CHAPTER
N£W WAV£S AND YOUNG CIN£MAS. 1958-1967
he decade after 1958 S8 W extraordinary ferment in the interna tionaJ T 8ft cinema. Not only were major innov8tions introduced by older auteurs, but a host of "new waves," "young cll1emas," and "new cine mas," criticized and rejuvenated the modernist tradition. Many of the younger filmmakers became the major figures of later decades.
THE INDUSTRIES' NEW NEEDS
lnd ustnal cond itions fa vored the a rrival of fresh ta len t. Whereas Ameri can film attendance had declined after 1947, elsewhere audiences did not significantly dwindle until the late 1950s. Then, with television provlding cheap entertainment, producers aimed at new audiences-sometimes through coproduetions, sometimes by making erotic films. They also tried to attract the "youth culture" that emerged in most western countries in the late 1950s. In western Europe, sexual liberation, rock music, new fashions, the growth of soccer and other sports, and new forms of tourism such as Club Med became hallmarks of the generation coming to matu rity 8round 1960. Trends toward an urban, leisure-class lifestyle were strengthened by an economic boom a frer 1958 tha t raised Europea n Ii v ing standards. Similar patterns emerged in ]clpan and eastern Europe. Who could better attract this affluent audience than young filmmak ers? Film companles began to open up production to beginning direc tors. These opportunities coincided with the expansion of professional film traillll1g. After the late I950s, existing film academies 111 the USSR, eastern Europe, France, and Italy were joined by national film schools founded in the Netherlands, Sweden, West Germany, and Denmark. Throughout Europe, young directors (around thelr thirties) made their
439 440 CHAPTER 20 New Waves :lI1d Young Cinemas. i 958-1967
20.1, le(t Istvan Sza bo's The Age o( Da)'drearning (1964): shooting on rhe street, using a long lens that tlartens perspective.
20.2, right Sha Itow depth in a closer view, yielded by the telephoro lens (Walkover. 1965, Jerzy Skolimowski).
first features in the years 1958 to 1967. Brazil, one of showed exactly what the lens saw, and film stocks that the most westernized countries in South America, also needed less light to create acceptable exposures. Al reflected this trend in Its Cinema Novo gl'OUp. though much of this equipmenr was designed to aid Youth culture accelerated the internationalizing of documentary filmmakers (p. 484), fiction filmmakers film culture. Art thea ters and ci ne-clu bs In ultlplied. The immediately took advantage of it. Now a director could list of International film festivals now included San film with direcr sound, recording rhe ambient noise of Francisco :Jl1d London (both begun in 1957), Moscow the world outside the sealed studio. Now the camera (1959), Adelaide and New York (1963), ChIcago and could take to the streers, searching out fictional charac Panama (1965), Brisbane (1966), and San Antonio and ters 111 the midst of a crowd (20.1, 20.2). This porta ble Shiraz, Iran (1967). Festivals in Hyeres, France, and Pe equipment also let the filmmaker shoot quickly and sara, Italy (both begun In 1965) were deliberately cre cheaply, an advantage for producers anxious to econo ated as gathering points for young filmmakers. mize in a declining industry. The 1960s fictional cinema gained a looseness that put it closer to Direct Cinema documentary (see Chap FORMAL AND STYLISTIC TRENDS ter 21). Directors often filmed from a distance, using panning shots to cover the action and zoom lenses to Each na tlon 's new ci nema was a loose assortment of enlarge derails, as if rhe filmmaker were a journalist quite different filmmakers. Typically their work does snooping on the characters (20.3). It was during this pe not display the degree of unity that we find in the stylis riod that close-ups and shotlreverse-shot exchanges tic movements of the silent era. Still, some broad trends began to be shot almost entirely with long lenses-a link the young cinemas. trend that would dominate the 1970s (2004, 20.5). The new generation was the first to have a clear Yet this rough documentary look did not commit the awareness of the overall history of cinema. The Cine directors to recording the world passively. To an extent matheque Fran<;:aise in Paris, the National Film Theatre not seen since the silent era, young filmmakers tapped in London, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York rhe power of fragmentary, discontinuous ediring. In became shrines for young audIences eager to discover Breathless (France, 1960), Jean-Luc Godard violated films from around the world. Film schools screened for basic ruJes of continuity editing, notably by rossing out eign classics for study. Older directOrs were venenHed as frames from the middle of shots in order to create jarring spi ritual"fa thers": Jean Renoi r, for Franc;ois Truffa ut; jump cuts (20.6). A film by the Japanese Nagisa Oshima Fritz Lang, for Alexander Kluge; Alexander Dovzhenko, might contain over a rhousand shots. Older directors for Andrei Tarkovsky. In particular, young directOrs ab favored smooth editing, considering Sovier Montage sorbed the neorealist aesthetic and the art cinema of the unrealistic and manipulative, but now montage became 1950s. Thus the new clllemas exrended several postwar a source of inspiration. At the limit, 1960s direcrors trends. pushed toward a collage form. Here the director builds Most apparent were JOnovatlons in technique. In the film out of staged footage, "found" footage (news part, Young Cinema identified itself with a more imme reels, old movies), and images of all sorts (advertise diare approach to filming. During the lare 1950s and ments, snapshots, posters, and so on). throughour the 1960s manufacturers perfected cameras Yet young filmmakers also exrended the use of long that dId not require tripods, reflex viewfinders that takes, one of the major stylistic trends of the postwar Formal and Stylistic Trends 441
20.3 A Illoment in the pan-and-zool11 2004,20.5 Shotlreverse shot employing a long lens in Milos Forman's Blacl<. Peter shot covering a conversation ([,5, 1965, ( 1963). Ulrich Schamoni).
20.6, left In Breathless, Godard's jUl11p cuts create a skittery, nervous style.
20.7, right The end point of a zoom in from Los Golfos.
line. The objective realism of the Neorealist approach was enhanced by the use of nonactors, reaJ locations, and improvIsed performance. The new techniques of Di rect Cinema allowed young directors to go even further on this path. Accordingly, young filmmakers set their stories in their own apartments and neighborhoods, filming them in a way that traditional directors consid ered rough and unprofessional. For instance, in Los Gol (os ("The Drifters," 1960), Carlos Saura uses nonactors and improvisation to tell his story of young men's Jives era (p. 341). A scene might be handled in a single shot, of petty crime. 5aura incorporates hand-held shots and a device that qUlckly became known by its French abrupt zooms (20.7) to give the film a documentary name, the plan-sequence ("sequence shot"). The light immediacy. weight cameras proved ideal for making long takes. The art cinema's subjective realism also developed Some directors alternated lengthy shots and abrupt edit further during this period. Flashbacks had become com ing; French New Wave directors vvere fond of chopping mon in the postwar decade, but now filmmakers used off a graceful long take with sudden close-ups. Other them to intensify the sense of characters' mental states. directors, such as the Hungarian Miklos ]ancso, devel Alan Resnais's Hiroshima mon amour (1959) led many oped the Ophuls-Antonioni tradition by building the filmmakers to "subjectivize" flashbacks. Scenes of fan film out of lengthy, intricate traveling shots. Across the tasy and dreams proliferated. All this mental imagery 1960s, telephoto filming, discontinuous editing, and became far more fragmentary and disordered than it had complex camera movements all came to replace the been in earlier cinema. The filmmaker might interrupt dense staging In depth that had been common after the narrative with glimpses of another realm that only World War II. gradually becomes identifiable as memory, dream, or The narrative form of the postwar European art film fantasy. At the limit, this realm might remain tantaliz relied on an objective realism of chance events that often ingly obscure to the very end of the film, suggesting how could not be fitted into a lwear cause-and-effect story reality and imagination can fuse in human experience. 442 CHAPTER 20 New Waves and Young Cinemas, 1958-1967
20.8, left Daisies: the long lens f1attens women and man.
