TCF112/French New Wave

Three godfathers of the Auteur Theory & the New Wave

(See lecture notes on Auteur Theory)

1. Henri Langlois -- Cinématheque Française
2. André Bazin -- Cahiers du Cinéma
3. Alexandre Astruc -- caméra stylo

1959-60 New Wave (Nouvelle Vague) breaks

1. Alain Resnais, Hiroshima, Mon Amour (1959)
2. François Truffaut, The 400 Blows (1959)
   • Author of "A Certain Tendency in the French Cinema" (Cahiers du Cinéma, 1954)
3. Jean-Luc Godard, Breathless (shot in '59, released January '60)

Jean-Luc Godard

• b. 1930
• 1946-55 odd jobs at studios, beginnings of film criticism
  • Gazette du Cinéma (1950, only 5 issues)
  • Cahiers (1952 on)
  • Characteristics of Godard's Criticism
    1. Attacked "Tradition of Quality"
    2. Auteurist re-evaluation of US Film
    3. Emphasis on visual style
    4. Eclectic points of reference
• 1st Feature film
  • Breathless, directed in '59, released in January 1960
• 1960-'68 one-two films per year
  • Reinvented "language" of the cinema, rejects classical cinema
    • Hand-held camera
    • Location shooting
    • Jump cuts
    • Direct looks at the camera
    • Graphics (text and images)
    • References to other films
  • Bertolt Brecht -- Epic Theatre
    • Playwright/theorist
    • German, trans. into French in early 60s
    • Cahiers issue on Brecht in '62
    • Against Aristotle, against Dramatic Theater
    • Alienation effect -- Verfremdungseffekt
      • Rejects strong identification
      • Distanciation
      • Marxist revolution
      • Russian Formalists in ‘20s
        • Ostranenie
        • Defamiliarization--making the familiar strange
  • Vivre Sa Vie (1962) = Brechtian film?
    • Godard sees:

      Dramatic theater = classical cinema

      Epic theater = counter cinema

    • Narrative
      • Breaks story into 12 sections (narrative segmentation)
      • Digressions
      • Quotations
        • E.g., Edgar Allen Poe's The Oval Portrait
      • Aperture (not closed)
    • Visual Style
      • Cinematography
        • Unconventional framing
        • Extremely long takes
        • Jump cut
          • Opposite of the match cut
        • Direct looks at the camera
• May 1968 France nears socialist Revolution
  • Strongly affects Godard and other New Wave filmmakers