The French New Wave: A Film Revolution
Questioning Cinema, episode 1
Key Points:
About us:
Welcome to the first ever episode of Questioning Cinema, the podcast that reflects on the cinema of yesterday and today! We are brought to you by New Wave Productions, an arts and education non-profit which you can learn more about at NewWavesProductions.org!
Join our upcoming Quarantine Conversation on Zoom where we will discuss the French New Wave and the films Breathless and 400 Blows. RSVP on Facebook!
Our first several episodes will cover a major film movement, but today we will start in the middle of the 20th Century to discuss the French New Wave because it has had the biggest impact on our modern understanding of film of any individual movement.
Historical Context
The Realists in France and Neo-Realists in Italy and Ingmar Bergman in Sweden drove mid-century cinema towards strong social content, realism, and a minimalist approach to filmmaking, a strong contrast to the Hollywood studio system.
After WWII, in the 1950s, there was the Algerian War, a major conflict between France and Algeria that much like America’s intervention in Vietnam, saw a generation of young men sent to fight and die for a colonialist cause that they did not necessarily believe in. This led to an outcry by the youth of the day, and a feeling of pushing back against the world and ideals of their parents.
Also in the 50s, a group of young writers in France started to write essays on film in the magazine Les Cahiers du Cinéma. They had strong opinions on what constituted good filmmaking and good directors.
Their passion for cinema led them to begin making their own films despite a lack of formal training. These filmmakers became known as the French New Wave.
A Film Revolution
The French New Wave were revolutionary in part because of their ideas. They wanted films that were passionate, rebellious, realist, and anti-establishment. They had liberal political opinions and fought for change. They questioned everything.
The French New Wave also constituted a technical revolution as production was distinctly opposed to the traditional methods of filmmaking. Money was tight so they got creative and innovative in their technological approach to their work and it all supported their attempts to capture reality, eschewing any hint of glossy Hollywood styles.
Cinéma d’auteurs: the director was in control of every element of the film and the producer’s role was greatly diminished.
Advances in camera technology allowed for lighter equipment, so directors were able to take their films outside and shoot in the streets.
They allowed actors to improvise.
They were less careful about making sure sound and picture were exactly perfect.
They used controversial editing techniques like the jump cut.
These were young directors looking for a way to express themselves and the tensions of their generation, and to rebel. The filmmaking was not perfect but the power of their vision was strong enough that that did not matter.
If you would like to discuss the French New Wave with Gerard Amsellem, please join us on Zoom on June 6th at 6PM EDT.
Credits
Questioning Cinema was created and recorded by Gerard Amsellem. It was edited by Kit McDonald and Jackson Collins Jr., C.A.S.
The musical track "Act Three" is by Jason Shaw of Audionautix.com
Full Transcript
Kit: [00:00] Welcome to Questioning Cinema, the podcast that reflects on the cinema of yesterday and today. In each episode we discuss important moments in film history and their impacts on today’s art and entertainment. Questioning Cinema is brought to you by New Wave Productions, a non-profit dedicated to art and film education. If you like what you hear, you can visit our website at NewWavesProductions.org to learn about our mission and upcoming events. In today’s episode we’ll talk about the French New Wave. Now here’s your host, Gerard Amsellem.
Gerard: Hello and welcome to New Wave Productions. In this part of the series we will talk about different film movements. Cinema has a long history of different movements who impacted the world of where we are today, but to start this series I will start with the French New Wave.
Why the French New Wave, [01:00] even though it is the middle of the century? It is the one that we can relate to the most for the reason that it is what will impact the cinema of today. And I will go over what happened exactly and how has the French New Wave impacted the rest of cinema.
So just after World War II we have the Neo-Realists, who really impacted the way films are made. But before that we have Jean Renoir with the Realist movement. So the cinema at that time is not going towards a way of entertaining in Europe but more with a social content. So we’re looking at social content with the Neo-Realists, even so if it’s still dramatic, we use non-professional actors, we do something of quality who is political, social, with a way of making films who are very different, who are minimalist because obviously there is less money. So as we go through the Neo-Realists in the ‘50s, we have Ingmar Bergman working in Sweden.
And in France we have this group of young writers before to be filmmakers [02:00] who start to really look at cinema as, what is cinema of today, how much mediocrity we have in cinema, it’s entertainment, it does not carry very strong social and strong vision of what the youth at that time wanted. And they created a magazine called Les Cahiers du Cinéma. Les Cahiers du Cinéma was really a critic magazine talking about all the great directors that they love and, too, the good films that were coming out. They were not very well trained in filmmaking but they had such a great ideas, such a great passion. And they used to meet, all of them, in the Cinémathèque of Henri Langlois where they used to watch all these foreign films, and these films where they could explore what their vision was of cinema. So in the 1950s as they’re writing in this magazine, they really had vision of what a new wave, or what new cinema should be. And they were starting by looking and having a different idea of cinema.
[03:00] Obviously at the same time, which is extremely important too, because I think cinema is a vision of society, we are in the mid-50s, the war who started in 1953 was the Algerian War, brought young men to a place where they get killed. There is a sense of renewal. They want something different, they want a world, they don’t want a world of their parents. After war came everything is established, everything is running, they want something who is full of passion, full of vision full of trying to make things different.