20.9, right Everything (or Sale joins the new cinemas in its self-conscious references to film history-a history that includes Wajda's early work. In a direct echo of Ashes and Diamonds, the mysterious young actor lights drinks while remarking that the partisans were symbols for his generation (compare with 18.23).
The an-cinema rendency roward aurhorlal COI11 from objective realism made film form and sryle sel£ menrary likeWise conrinued. Fran~ois Truffaur's lilring referential. Many films no longer sought ro reflect a camera movements around his characrers suggesred thar realiry outside themselves. Like modern painting and rheir lives were a lyric,1i dance. In Daisies (1966), Vera literature, film became reflexive, pointing to its own ma Chyrilov3 uses camera rricks ro commenr on her hero terials, structures, and history. tne's mocking view of men (20.8). Reflexjviry was perhaps least disturbing when the Directors combined objective realism, subjecrive re 111m built its plot around the makjng of a film, as in 8'/1, alism, and authorial commenrary in ways rhat gener Godard's Contempt (1963), and Andrze) Wajda's Every ared narrarive ambiguiry. Now rhe specrator could not thing for Sale (1968), a memorial to Zbigniew Cybulski, always rell which of these rhree factors was the basis for the deceased star of Ashes and Diamonds (20.9), Even the film's presenration of evenrs. In Federico Fellini's 8'/2 when filmmaking is not an overt subject, reflexivity re (1963), some scenes ind iscernibly blend memory with malllS a key trait of new cinemas and of 1960s art cin fantasy Images. Younger directors also explored am ema generally. Erik L0ken's The Hunt (1959) starts with biguous uses of narrative form. In Jaromil JirtS's The a voice-over commentary remarking, "Let's begin," and Cry (1963), events may be taken as either objectIve or ends wirh the narrator asserting, "We can't let it end like subjective, and the question is left open as to whose sub this." In Breathless, the hero talks to the audience, and jective pOint of view might be represented. Open-ended Truffaut's Shoot the Piano Player (1960; 20.10) affec narratives also lent themselves to ambiguity, as when tlonarely echoes silenr cinema. we are left ro wonder at rhe end of Breathless about the The collage films, which juxrapose footage from herollle's arritude toward rhe hero. different sources or periods, contribute to a similar As films' stories became indeterminate, they seemed awareness of the arrifice of film. And new cinemas could to back away from documenting the social wor-ld. even cite each other, as when Gilles Groulx's Le Chat Now the film itself came ro seem the only "realiry" rhe est dans Ie sac ("The Car Is in rhe Bag," 1964) deliber director could claim. CCllllbined with young directors' ately echoes a French New Wave film (20,11, 20.12). In awareness of the hIstory of their medium, this retrear all, the films acknowledge the mechanisms of illusion
20.10 Irises in Shoot the Piano Player pay homage to sitenr film. France: lo.'t:w \'(/ave and New Cinema 443
20.11, 20.12 Le Chat est dans Ie sac cites Godard's Vivre sa vie.
':'I
making and an indebtedness to the history of the The New Wave medium. This made the new cinemas major contribu tOrs to postwar cinematic modernism. The French New Wave (Nouvelle Vague) IS largely re Many countries sustained new waves and new cine sponsible for the romantIc Image of the young director mas, but this chapter concentrates on the most influen fighting to make personal films that defy rhe conven tial and original developments in western and eastern tional industry. Ironically, most directors associated with Europe, Great Britain, the USSR and Brazil. the New \Xfave quickly became mainstream, even ordi nary, filmmakers. But certain members of the group not only populaIlzed a new conception of personal cinema FRANCE: NEW WAVE AND NEW CINEMA but also provided Il1novations in film form and style. The principal NouvelJe Vague dIrectOrs had been In France during the late 1950s, the idealism and politi film critics for the magazine Cahiers du cinema (p. 374). cal movements of the Immediate postwar years gave Strong adherents of the auteur policy, these men be way to a more apolitical culture of consumptIOn and lieved that the director should express a personal Vision leisure. The rising generation was dubbed the Nouvelle of the world. This vision would appear not only in the Vague, the "New Wave" that would soon govern film's scnpt but also In its style. Most of the Cahzers France. Many of these young people read film journals groLlp started by directing short films but, by the end of and attended screenll1gs at cine-clubs and art et essai the decade, most turned to features. They helped each ("art and expenment") cinemas. They were ready for other by financing projects and shanng the services of more offbeat films than those of the Cinema of Quality. two outstanding cinematographers, Henri Decae and The film industry had not fully tapped these new Raoul Coutard. consumers. In 1958, film attendance started to decline The ew Wave's initial impact came from four sharply, and several big-budget films failed. At the same films released In 1959 and L960. Claude Chabrol's Le time, government aid fostered risk taking. In 1953, the Beau Serge and Les Cousins explored the disparity be Centre National du Cinema established the prime de la tween rural and urban life in the new France. The first quaNti ("subsidy for quality"), which aJlowed new direc film almost became the French entry at Cannes; the sec tors to make short films. A 1959 law created the avance ond won a major prize at the Berlin festIval. Franc;:ois sur recettes ("advance on receipts") system, which fi Truffaut's The 400 Blows, a sensitIve tale of a boy be nanced first features on the basis of a script. Between coming a thIef and a runaway, won the director's prize 1958 and 1961, dozens of directors made their first full at Cannes and gave the New Wave great International length films. prestige. The most innovatIve early New Wave film was Such a broad development naturally ll1cluded quite Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless, a portrait of a petty crim different trends, but two major ones are crucial. One inal's last days. As ChabraJ, Truffaur, and Godard fol centers on the Nouvelle Vague, or New Wave, group. 10'wed lip their debuts, other young directors L:1Unched The other trend, often identified with the Left Bank first featmes. group, involves a slightly older generation who now Many New Wave films satisfied producers' finan moved into feature production. Both groups are repre cial demands. Shot on location, usmg portable equip sented in the following box. ment, little-known actors, and small cre-ws, these films 444 CHAPTER 20 New \Vaves and Young Cinemas, 1958-1967
