CHAPTER ¡6

The , Part One: ¡957–¡968

Introduction Sartre and Albert Camus, became part of a significant philosophical reflection on the The next two chapters focus on the historic nature of being and the absurdity of the human importance of the New Wave (nouvelle vague), condition. Sartre and Camus proposed a con- a radical film movement that changed the way cept of human freedom based upon the possi- we think about and understand film narratives bility of a deliberate and conscious choice in as an art form and cultural construct. The which the actions of human beings are not lim- movement was initiated by a young, talented ited or determined by powerful cultural forces. group of French film critics, namely, François On the contrary, it is the experiential choices Tru›aut, Jean-Luc Godard, , they make that fully bring whatever endow- Eric Rohmer and , whose first ments they have into being. “Man is a self-cre- feature films in ¡959 revolutionized film pro- ating being who is not initially endowed with duction in Western Europe. Their improvisa- a character and goals,” notes Sartre, “but must tional approach to acting, directing and script- choose them by acts of pure decision … [and writing followed the documentary techniques make] existential leaps into being” (Sartre of filmmakers like , ¡943). Contrary to Plato, Sartre places one’s and , using handheld cameras, on- existence before the idea of essence. By location shooting, and small crews. As writers acknowledging that people are temporal beings and directors they followed André Bazin’s con- conscious of their own mortality, a person must cept of the long take and mise-en-scène. The strive to live authentically with the under- unifying principle behind these films was standing of this fact as leading to a person’s own French Existentialism, in which they expressed ultimate destiny. a personal vision of the world. They merged These concepts were born out of the philoso- this philosophy with the dramatic theories of phers’ own experiences during the French strug- Bertolt Brecht. The New Wave displaced the gle against German occupation during World postwar French commercial cinema, the Tra- War II. For some documentary French filmmak- dition of Quality, in which studio writers ers such as Alain Resnais, and adapted novels into filmscripts to produce a , it was necessary to depict on cinema of “psychological realism.” film these atrocities, symbolically or otherwise, if only to document them. This political com- mitment to documentary filmmaking began The Influence of French with the early short documentaries of Georges Existentialism on the New Wave Franju (¡9¡2–¡987), the co-founder of the Ciné- mathèque Française with . His During the postwar years French Existen- Les Sang des Bêtes / The Blood of the Beasts tialism, through the writings of Jean-Paul (¡949) is a surreal documentary on a

194 ¡6. The French New Wave, Part One: ¡957–¡968 195

Alain Resnais in Last Year at Marienbad (¡96¡) uses shots of gardens and statues of a hotel where remem- brances of times past confuse time present. slaughterhouse that becomes an allegory of the centration camps. Resnais uses brief, almost Nazis and their butchery of French Resistance subliminal, flash cuts as a method to pursue the fighters. His other short films, one on Georges e›ects of time and memory and how they play Méliès, the other on Madame Curie, decon- upon our present sense of reality. A somber struct myths about heroism and heroes. His voice-over narration throughout the film leads first feature film, La Tête Contre les Murs / The to his warning for viewers to remember the hor- Keepers (¡958), a partly surreal documentary on rors of the death camps. His meditations on the the French insane asylums, is cited as a fore- e›ects of time upon memories and how we per- runner of New Wave attacks on traditional ceive them became the theme of his first feature institutions and structures that Michel Foucault film, Hiroshima, Mon Amour (¡959), followed revisits in his account of mental institutions in by L’Année Dernière à Marienbad / Last Year at Madness and Civilization (¡965/¡98¡). Marienbad (¡962) whose intersection of past and Alain Resnais (b. ¡922) is another important present a›ects our sense of the future. These documentary filmmaker to influence the New themes are taken up by another documentary Wave filmmakers and critics. His early work filmmaker, Chris Marker (b. ¡92¡). In his sci- included short documentary films about Van ence-fiction short, La Jetée / The Pier (¡962), we Gogh and Gauguin. In Nuit et Brouillard / Night become involved in a time-travel adventure of and Fog (¡955), he interweaves past with pre- a man revisiting his past only to discover his own sent in a political documentary on Nazi con- death. In Le Joli Mai (¡963) Marker focuses upon 196 AN INTRODUCTION TO WORLD CINEMA

