!”
"All you need for a movie is a gun and a girl."
"A story should have a beginning, a middle and an end, but not necessarily in that order."
"Photography is truth. The cinema is truth twenty-four times per second."
"Every edit is a lie."
Cahiers du Cinema + Francois Truffaut
Truffaut and Godard met when working at their cinema club eras, and their friendship grew working at Cahiers and later during their directorial success.
But as their careers continued, both went into their own streams of filmmaking, and so did their friendship: Truffaut's films started to become more mainstream and commercially successful while Godard became even more minimalist and political
Their rivalry reached a boiling point when Truffaut’s Oscar winning 1973 film Day for Night was released and Godard wrote a 4 page letter beginning "Yesterday I saw Day for Night. Probably no one else will call you a liar, so I will.”
Their feud continued until 1984, when Truffaut died. Neither reconciled.
Auteur debate
Technical competency - yes. His films were very dynamic for creating unconventional and disjointed worlds that refused to conform to the audience's expectations, but did them so deliberately that it felt like someone was controlling all these actions instead of just Godard's incompetency.
Personal style - yes. By influencing from Brecht, his work was dynamic and deliberately intrusive to shock the mainstream status quo, and his unconventionality was ironically like clockwork.
Interior meaning - kind of??? His protagonists are very anti-establishment, like Breathless following a criminal and VSV showing the exploitation of women in France, but at the same time there's not too much of a plot: likely what made Godard and the FNW films so radical is because of the unconventional techniques Godard used instead of his plots
Conclusion - Yes, Godard is an auteur with his Brechtian and deliberately disruptive style, but less so from his consistent messaging.
NANA VS THE PATRIARCHY FOR STRUCTURALIST APPROACHES, NANA LOSES