French New Cinema and the Nouvelle Vague: A Chronology of Major Releases
Le Beau Serge ("Good Serge"), Claude Chabral Les Cousins (The Cousins), Claude Chabrol 1959 . Les Quatre cents coups (The 400 Blows), Franc;:ois Truffaut Hiroshima mon amour ("Hiroshima My Love "), Alain Resnais Les Yeux sans visage (Eyes wiUJOut a Face), Georges Franju
A bout de souffle (Breathless), Jean-Luc Godard 1960 . Les Bonnes femmes ("The Good Girls"), Claude Chabrol Tirez sur Ie pianiste (Shoot the Piano Player), Franc;:ois Truffaut Zazie dans Ie metro ("Zazie in the Subway"), Louis Malle
Lola, Jacques Demy 1961 . Une Femme est une femme (A Woman Is a Woman), Jean-Luc Godard L'Annee derniere aMarienbad (Last Year at Marienbad), Alain Resnais Paris nous appartient (Paris Belongs to Us), Jacques Rivette
Jules et Jim (Jules and Jim), Franc;:ois Truffaut Le Signe du lion ("The Sign of the Lion"), Eric Rohmer 1962 Vivre sa vie (My Life to Live), Jean-Luc Godard Cleo de 5 a7 (Cleo from 5 to 7), Agnes Varda L'lmmortelle ("The Immortal One"), Alain Robbe-Grillet
Le Petit soldat ("The Little Soldier"), Jean-Luc Godard Ophelia, Claude Chabrol Les Carabiniers ("The Riflemen"), Jean-Luc Godard 1963 . Le Mepris (Contempt), Jean-Luc Godard Muriel, Alain Resnais Judex, Georges FI'anju Adieu Philippine, Jacques Rozier
La Peau douce (The Soft Skin), Franc;:ois Truffaut 1964 . Bande apart (Band of Outsiders), Jean-Luc Godard Une Femme mariee (A Married Woman), Jean-Luc Godard Les Parapluies de Cherbourg (The Umbrellas of Cherbourg) , Jacques Demy
Alphaville, Jean-Luc Godard 1965 Pierrot Ie fou ("Crazy Piermt"), Jean-Luc Godard Le Bonheur ("Happiness"), Agnes Varda
Masculin-Feminine, Jean-Luc Godard Fahrenheit 451, Franc;:ois Truffaut La Guerre est finie ("The War Is Over"), Alain Resnais 1966 Suzanne Simonin, la Religieuse de Denis Diderot ("Suzanne Simonin, the Nun by Denis Diderot"), Jacques Rivette Les Creatures ("The Creatures"), Agnes Varda La Collectionneuse ("The Collector"), Eric Rohmer
Made in USA, Jean-Luc Godard Deux ou trois choses que Ie sais d'elle (Two or Three Things I Know about Her), Jean-Luc Godard La Chinoise ("The Chinese Woman"), Jean-Luc Godard 1967 .. ·.. ·..... Weekend, Jean-Luc Godard Les Demoiselles de Rochefort (The Young Girls of Rochefort), Jacques Demy Trans-Europe Express, Alain Robbe-Grillet Ma nuit chez Maud (My Night at Maud's), Eric Rohmer France: New \'(Iave and New Cinema 445
20.13 Anroine Doinel, at rhe edge of rhe sea, rums to rhe audience III world cinem,l'S most famous freeze-frame (The 400 Blows).
20.14 In intensify the an-cinema convention of the open-ended Chabrol's Les narrative; the f8mous ending of The 400 Blows made Cousins, a the freeze-frame technique a favored device for express browser finds a book on Alfred ing an unresolved situation (20.13). At the same time, Hirchcock, the mixture of tone characteristic of Italian Neorealism wrirren by Eric gets pushed to the limit. In the films of Truffaut, Godard, Rohmer and ... and Chabrol, farcical comedy lS often only an instant Claude Chabrol. away from anxiety, pain, and death. further, the Nouvelle Vague witS the first group of directors to refer systematically to prior film traditions. For these former critics, film history was a livlng pres could be made quickly and for less than half the usual ence. In BreatlJless, the hero imitates Humphrey Bogart, cost. Often a film vvould be shot silent and postdubbed. while the heroine comes from Otto PI-eminger's Boniour And, for three years, several New \'(lave films made high Tristesse (1958). Partygoers in Paris Belongs to Us screen profits. The trend brought fame to Jean-Palll Eelmondo, Metropolis, while in The 400 Blows the boy steals a pro Jean-Claude Brialy, AnnJ Karina, Jeanne Moreau, and duction still from Ingmar Bergman's Summer with other stars who would dominate the French cinema for Monika. Celebrating their own notoriety, the directors decades. Moreover, Nouvelle Vague films proved more cited each other or their friends at Cahiers du cinema exportable than many bigger productions. (20.14). Such awareness of a film's debt to hIstory helped As the very name New Wave indicates, much of the usher Jl1 the re~exive filillmaklllg of the 1960s. group's success can be attributed to the filmmakers' rap Since the Cahiers critics favored a cinema of personal port with their youthful audience. Most of the directors vision, it is not surprising th,lt the New Wave did not co were born around 1930 and were based In Paris. By al.esce lI1to a unified stylistic movement like German Ex concentrating on urban professional life with its chic pressionism or Soviet Moorage. The development of the fashions and sports cars, all-night parties, bars and Jazz directors' careers during the 1960s suggests that the New clubs, thiS cInema suggested that the cafe scene was \'(lave was only a brief alliance of varied temperaments. being captured with the immediacy of Direct Cinema. The two most exemplary and Il1fluential directors were The films also have thematic affinities. Authority is to Truffaut and Godard (see box), but several of their col be distrusted; political and romantic commitment is sus leagues also made long-term careers in the film industry. pect. The characters' gr8tuitous actions bear traces of "You become a director," Claude Chabrol wrote, pop existentialism. And In an echo of Poetic Realism, "when you find the money to make your first film."3 His the TraditIon of Qualitv, and American crime movies, wlfe's lllheritance financed Le Beau Serge, whJCh won a the films often center on a femme fatale. prime de fa qualhe that nearly covered its costs before it The New Wave directors also share some basic nar was released. The success of Les COUSIl1S allowed Chabrol rative assumptions. l.ike Michelangelo Antonioni and to make several films quickly. His admiration for Hitch Federico Felltni, these filmmakers often build their plots cock turned him toward moody psychodramas, often around chance events 8nd digressive episodes. They also with touches of grotesque humor (Les Bonnes femmes, 446 CHAPTER 20 1 cw Woves Jnd Young Cinemos, j 958-1967
FRAN~OISTRUFFAUT AND JEAN-LUC GODARD ,. ~ ~, .