Impersonal relations between lovers, indicated by long tracking shots of empty corridors and outdoor vistas, disorient the viewer trying to sort out the flashbacks and present-day actions in Last Year at Marienbad. the political strife in Parisian life as he mixes use the camera as a pen to express his own present time with fading memories. Resnais and thoughts and ideas independent of a given sce- Marker and other documentary filmmakers nario, as opposed to adopting a style from lit- were part of the Left Bank group associated with erature or the theatre. This “writing with the the New Wave, but were committed to a more camera” would see filmmaking as a sponta- existential approach to documentary films. neous happening, in which the director would Alexandre Astruc (b. ¡923) championed the face the problems of expressing ideas and direct cinéma style of Franju and Resnais. He thoughts through the very activity of filmmak- expressed his critical thoughts on filmmak- ing. Using this cinematic technique, Astruc ing in his ¡948 essay, “The Birth of a New believed young French filmmakers would be Avant-Garde: La Camera-Stylo” (camera-pen). able to find a personal style and form of expres- According to Astruc, this new cinema would sion comparable to a written language. Thus, “gradually break free from the tyranny of what they could discover a new audiovisual language is visual, from the image for its own sake, from that abandoned the classical style of montage the immediate and concrete demands of the editing and linear narration. This new cinema narrative, to become a means of writing just as would give the filmmaker the status of author, flexible and subtle as written language” (Astruc, or , since the mode of filmmaking inves- quoted in Graham ¡968, p. ¡8). tigated natural phenomena according to the By breaking away from a traditional narra- director’s personal attitude and beliefs. As a tive technique, and more into a surreal stream- film style, it would emphasize the use of the of-consciousness approach, the director would “long-take” and mise-en-scène. ¡6. The French New Wave, Part One: ¡957–¡968 197

The French New Wave lightweight ¡6mm cameras, and remembered Directors, ¡956–¡968 his dictum to show people as they are. Godard made Tous les Garçons S’Appellent Patrick / All The critical comments of Alexandre Astruc the Boys Are Named Patrick (¡957), Tru›aut on a personal, first-person filmmaking tech- directed Les Mistons / The Mischief Makers nique were advanced by André Bazin (¡9¡8– (¡958) and Chabrol produced and directed Le ¡958) in the influential film journal Cahiers du Beau Serge / Bitter Reunion (¡958). Cinéma which he founded as La Revue du Cinéma with Jacques Doniol-Valcroze in ¡95¡. The term to describe this filmmaking practice The New Wave became known as the politique des , and and Jean-Luc Godard was defined by Bazin in his own essay as follows: The French New Wave was a provocative The politique des auteurs consists, in short, exploration into commercial cinema at a time of choosing the personal factor in artistic when film that relied on traditional stage tech- creation as a standard of reference, and niques was seen as a sterile creative movement. then of assuming that it continues and The personal styles of these young critics of even progresses from one film to the next. challenged this “cinema de It is recognized that there do exist certain papa.” They became filmmakers to examine the important films of quality that escape this relationship of one’s own identity with the role test, but these will systematically be con- sidered inferior to those in which the per- assigned by society. They followed two basic sonal stamp of the auteur, however run-of- tenets emerging from Cahiers du Cinéma and the-mill the scenario, can be perceived André Bazin. One was the use of the long take, even minutely [Bazin, quoted in Graham and a mise-en-scène that respected the unity of ¡968, p. ¡5¡]. time and place, as opposed to montage. The second tenet related to the use of the camera as Under the guidance of Bazin, a group of an instrument for personal expression as advo- young writers and critics who wanted to cated by Alexandre Astruc. Thus universal become filmmakers began studying film at the themes on life, love and identity would receive Cinémathèque Française. This film theatre was a personal interpretation as a dialectical play founded by Georges Franju and Henri Langlois between the representation of self in the cinema in ¡937 as a film archive designed to promote and in real life, a play between illusion and film study and film culture. After the war, reality. André Malraux, the Minister of Culture, pro- Jean-Luc Godard and François Tru›aut vided funds to maintain the collection and pro- practiced a cinéma des auteurs, calling attention vide public screenings of the experimental to itself as cinema through the process of its silent French films of the ¡920s and the sound own making. Thus, New Wave cinema becomes films of the ¡930s, especially films directed by self-reflexive of filmmaking itself, unmasking Jean Vigo, Abel Gance and Jean Renoir. Besides the process of its own apparatus. These two these classical French films, American films of directors advocated a freewheeling, improvised the ¡930s and ¡940s, particularly those of Alfred style that called attention to the cinematic Hitchcock, Nicholas Ray and Howard Hawks, tricks of filmmaking. They reveled in appropri- also were screened. ating cinematic techniques from the silent films Another