Friends, Cahiers critics, codirectors (on a 1958 short), and eventual adversaries, Truffaut and Godard usefully define the poles of the New Wave. One proved that the young cinema could rejuvenate mainstream filmmaking; the other, that the new generation could be hostile to the comfort and pleasure of ordinary cinema. A passionate cinephile, Franr;ois Truffaut grew up as a ward of the critic Andre Bazin. After a notable short film, Les Mistons ("The Brats," 1958), Truffaut managed to fi nance a feature, The 400 Blows. This film about a young 20.15 A snapshot image, thanks to the freeze-frame runaway established an autobiographical strain in Truffaut's (Jules and Jim). work. His next features revealed two more tendencies that would recur over his career: the offhand, affectionately Renoir). Jules and Jim, set in the early days of cinema, pro parodic treatment of a crime plot (Shoot the Piano Player) vided an occasion to incorporate silent footage and to em and the somber but lyrical handling of an unhappy love af ploy old-fashioned irises fair (Jules and Jim), For many worldwide audiences, these Truffaut sought not to destroy traditional cinema but to three films defined the New Wave. renew it. In the Cahiers spirit he aimed to enrich commercial Stylistically, Truffaut's early films flaunt zoom shots, filmmaking by balancing personal expression with a concern choppy editing, casual compositions, and bursts of quirky for his audience: "I have to feel I am producing a piece of humor or sudden violence. Sometimes such devices cap entertainment. "1 Over two decades he made eighteen more ture the characters' vitality, as in Antoine Doinel's frantic films. As if seeking more direct contact with the viewer, he rush around Pat'is in The 400 Blows or in the waltzlike cam took up acting, performing in his own works and in Spiel era movements that surround Jules, Jim, and Catherine berg's Close Encounters ofthe Third Kind (1977). His out during their country outings. The extreme shifts of mood put includes light entertainments (Vivement dimanche! [" Fi in Shoot the Piano Player are accented by abrupt cutaways; nally Sundayl "J. 1983), bittersweet studies of youth (Stolen when a gangster swears, "May my mother die if I'm not Kisses, 1968), and more meditative films (The Wild Child, telling the truth," Truffaut cuts to a shot of an old lady 1970) Late in his life, he created intense studies of psycho keeling over. But Truffaut's technique increasingly injected logical obsession (The Story of Adele H., 1975; The Green it subdued romanticism, as when he dwells on Charlie's Room, 1978; see Color Plate 26.9). Of Truffaut's last films numb face at the end of Shoot the Piano Player or turns only The Last Metro (1980) achieved international success, Catherine's image into a freeze-frame (20.15). but he remained the most popular New Wave director. Truffaut remained true to the Cahiers legacy by insert Far more abrasive was the work of Jean-Luc Godard. ing into each film references to his favorite periods of film Like Truffaut, he was a stormy and demanding critic. He history and his admired directors (Lubitsch, Hitchcock, soon became the most provocative New Wave filmmaker.
Ophelia). Chabral churned out lurid espionage pictures The Bicycle Thief, consistmg largely of a homeless man's before embarking on a series of psychological thrillers: meanderings through the hot Parisian summer (20.17). La Femme infidete ("The Unfaithful Wife," 1969), Que After this work, Rohmer embarked on his "Six la !Jere meure (This Man Must Die, 1969), Le Boucher Moral Tales," wry studies of men and women struggling ("The Butcher," 1970), and others. Like Hitchcock, to balance intelligence with emotional and erotic im Chabrol traces how the tensions of middle-class life pulses. In the first feature-length tale, La Collection explode into mJdness and violence. By 2001, Chabral neuse, the nymphJike Haydee tempts the overintellectual had made over fifry features and several television epi Adrien but remains just out of his reach (20.18). After sodes, remaining the most commercially flexible and prag the success of this film, Rohmer was able to complete matic of the directors to emerge from Cahlers. his 5rst serres with My Night at Maud's (1967), Claire's Although Eric Rohmer was nearly ten years older Knee (1970), and Love in the Afternoon (1972). In the than most of his Cahiers friends, his renown came some 1980s, he completed a second series, "Comedies and what later. A reflective aesthete, Rohmer adhered closely Proverbs," and la unched another, "Ta les of Four Sea to Andre B~1Lin's teachings. Le Signe du lion is akin to sons" (1990-1998). Rohmer has continued directing France: New Wave and New Cinema 447
4 ~ ~ 0 6 • • ~ 4 • • I ~ ~ + • • ~ • • • • • • • •
Of his early works only Breathless had notable financial success-due in part to Belmondo's insolent performance and Truffaut's script. The film was also recognizably New Wave in its hand-held camerawork, jerky editing, and homages to Jean-Pierre Melville and Monogram B pictures. Over the next decade, Godard made at least two features per year, and it became clear that he, more than any other Cahiers director, was redefining film structure and style. Godard's work poses fundamental questions about nar rative. While his first films, such as Breathless and A Woman Is a Woman, have fairly straightforward plots, he gradually moved toward a more fragmentary, collage structure. A story is still apparent, but it is deflected into unpredictable paths. Godard juxtaposes staged scenes with documentary material (advertisements, comic strips, crowds passing in the street), often with little connection to the narrative. Far more than his New Wave contemporaries, Godard mixes conven 20.16 The painterly flatness of the Godard frame (Vivre sa vie). tions drawn from popular culture, such as detective novels or Hollywood movies, with references to philosophy or which everyone can be forgiven, Godard's Contempt, by avant-garde art, (Many of his stylistic asides are reminiscent contrast, treats filmmaking as an exercise in sadomaso of Lettrist and Situationist works; p. 493.) The inconsisten chism. To secure his job, a scriptwriter leaves his wife alone cies, digressions, and disunities of Godard's work make most with a venal producer and then taunts her with his suspi New Wave films seem quite traditional by comparison. cions of infidelity: His games and her contempt for him lead Breathless identified Godard with the hand-held cam to her death. Fritz Lang, playing himself as the director, is era and the jump cut (see 20.6). His subsequent films ex seen to be a slave in exile. Ironically, Godard's critique of plore film style more widely, interrogating conventional film the film world uses the resources of the big-budget film to techniques. Compositions are decentered; the camera create ravishing color compositions (Color Plate 20.1) moves on its own to explore a milieu. One of Godard's Such works aroused passionate debate. After the mid most influential innovations was to design shots that seem 1960s Godard continued to develop, always in ways that astonishingly flat (20.16). aroused attention. Even his detractors grant that he is the Nothing could be further from Truffaut's accommodat most widely imitated director of the French New Wave, per ing attitude to his audience than Godard's assault on sense haps the most influential director of the entire postwar era. and the senses. In Truffaut's La Nuit americaine (Day for With characteristic generosity Truffaut remarked, "There is Night, 1973), filmmaking becomes a merry party, after the cinema before Godard and the cinema after Godard."2
20.17 Parisian landscapes 'lI1d a wear)' man's gait in I.e 20.18 Flirtarion among the intelligentsia: Rohmer's charac Signe du lion. teristic world already formulated in I.a Col/ecti0I111euse. 448 CHAPTER 20 New Waves and Young Cinemas, 1958-1967
20.19 A rJlcater Paris Belongs to Us initiated this paranoid plot rehearsal wirh structure. A young woman is told that the unseen rulers si nisrer overtones of the world have driven one man to suicide and will (Paris Belongs to Us). soon kill the man she loves. The film owes much to Lang, whose parables of fate and foreboding Rivette ad mired. Paris Belongs to Us also introduces Rivette's fas cination with the theater. In one plot strand, an aspiring director tries to stage Pericles in makeshift circumstances (20.19). L'Amour fau develops the motif more elabo rately by following a 16mm film crew documenting a theater troupe's production (20.20). Considered mar gl11al in the prime Nouvelle Vague period, RIvette's work strongly influenced the French cinema of the 1970s. More stylized in technique are the films of Jacques Demy, whose career was launched with Lola (dedicated to Max Ophuls in memory of Lola Montes). This and Baie des anges ("Bay of Angels," 1963) introduced the artificial decor and costumes that became Demy's trade mark. With The Umbrellas of Cherbaurg, Demy broke even more sharply with realism by having all the dialogue sung. Michel Legrand's pop score and Demy's vibrant color schemes helped the film achieve a huge commercial 20.20 Filming rhe thearer rehearsal in L'Amour (ou. success. In Les Demoiselles de Rochefort, an homage to MGM musicals, Demy created the sense that an entire city's population was dancing to the changing moods of into his eighties, embracing 16mm and digital video (The his protagonists (20.21). Most of Demy's films disturb Lady and the Duke, 2001). Deflating his characters' pre ingly contrast sumptuous visual design with banal, even tensions while still sympathizing with their efforts to find sordid, plot lines. happiness, Rohmer's cinema has the flavor of the novel The New Wave label was often applied to directors of manners or of Renoir's films. who had little in common with the Cahiers group. Niko Whereas Rohmer favors the concise, neatly ironic Papatakis's savage Les Abysses (1963), for instance, tale, the films of Jacques Rivette, another Cahiers critic, seems chiefly indebted to the Theater of the Absurd in struggle to capture the endlessness of life itself. L'Amour its depiction of two housemaids' frenzied psychodrama fou (1968) runs over four hours, Out I (1971) twelve. (20.22). By contrast, the mainstream Louis Malle could Such abnormal lengths allow Rivette gradually to unfold appropriate a New Wave style for his Zazie dans le a daily rhythm behind which intricate, half-concealed metro (20.23). In general, the New Wave rubric allowed conspiracies are felt to lurk. a variety of young filmmakers to emerge.
20.22 Ll?s Abysses: an adaprarion of the s[()ry of the murderous Papin sisrers. Here [hey savagely peel away 20.21 The rapture of a ciry dancing: Les Demoiselles de Roche(ort. wallpaper. France: New \Xfave and New Cinema 449
20.23, left Joviality echoing the Marx Brothers (Zazie dans Ie metro).
20.24, right In La Pointe co~trte, the couple declaim philosophically while in the background fishermen go about their work.
20.25,20.26 Hiroshima man amour: as the couple lie in bed, Resnais cuts abruptl)' to a shot of the woman's Ger man lover. The grayer tonality of the film stock helps mJrk the distant past.
New Cinema: The Left Bank dence that the French cinema was renewing itself. But Hiroshima differs greatly from the works of Chabrol The late 1950s brought to prominence another loosely and Truffaut. At once highly intellectual and viscerally affiliated group of filmmakers-since known as the Rive shocking, it juxtaposes the present and the past in dis Gauche, or "Left Bank," group. Mostly older and less turbing ways. movie-mad than the Cahiers crew, they tended to see cin A French actress comes to Hiroshima to perform 111 ema as akJl1 to other arts, particularly literature. Some of an antiwar film. She is attracted to a Japanese man. these directors-Alain Resnais, Agnes Varda, and Over two mghts and days they make love, talk, quarrel, Georges Franju-were already known for their unusual and gain an obscure understanding. At the same tIme, shmt documentaries (pp. 481-482). Like New Wave memories of the German soldier she loved during the filmmakers, however, rl1ey practiced cinematic mod Occupation well up unexpectedly. She struggles to con ernism, and their emergence in the late 1950s benefited nect her own torment during World War II with the from the youthful public's interest In experimentation. ghastly suffering inflicted in the 1945 atomic destruc Two ""orks of the mid-1950s were significant pre tion of Hiroshima. The film closes with the couple's ap cursors. Alexandre AstrLlc, whose camera-stylo manifesto parent reconciliation, suggesting that the difficulty of had been an important spur to the auteur theory (p. 415), fully knOWing any historical truth resembles that of un made Les Mauvaises rencontres ("Bad Meetings," 1955), derstanding another human being. which uses flashbacks and a voice-over narration to ex Duras builds her script as a duet, with male and fe plalll the past of a woman brought to a police station in male voices intertwining over the images. Often the connection with an abortionist. More important is Agnes viewer does not know if the sound track carries real Varda's short feature La Pointe courte (1955). Much of conversations, imaginary dialogues, or commentary the film consists of a couple's random walks. But the non spoken by the characters. The film leaps from current actors and real locales conflict with the couple's archly story action to documentary footage, usually of Hi stylized voice-over dialogue (20.24). The film's elliptical roshima, or to shots of the actress's youth in France editing was without parallel in the cinema of its day. (20.25, 20.26). While aud iences had seen flashback con The prototypical Left Bank film was Hiroshima man structions throughout the 1940s and 1950s, Resnais amOUJ~ directed by Alain Resnais from a script by Mar made such temporal switches sudden and fragmentary. guetite Duras. Appeanng 111 1959, it shared the limelight In many cases they remain ambiguously poised between with Les Cousins and The 400 Blows, offenng more eVI- memory and fantasy. 450 CHAPTER 20 New Waves and Young Cinell1clS, [958-l %7
keeper who believes that a tramp is her returning hus hand. With its fragmentary scenes and unexpected cuts, it anticipates Nluriel. ~Marguerite Duras, who wrote Colpi's film as well as Resnais's, was eventually drawn to filmmaking (see Chapter 25). The fame of Resnais's work enabled another literary figure to move into directing. After scripting Last Year at Marienbad, the novelist Alain Robbe-Grillet debuted as a director with L'[mmortelle. It continues Marienbad's rend ition of "impossible" tImes a nd spaces (20.31, 20.32). Robhe-Grillet's second film, Trans-Europe Ex
20.27 Lost Year 01 Marienbad: people cast shadows bur press, is self-consciously about storytelling, as three writ trees don'r. ers settle down in a train to write about international drug smuggling. The film shows us their plot enacted, with all the varrants ,lnd revisions that emerge from the In Hiroshima's second part, the Japanese man pur discl1ssion. sues the french woman through the city ovel' a single The Hiroshima breakthrough also helped Agnes night. Now her mner VOIce takes the place of Hashbacks, Varda make a full-length feature, Cleo from 5 to 7. De commenting on what is happening in the present. If the spite its title, the film covers nll1ety-five minutes in the fi.lm's first half is so rapidly paced as to disorient the spec life of an actress awaiting the results of a critical med tator, the second part daringly slows to the tempo of their ical test. Varda distances us from this tense situation by walking, her nervous avoIdance, his patient waiting. The breaking the film into thirteen "chapters" and by in rhythm, which forces us to observe nuances of their be cludll1g various digressions (20.33). The film's exuber havior, anticipates that of Antonioni's L'Auuentura. ance, In surprising contrast to its morbid subject, puts it Hiroshima mon amour was shown out of competi close to the Nevv Wave tone, but its experiment in ma tion at Cannes In 1959 and awarded an International nipulating story duration has an intellectual flavor typi Critics' Prize. It caused a sensation, both for its scenes of cal of the Left Bank group. sexual Ultimacy and for its storytelling techniques. Its Varda's films after Cleo include the controversial Le ambiguous mixture of documentary realism, subjective Bonheur, which disturbed viewers by suggesting that one evocation, and authorial commentary represented a land woman can easrly take the place of another. In a typi mark in the development of the international art cinema. cally moderl1lst attack on traditional morality, Varda Hiroshima lifted Resnais to international renown. quotes Renoir's Picnic on the Crass, in which a charac His next work, Last Year at Marienbad, pushed mod ter remarks, "Happiness may consist in submitting to ernist ambiguity to new extremes. This tale of three the order of Nature." people encountering each other in a luxurious hotel mixes fantasy, dream-and reality, If there is any to be Both the New Wave and the Left Bank groups had discovered (20.27). Resnais's next fi 1m Muriel, uses no only a few yeal's of success. French film attendance con flashbacks, but the past remains visible in a young man's tinued to decline. Some works by novice directors, no amateur mOVIes of his traumatic tour of duty in Algeria. tably Jacques Rozier's Adieu Philippine, ran up huge Even more explicitly than Hiroshima, the film takes up production costs. By 1963, the New Cinema was no political questions; the MUrIel of the title, never seen, is longer selling, and It was as