important influence on the devel- of the ¡920s and the sound films of the ¡930s. opment of these film critics was Roberto Ros- As Godard’s cinematic anti-heroes rebel against sellini (see Chapter ¡¡), who became their film the norms and conventions set up by a popu- mentor. They followed his advice and made lar culture and consumerism, Tru›aut’s misfits their own independent short films, using his try to understand the forces that repress indi- semidocumentary techniques including on- viduality. The goal of their film experiments location shooting, nonprofessional actors and was to deal with the question of authenticity, 198 AN INTRODUCTION TO WORLD CINEMA and the coming together of an inner subjective events taking place on stage. To insure that his consciousness within a social-political reality. dramas achieved the necessary critical detach- In this conscious intellectual striving, ment, Brecht advanced his theory of Verfrem- Godard and Tru›aut not only borrowed from dung, translated as “distanciation” or “estrange- American B-movies but also drew upon the ment” and referred to as the V-e›ect. It does modernist tendencies of James Joyce, Bertolt not mean alienating spectators in the sense of Brecht and William Faulkner. Godard and making them hostile to the play. According to Tru›aut extended the experimental forms of Wright: the novel in their exploration of cinema as an art form as well as its role in education and Verfremdung is a mode of critical seeing communication. With these two young direc- that goes on within a process by which man tors, Claude Chabrol, Eric Rohmer and Jacques identifies his objects. Further, it sets up a Rivette also used a self-reflexive style to estab- series of social, political and ideological interruptions that remind us that represen- lish their roles as auteurs. As directors and tations are not given but produced. Con- screenwriters, they established various narra- trary to popular belief, Verfremdung does tive strategies to explore the moral and social not do away with identification, but exam- values in a changing existential world of con- ines it critically, using the technique of tingency. In this world the personal experiences montage which shows that no representa- of life are often alienated by the depersonaliz- tion is fixed and final [Wright ¡989, p. ¡9]. ing forces of modern society. The problem is to unmask these forces and liberate oneself from In ¡948, after years in exile from Nazi Ger- their tyrannies. many, Brecht returned to East Berlin, where he became director of the state-supported Berliner Ensemble. Here he directed his own plays, The Influence notably those written while he was living in the of Bertolt Brecht United States. During this period, Brecht decided to replace the term epic with the term Bertolt Brecht (¡898–¡956) was a German dialectical to further his political awareness dramatist and poet who developed an epic or “that the spectator is never only at the receiv- narrative theatre during the late ¡920s in Berlin. ing end of a representation, but is included in His theatre employed anti-illusionistic devices it” (Wright ¡989, p. ¡9). He produced and to break down the Aristotelian theatre of illu- directed three major plays that became world sion, one based upon the theory of catharsis, famous: Mother Courage (¡94¡), The Good an empathic identification by the spectator with Woman of Setzuan (¡943) and The Caucasian the stage actor. This response purged the audi- Chalk Circle (¡955). In each drama, Brecht ence of its emotions of fear and pity created by shows how his “dialectical” theatre, using the the drama. Such dramas easily brought the V-e›ect, discourages and agitates against audi- audience under their spell, and it became anti- ence identification with stage characters, thus critical of the stage actions. “These powerful helping the spectator to realize the parts they empathic responses depended upon stage illu- play in the fictional narrative itself. sion and served as mental foodstu›s, quickly For each of these plays, Brecht “developed a enjoyed and consumed by the viewer, then for- variety of e›ects to present his themes and gotten” (Willett ¡968, p. ¡72). motifs: songs, inserted texts, self-reference, and Brecht claimed that the function of theatre the self-presentation of characters.” These should be to challenge the cultural perceptions e›ects were all designed to promote a new way of the audience. It should communicate, not of seeing, a new attitude to be shared between only provide entertainment. A theatre is a sym- the stage and the audiences. Brecht’s dramas bolic place where the audience should be made aimed at “transforming ‘fear’ and ‘pity’ into a to think, to question and to become politically ‘desire for knowledge’ and a ‘readiness to conscious of the contradictions behind the help’” (Wright ¡989, p. 33). Brecht’s techniques ¡6. The French New Wave, Part One: ¡957–¡968 199

Anna Karina plays a prostitute in a series of Brechtian episodes detailing her lifestyle in Godard’s Vivre Sa Vie / My Life to Live (¡962). 200 AN INTRODUCTION TO WORLD CINEMA

Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg as lovers strolling down the Champs-Elysées in Breathless (¡959), directed by Jean-Luc Godard. kept the audiences constantly aware that they derment, then audiences become discoverers of were being presented with a report of past the relationships that exist between people and events. As historical reconstructions his plays realize that nothing will seem inevitable. Brecht openly declared the stage as just a stage, and sought to demonstrate how his characters can not a place to be mistaken for the actual world develop and grow out of a social function. As itself. The main function of the enactment that social function changes, so does the action was to produce living illustrations that could and identity of the person. The idea he explores foster a critical attitude in the audience in in his dramas is that nothing is fixed, that there hopes of changing the powerful social, eco- is no absolute role or identity created that is nomic and historical forces operating upon unchangeable. His characters, through their people’s lives. actions and experiences, are in the act of be- For Brecht, the art of the drama was to place coming in association with their social and familiar things, attitudes and situations “into a political functions. new fresh and unfamiliar perspective so that In this context, Jean-Luc Godard, in his the spectator is brought to look critically at assimilation of Brechtian theatre, became the what has been taken for granted” (Willett ¡968, foremost experimenter of narrative form in the p. ¡77). Brecht points out that when the “nat- cinema. He constantly reminds us, as specta- ural” is made to look surprising or creates won- tors, that we are watching a filmed reality, one ¡6. The French New Wave, Part One: ¡957–¡968 201 that shares resemblances to actual life but is a À BOUT DE SOUFFLE / BREATHLESS constructed reality. Through the use of jump- cuts, elliptical editing, and the elimination of Breathless is the first feature film directed by transitional scenes, Godard violates the invisi- Jean-Luc Godard. It is based upon an idea for a ble editing developed by film directors in the love story written by François Tru›aut, but classical Hollywood style. Godard scripted and edited the film. Godard ded- In its place he deliberately creates a self- icated Breathless to Monogram Pictures, a minor reflexive cinema. This cinema, which appears Hollywood studio that made B gangster movies. to have temporal and spatial continuity As a New Wave critic and filmmaker, Godard through editing is, in reality, a very discontin- exploited this gangster-thriller model and its uous process. In a radical departure from the familiar plot to set up a self-reflexive cinema, narrative films of the past, Godard’s films making films about the process of making films. become a series of cinematic essays decon- When Breathless was first reviewed in the structing the myths that control the social rela- New York Times by Bosley Crowther in ¡96¡, he tions of people within modern industrial criticized the sordidness of the love a›air, and society. the fact that the key character, Michel, as por- In the early films of Godard and Tru›aut, trayed by Jean-Paul Belmondo, was “an impu- the central character is always trying to shed an dent, arrogant, sharp-witted and alarmingly assigned social role, especially in Tru›aut’s 400 amoral hood.” He cited Jean Seberg’s character, Blows and in Godard’s Vivre Sa Vie / My Life to Patricia, as a “cold, self-defensive animal in a Live (¡962). Further, as in Brechtian theatre, the glittering, glib, irrational, heartless world.” For New Wave films always pose this question: How Crowther, these two lovers were fearsome will a given person act in a specified set of cir- characters since their animalistic drives “were cumstances and conditions? Godard, like completely devoid of moral tone, and they Brecht, reverses a psychological drama which were mainly concerned with eroticism, and focuses upon a character caught in a suspense- the restless drives of a cruel young punk.” ful Aristotelian plot with a narrative drama But Crowther seems not to be aware that which concentrates on a character caught in a Michel was one of the first film antiheroes, the particular political situation. By showing a outsider from the fictions of Sartre and Camus, series of episodes, each detailing a di›erent set living immorally in an antisocial world. of circumstances, the writer-director can place The first close-ups of Michel show him read- familiar characters into new or unfamiliar posi- ing a newspaper containing erotic photos of tions, thus contrasting episodes. bathing beauties. By an association of his image Further, Godard allows the non-literary ele- with the newspaper images, we are led to believe ments, including the decor, the sound e›ects, that Michel is motivated or driven by lust. This the music and the mise-en-scène, to retain their sexual desire, called l’amour fou by the Surreal- autonomy. In this manner they enter into a ists, removes the person from any rational dialectical relationship with characters in each behavior. Michel is an anarchist who acts impul- episode. Godard uses these non-literary ele- sively and irrationally. He models himself on ments to their