difficult for a young direc an Algerian tortured by French occupiers. Resnals em tor to get started as it would have been ten years earlier. phasIzes the anxiety of the present through a jolting edit Tenacious producers such as Georges de Beauregard, ing far more pl'ecise than the rough jump cuts of the Anatole Dauman, Mag Bodard, and Pierre Braunberger New Wave (20.28,20.29). assisted the major filmmakers, but far more bankable The success of Hiroshima mon amour helped were directors like Claude Lelouch, whose A Mall and launch features by other Left Bank filmmakers. Georges a Woman (J 966) used New Cinema techniques to dress Franju's f,yes without a Face (20.30) and Judex offered up a traditional romantic plot. cerebral, slightly surrealis! reworklllgs of claSSIC genres Nevertheless, the French cinema of the 1960s was and paid homage to directors like fritz Ll11g and Louis one of the most wlddy admired and imitated in the feuillade. Resnals's editor Henri Colpi was able to world. The TraditIon of Quality had been supplanted make Une AIISSI longue absence (1960), a tale of a cafe by a vigorous cinematic modernism. fwly: Young CineJ11d and Spaghetti Westerns 451
20.28,20.29 Muriel: when Alphonse rises from a table, Resnais curs to him in a 20.30 A dead-white mask echoing different locale but in the same part of the frame. silenr-film makeup in Franju's Eyes without a Face.
20.31,20.32 The protagonist of L'fmmortelle peers out through a blind, and the 20.33 Cleo sings to the camera. phantom womJn he pursues, in still photogr<1ph, peers back.
ITALY: YOUNG CINEMA AND SPAGHETTI WESTERNS
During the late 1950s and early 1960s, the Italian film Industry fared much better than the French. Higher ticket prices offset the decline in attendance, American imports were decreasing, and Italian films ,vere gaimng a large share of domestic revenues. The international market proved accessible to horror films, comedies like Divorce Italian Style (1961), and revived "mythologi cal" epics like Hercules Unchained (1959). U.S. and European firms continued to seek Italian coproductlons. Cinecitta churned out films, and In 1962 Dino De Laurentiis built a huge studio outSide Rome. By the early 1960s, Italy had become western Europe's most 20.34 1/ Posta: an older employee's death allows the powerful production center. protagonist to move into the office amid a scramble for the slightly better empty desk at the front of the row. The most visible directors were Fellini and Anto 11I0nl, whose early 1960s films solidified their reputations as auteurs (see Chapter 19). Expansion in rhe industry prepare breakfasr, l/ Posto ("The Job," aka The Sound also enabled dozens of new directors to embark on ca o(Trumpets, 1961) seems to conrinue the patienr obser reers. Most went unmediately into the popular genres, vation of daily life conducted in Umherto D. (p. 364). but a few became more celebrated and influential. As we If Posta is also characteristic of international Young Cin might expect, they were often characterized in relation to ema in the way it loosens its narrative beyond the Neo rhe Neorealist rradirion. realist norm. The young man's application for a civil ser A srraightforward updaring of Neorealism occurred vice Job, the petry office rourll1es, and the melancholy in the work of Ermanno Olmi. From the first scene, lives of the clerks are presented in an anecdotal, digres which shows a young man waking up while his parents sive fashion (20.34). The romance plot line remains 452 CHAPTER 20 :-':cw W,lICS and Young Cinemas, 1958-1 %7
tecorvo, like ROSI, showed tbe influence of Resnais and other experimenters. The Neorealist impulse also encountered a radical modernism in the \vork of Pier Paolo Paso1111i. An un orthodox MarXist, 3 homosexu31, 3nd a nonbeliever steeped in Catholicism, Pasolinl generated a furor m 1tdl ian culture. He was dlready famous as a poet and novel ist when he entered filmmaking. He worked on several scnpts, notably for FeUini's Nights of Cabiria, and he cast his own films on a principle that Vittorio De Sica could have accepted: "I choose 3ctors for wh,lt they are 20.35 Saluatore Giuliani: soldiers line ,1 street in a village 3nd not for what they pretend to be."4 Yet Pasolinl th,lt h,ls aided the hero. cLllmed to take from Charles Chaplin, Carl Dreyer, and Kenii Mizoguchl the ide3 that the filmm3ker could re veal the epic and mythic dimenslons of the world. The bleak examination of urban poverty in Accatcme (1961) and Mama Roma (1962) was h3iled 3S a return to Neorealism. Yet Pasolini's treatment of the milieu seems to owe more to Luis BUDuel's Los Olvidados, not only in the scenes of savage violence but 111 the disturb ing dream imagery. Pasolinl niticized Neore31ism as being too tied to Resistance politics and too attached to a surface veracity. "In neorealism things :He described with a certain detachment, with human warmth mixed with irony-characteristics which I do not have."5 20.36 H'lnd-helc.l shots give ,1 sense of W,lI" reportage ,1S Pasolini's first films also display what he called pas the C,1l1lerJ follows soldiers II1vading an apartment block In ticchio, the "jumbling together" of a Wide range of Battle of Algiers. aural and visual materials. In compositions reminiscent of Renaissance paintings, characters spew forth vulgar unfulfilled. Olmi's alternation of satiric touches with language. Cinema-verite street scenes are accompanied quiet sympathy resembles the attitude of young Czech by Bach or Mozart. Pasolilll explained these dispa,-ities fiJmm3kers like Jii'f Menzel. of technique by c1aul1lOg that the peasantry and the Neoredlism's socially critic31 impulse W3S intensified lowest reaches of the urban work111g class ret,lined a tie by new filmmakers Identified vvith the left. Perhdps clos to prellldustnal mythology, which his citation of great est to the Neoreallst source was the work of the Tavlani artworks of the past was meant to evoke. brothers, Vittorio and Paolo, who would gain interna The tactic of stylistic"contam ina tion," as Paso Iini tional prominence in the 1970s. Francesco Rosi, who had caJled it, was perhaps least disturbing to audiences 111 The assisted Visconti on La Terra trema, merged a semidoeu Gospel According to St. iVlatthew (1964), which-unlike mentarv InqUlry Into a Sicilian bandit's death with non his previous writings and films-won praise from the chronological flashbacks m Salvatore Ciuliano (1961). Church. The biblical tale ,",vas presented with greater Avoiding a concentration on its protagonist, the film ex realism than would be found in Hollywood or Cinecitta plores the Mafia and government forces that defeat the epics. Pasolil1l made Jesus a fierce, often impatient, populist rebel (20.35). Marco Bellocchio brought a New preacher, and he dwelt on the characters' gnarled fea Left nitique of orthodox communism to the screen with tures, wrinkled skin, and broken teeth. The Gospel, how
Fists 111 the Puck:ets (1966) and China Is Near (1967). ever, IS not simply a Neorealist scriptllfe. Techniques are Cillo Pontecorvo, older than these filmmakers, made one Jumbled together. Bach and Prokofiev vie with the Afri of the most important contributions to the trend In Bat can Missa Luba on the sound track. Faces out of Renais tle of Algiers (1966). This restaged semidocumentary sance pamtlOgs are filmed In abrupt zoom shots. jesus' drew upon the conventions of cinema verite to render the trial before Pilate is vie"wed by a hand-held camera within immedwcy of the Algerian war for independence (20.36); a crowd of onlookers, as if a news reporter could not get but, In usmg a complex ~ashback construction, Pon closer (20.37). ftaly: Young Cinema and Sp<1ghetti \'vbtcrns 453
This familiar modernist device, exploited in Citizen Kane and Rashomon, is here applied to ,1 classic Neorealist sit uation-a purse theft that recalls both The Bicycle Thief and Nights of Cahiria. Bertolucci's most celebrated film of the era was the autobiographical Before the Revolution ('1964). A tale of a young man who falls in love with his aunt, it parades reference~ to Cahiers du cinema Jnd HolJywood direc tOrs Jnd displays the director's mastery of an-cinema procedures of diSOrientation (20.38-20.42). Avoiding the r,ldical disjunctions of Godard, Bertolucci made mildly 20.37 The Gospel According to St. Matthew: hom Judas's modernist films of great technical polish, a quality that point of view, we glimpse the trial past the heads of other he would exploit in his successes of the 1970s and 1980s. onlookers. The industry's prosperity allowed Olmi, Pasolini, BertolucCl, and many other directors to enter filmmak Pasolint, the experimental writer turned filmmJker, ing. As in France, however, the period of opportunity somevvhat resembles Alain Robbe-Grillet, while Ber was rather brief. A crisis emerged dUring] 963 and nardo Berrolllccl represents an Italian parallel to the di 1964, when the costume epic fell out of favor and major rec[()rs of the Nouvelle Vague. At age nineteen Benolucci companies ~uffered from expensive failures, principally was assistanr director on Accatone, and Pasolini supplied Luchll10 Visconti's The reopard (J 963) and Robert the script for his first film, La Commare secca ("The Aldrich's SodolJ1 and COl11orrah (l96.1). In 1965, the Grim Reaper," 1962). A devoted cinephile, he spent his government llltervened and offered an aid policy resem teenage vacations watcbing movies at the Cinematheque bling that of France: prizes for quality effons, guaran Franc;:aise. Although Benolucci identified strongly with teed bank. loans, credits from special funds. the New \Vave filmmakers, the careful construction and \X!hlle thIS policy led to a new filmmakIng boom, technical elegance of his films put them closer to the producers turned to low-budget production in new gen world of older modernists like Resn:l1s. In La C071lmare res, such as sex films and James Bone! imitations. Mario secca, offscreen deteerives ll1terrogate murdel' suspects, Bava lntroduced new eroticism, baroque set designs, and and fbshbacks supply each suspect's versIOn of events. bizarre camera movements into fantasy-based thrillers
20.38 Disorienting timc Juggling in 20.39 After ,1 close-up of some of the 20.40 ... Bertollicci cutS to the bed, Before the Rel'olutiol1: the aunt sorts PJCtu res ... empt)', and tracks 1Il; she comes IIUO the photographs from her life on her bed. room in the background.
20.41, left Then Bertolllcci resLimes sbowing piCtureS, 'lgain s[Jre'lci on the beel ...
20.42, right ... before the aUllt slowly turns the pictUl'cs over one hy one. The ,hot of the elllpt}' bed presents an amhiguity of time: Is the ,hot OLit of order, or does it Illark a IlCW occasioll on which the aunt returned to the bed and h1iel out the photo, once again) 454 CHAPTER 20 New Waves and Young Cinemas, 1958-1967
(Black Sabbath, 1963; Blood and Black Lace, 1964). The most lDternationally successful Italian genre was the spaghetti Western, as it came to be known in EngJish, and its most successful practitioner was Sergio Leone. A fan of American comIc strips and films nOlrs, Leone was as dedicated a film fan as were the New Wave directors. He worked as assistant director for his father, Roberto Roberri, for De Sica (on The Bicycle Thief) and for American directors on runaway productions. After directing two costume epics, Leone moved to the genre that producers hoped would restabilize the Industry. A Fistful of DoLLars (1964), For a Few Dollars More (1965), and The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly (1966) became the prototypical spaghetti Westerns. Laconic, srubbJe-jawed Clint Eastwood saunters through a worJd of grotesque absurdity modeled on Akita Kurosawa's 20.43 The image of one of the terrified victims in Peeping Tom is p<1rtially projected on the protagonist as he stands samu ra i films. Leone's Westerns ha ve a ha rsh rea lism before the cinema screen. seed}' towns, grubby ponchos, and violence more grue some than most audiences had ever seen. But they also display an almost operatic splendor. Vast landscapes dent production company, rose to prominence with a se (filmed cheaply in Spain) are juxtaposed with wldescreen ries of internationally popular horror films. Many were close-ups of eyes or hands. \X1ide-angle lenses dIstort loose remakes of 1930s Ul11versal films, lI1cluding Drac depth (Color Plate 20.2). Leone's Oamboyant visual style ula (aka The Horror of Dracula, 1958, Terence Fisher) pushes the Western conventions to the level of formal cer and The Mummy (1959, Terence Fisher). Gorier than emony, so a face-off lD a bar becomes as prolonged and their predecessors, they also boasted polished production stylized as a confrontation In Sergei Eisenstein's [van the values, ll1cluding elegant color cinematography (Color Terrible. Yet Leone often detlates his supercharged scenes Plate 20.3). with grimly Ironic humor. The horror vogue pa ved the way for one of the most In each film, Ennio Morricone's musical score hero unusual films of this period, Michael Powell's Peeping Icizes the action with soaring strings or mocks it wirh Tom (1959). Although it was not produced by Hammer, an abrupt whistle or a twang. Leone called Morricone its scriptwriter had worked there. It concerned a shy his "scriptwriter" because the composer could replace a young assistant cinematographer, who is also a psychotic line of dialogue with a sudden exptessive chord. 