full extent as he demonstrates in movie-made gangsters like Bogart and Cagney Breathless, My Life to Live, and Weekend (¡968). to show his contempt for law and order. Michel As cinematic techniques, the jump-cuts, slow has no qualms about committing petty crimes fades and wipes, the use of titles, newspaper to obtain money, including a car theft, which headlines, interviews and voice-overs interrupt accidentally leads to the death of a police o‡cer. the flow of the action and thus break the illu- It is the irrational nature of this character in sion of reality. In many cases, Godard used an absurd world that interests Godard. As in a di›erent sound e›ects either from a music score film noir, Godard creates tensions in Breathless or actual sounds coming into the scene from as part of a gangster-thriller narrative whose the environment, to comment upon or contra- male character is fated to “live dangerously to dict the mood of the scene. the end.” In this fashion then, Godard can ask 202 AN INTRODUCTION TO WORLD CINEMA the audience a series of moral questions regard- rian melodrama and morality which he believes ing the nature of contemporary society and its informs the social constructs of modern society middle-class preoccupations with sex and and the world of cinematic “illusions.” wealth. As lovers, Michel and Patricia are trapped by di›erent jobs in order to gain what DUDLEY ANDREW: they most desire. In fact, Michel steals cars to “BREATHLESS:OLD AS NEW” pay for their amorous activities. Patricia works for the Herald Tribune as a novice reporter, but Dudley Andrew’s essay explores the decade she uses her sexuality to gain advantage over of the ¡950s, in which the cultural forces in Michel and other men. Both in their own ways postwar Europe underwent dramatic changes prostitute themselves, hoping to gain an eco- as found in New Wave filmmaking. Andrew nomic edge in their obsessive love a›air. describes the innovations in editing techniques In his films made before May ¡968, Godard Godard employs in Breathless to jolt the viewer turned to parables in a Brechtian manner to as his camera moves from long-takes and pans demonstrate the myriad problems of modern to staccato jumps and quick cuts. These tech- industrialized society. In Une Étrange Aventure niques give Godard the opportunity to explore de Lemmy Caution / Alphaville (¡965), he de- the romantic possibilities of a world of contin- vised a science-fiction thriller using film noir gency where chance, accident and random ele- techniques to retell the legend of Orpheus and ments collide and play havoc with bourgeois Eurydice. His major character, Lemmy Cau- traditions. Andrew analyzes the ways Godard tion, becomes involved with Alpha 60, a mas- incorporates many surrealist elements to fan- ter computer that controls a city where a show tasize sex and violence as examples of l’amour of human emotions is punishable by a firing fou. The complementary emotions of fear and squad. Again, the concern is with alienation in love become the irrational forces that bring the a technological world where human beings are lovers together. Patricia even compares her robotized and dehumanized. Weekend is a more involvement with Michel to the a›air of Romeo apocalyptic parable about a modern Garden of and Juliet, lovers who are fascinated by their Eden turned into a monumental nightmare strange attraction to each other. The parodic where the landscape becomes a highway of elements are also presented in Breathless burning cars and corpses overrun by Maoist through an interview with a writer who dis- revolutionaries. Here the consumer society is cusses the politics of French and American reduced to savages engaged in rape, murder and women and their di›erent concepts of love. cannibalism in order to survive. After the May-June student riots in Paris in ¡968, Godard immersed himself in a four-year References collaboration with the Dziga-Vertov Group, making ¡¡ agit-prop films. This work went main- Andrew, Dudley (ed.). ¡987. “Breathless: Old is stream in ¡972, when he cast Jane Fonda and Yves New.” In Breathless: Jean-Luc Godard, Director. Montand in Tout Va Bien, co-directed by Jean- London: Rutgers University Press, pp. 3–20. Pierre Gorin. The characters are journalists Godard, Jean-Luc. ¡972. Godard on Godard. committed to a revolutionary struggle. Using Translated and edited by Tom Milne. New Brechtian techniques Godard examines the York: Da Capo Press, Inc. nature and uses of propaganda and the cultural Graham, Peter (ed.). ¡968. The New Wave. Gar- packaging of capitalism throughout all media, den City, N.Y.: Doubleday. Sartre, Jean-Paul. ¡943. L’Être et le Néaut (Galli- especially television. In a second film, A Letter to mard). Translated by Hazel Barnes. Being and Jane (¡972), Godard explores the power of images Nothingness. New York: Simon & Schuster, ¡956. through the use of Fonda’s photograph found in Willett, John. ¡968. The Theatre of Brecht. Lon- the magazine L’Express and its impact on the Viet- don: Methuen. nam War. Godard turned to a television format Wright, Elizabeth. ¡989. Postmodern Brecht. Lon- to continue his rebel spirit to unmask the Victo- don and New York: Routledge.