6 Mor killer, making 16mm films of his female victims in their ricone also helped Leone magnify the thematic implica death throes. Since Powell had codirected some of the tions of a film, as when, a t the end of For a Few Dollars most prestigious films of the postwar era, such as The More, the parallel between a gunfight and a bullfight l~ed Shoes and A Matter of Life and Death (see Chapter emerges not only from the corrida-shaped arena but 17), critics could not fathom why he should take on thIS also from throbbing Mexican brass on the sound track. sordid tale. Yet Peeping Torn explores the roots of sex The huge success of the Dollars trilogy spurred the ual VIOlence with a complexity unusual for ltS time, pre production of spaghettI Westerns a nd made Leone, Mor sciently linkLllg child abuse to the victim's later crimes. It ricone, and Eastvvood world famous. Although Leone also raises the question of how the film medium itself worked in a popular genre, his florid, highly personal arouses erotic impulses (20.43). reinterpretation of its conventions proved as significant If horror films constituted one of the most distinc as the efforts of those art-cInema directors who revised tive portions of the mainstream cinema, the "Kitchen and challenged the Neorealist tradition. Sink" trend (so-called for its depiction of grubby, every day life) was Britain's eqUIvalent of the French New Wave. Its principal directors emerged out of the Free GREAT BRITAIN: KITCHEN SINK CINEMA Cinema group (p. 480). During the mid-1950s, plays and fiction centering on As Italy had cultivated the spaghettl Westerns, Bmish rebellious working-class protagonists created a class filmmaking responded to the decline in filmgomg by cre conscious, "angry-young-man" trend. The most impor ating new sorts of films. Hammer Films, a small indepen tant of these works was John Osborne's play Look Back Great Britain: Kitchen Sink Cinem<1 455
20.44, left l.ike Illany Kitchen Sink films, Look Back in Anger stresses the grim industl"iallandsC 20.45, right The opening scene of Saturda)' NIght and Sunday Morning shows the promgonist ,It work, ,1S we hear his voice speaking over: "Don't let the bastards grind you down; th,lt';, one thing I've leal'l1ed." 20.46, left The hero of This Sporting Life In a f in Anger, directed on the stage by Tony Richardson in Runner (] 962), the story of a sullen prisoner 111 a re 1956. In 1959, Richardson and others formed a produc form school who trains as a cross-country runner. Like tion company, Wood Fall, in order to move from the doc other angry-young-man films, Lonelmess uses tech umentary shorts of Free Cinema into feature filmmaking. niques borrowed from the French New Wave, Itlcluding One of the first WoodfaJl films was an adaptation of fast motion to suggest excitement during the hero's Look Back in Anger (1959) starring Richard Burton. crimes and hand-held camerawork for scenes of his ex The alienated hero runs a candy stall in an open-air mar hdaratll1g open-all' jogging. In an echo of Truffaut's The ket and rants to his mates about the injustices of the 400 Blows, !-oneLiness ends witll a freeze-frame as the class system. His best friend is his elderly land lady, boys assemble gas masks. whom he accompanies on a visit to her husband's grave Lindsay Anderson, like the Cahlers du CInema di (20.44). Like other films of this tendency, Look Back in rectors, had been a film critic, and he lambasted the Anger's so ber rea lism owes a good dea I to loca non British cinem YOUNG GERMAN FILM In February] 962, at the Oberhausen Film Festival, a new impulse 111 \Vest German cinema was articulated. Twenty-six young filmmakers signed a manifesto declar ing the old film dead. In the face of a decaying Industry and a dwindling audience, the signatories promised to help German cinema regain international renown. After three years of lobbying and public debate, the central government established the Kuratorium Junger Deutsch Film ("Commission for Young German Film") in early 1965. ThIS agency provided interest-free loans on the basis of scripts by directors who had proved themselves 20.48 Morgan imagines his execution in a junkyatd with notable short films. decorated with pictures of famous Marxists. During its brief existence, the Kuratorium financed nearly two dozen feature films. All were low-budget projects, in which the filmmaker paid the actors little fashionable, and London came to be seen as the capital and filmed almost completely on location. Bm many of of trendiness, social mobility, and sexual liberation. A these Riicksackfilme (" backpack f1lms") had the shock series of films pro bing the shallowness of the "mod" of novelty. They depicted contemporary Germany as a lifestyle found success in art theaters around the world. land of broken marriages, soured affairs, rebellious For example, in Darling (1965, John Schlesinger) a youth, and casual sex. They suggested th"t the legacy of thoughtless, trivial model rises in society through a Naziism lingered into the present. And, after nearly two string of love affairs and finally marries an Italian decades of respectful adaptations of classics, the Young prince. Darling uses many techniques derived from the German Film forged alliances with experimental writ Nouvelle Vague, such as jump cuts and freeze-frames. ing. ThIS was a cinema of Autoren. Unlike the French Alfie (1966, Lewis Gilbert) offers a male reversal of auteur critic-filmmakers, the young Germans sought a Darling, in which a selfish charmer seduces a series of cinema of Iiterary quality. women, ducking all problems until confronted with the Later the Oberhauseners would admit that the illegal abortion of one of his victims. Alfie follows Tom manifesto was largely a bluff, but several signatories, Jones in letting the hero share his thoughts with the such as Edgar Reitz and Volker Schlbndorff, managed viewer by means of asides to the camera. to sustain careers. From a long-range international per Reisz's Morgan. a Suitable Case for Treatment spective, the two most noteworthy debuts of the period (1966) joined the working-class hero of the Kitchen Sink were those of Alexander Kluge and Jean-Marie Straub. period with a comic critique of swinging London. A man Trained as a lawyer, Kluge moved into experimental from a Marxist family tries desperately to prevent his writing and-after see1l1g Breathless-filmmaking. He wife from divorcing him and marrying a snobbish art became the most tireless advocate of the Young German gallery owner. Morgan assimila tes art-cinema con ven Film. A signer of the Oberhausen manifesto, Kluge tions in its fantasy scenes, in which the 11ero compares played a central role in lobbying for the Kuratorium. He people to gorillas and envisions his execution (20.48). also helped establish West Germany's first film produc Apart from the new prominence of the London tion school, at utm. During the sanw period, he made a lifestyle, creative talents left Kitchen Sink realism be series of shorts. In 1965, he was given Kuratorium fund hind. The success of Tom Jones Jed Richardson to Hol II1g for what became Abscheld von Gestern ("Departure lywood, while Alben Finney, Tom Courtenay, Rjchard from Yesterday," aka Yesterday Girl, 1966). Kluge's styl Harris, and Michael Caine became international stars. istic Aouflshes-jump cuts, fast motion, Interruptive ti Hollywood's tactics in fina ncing Bri tish fi Ims cha nged tles, hand-heJd tracking shots-and his fragmented, el as well. The intimate, realistic film would often be asso liptical storytelling firmly locate Yesterday Girl in the ciated with a more overtly political cinema, while many 1960s Young Cinema. Anita G. might be a French New nota ble later British works were either expensive pres Wave heroine: she drifts though cities, tries to hold a job, tige films (often made with American backing) or inven 1I1dulges tn petty theft, has love affairs, and winds up tive genre pictures. pregnant and in prison.