So the French New Wave is composed really basically of a few things. First the ideas. The ideas. The ideas is like we want something who is real, who is full of passion, full of rebellion, against establishment who is like so old and so overdone, and entertainment that they really don’t want that. So when we talk about their ideas, their ideas are political ideas very on the left side, obviously wanted to [04:00] change things. And, too, in philosophical ideas: What do we want from our lives? Do we want to live like our parents? Or do we want freedom? Do we want to experiment with things that are different? And even if the price is our life? But it’s not just that. It’s a way, too, of how to make a film. Film has today was, most of the entertainment films are made in studio in the US. Where it’s entertainment, it’s lavish, it’s controlled. So we’re taking all of these aspects and we’re making a cinema who is different.
First: the producing aspect of the film is not as well set as in a Hollywood studio. The film are set with a producer, but the producer does not have the same kind of handle and power on the film. The film is really done by the director. And this is the first time we see a cinéma d’auteurs where the director is gonna take all the decisions. He takes decisions about everything, even, he has a budget, but the producer does not say much. Georges de Beauregard, who was [05:00] most of their producer, was a very, very open-minded and he let them do a lot of things. So we’re talking a cinéma d’auters who is very original and who is very real. We don’t want something too entertaining, we want to try to catch reality. And when we see, when we talk precisely about these films, we will see the details of reality as I will point out more of this kind of scenes who are really, really revolutionary for the time.
So we have this and we have the way how we shoot, we shoot outside. Let’s not forget that we are starting to have very light equipment. Raoul Coutard, who is a director of photography for this group who did many of these films, was very instrumental in the way how to look at, we put a camera maybe we sit in a supermarket cart and we push the cart and this is gonna be a dolly. We’re looking at something real, we’re looking at something who is energetic and who is not static. It’s the first time we’re gonna see a lot of movement of camera, we’re gonna see people camera over the shoulder, we’re gonna see people following other people and [06:00] having a sense of movement. So we have this kind of movement, everything is in movement, it’s like in a wave, it’s not static, and at the same time as we have this, we have actors. Actors who can improvise too, who have the space to improvise when we see here, you know, Godard coming on the set in the morning and sitting down in the café and writing one of the scenes of his movies, it’s something that nobody would believe before. But yes he does this. And this works somehow. So there is a lot of spontaneity on the film and a lot of improvisation somehow, shot most of the time outside with natural lighting. We don’t care about the sound, if an ambulance come by or a cop car, we take the sound, we integrate the sound. We want something who is real, we want a message who has power, and it’s what the French New Wave is about.
Even so on editing room, in the editing room we are not afraid to do jump cuts. The way of to make a film to make believe that it’s a dream it’s not what the case here we want something who is different.
[07:00] So the two main directors that we will talk about even through this series and after this series are Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut. They were all in the Cahiers du Cinéma with other people, with Éric Rohmer, with Alain Resnais, with multiple people that we will talk briefly about it. But the two main, Godard and Truffaut, are the ones who carry this movement. One of them in a more romantic way, like Truffaut had all these ideas of like being more focusing on what reality is, and when he does 400 Blows in 1959 he really makes a statement, a statement you know, that cinema is reality. Of course Godard will say the same thing too, he will say 24 frames a second is reality.
And even Breathless took a little time before it became popular, it is today one of the main film where everybody relate to it. And even so people like Tarantino will, as his production house is called Band Apart, which is one of the films of Godard. Everybody refer to the French New Wave. The 1970s will be very, very, very, influenced by the New Wave. [08:00] You know, Scorcese and Coppola, where we talk about their films, they are real films. So there is a lot of common points. So we talking about this young directors looking at ways of expressing and rebelling. But the way how we make films, we make films more like a guerilla, more like not really a very well organized army. So everything is done with power, with vision, and with the way that’s going to revolutionize the rest of the world.
So these two main film directors that we will talk a little bit later on our Zoom conference are really at the center of this first chapter of the film movements and of the French New Wave, and of course these two films 400 Blows and Breathless. So all of this influence and all of this vision that we all go back to these people. So why did I choose this, why did I choose to start with this? It’s because today we see, even in reality TV, the influence of the French New Wave, and they are still there. [09:00] Truffaut, sadly died in 1984, but Godard is still making films and he is still one of the great spirits and great artists of the 20th Century.
So to summarize again two things: social and political vision, extremely rebellious with a way of change; cinematic-wise, a way of looking at reality, and calling them cinéma réalité instead of entertainment and big studio. Very little budget but a lot of passion and a lot of wanting to do something different. And technically, as I was saying, camera movements who are much lighter; editing with jump cuts; sound is going to be sound editing. Godard is a great film director who will put different images on different sound and give this effect of new energy. So we’re talking about new energy. And from the 1960s to early 1970s, even with Bresson a little bit before, and Jacques Rivette, we continue looking at this. And in the 1970s, [10:00] everything moves towards the US. We will see this again in the 1990s in France with the Cinema of the Look, so all this is still there. So why we are talking about this now is to show you that the center of all the new cinema is really based on the French New Wave.
So thank you for listening and I hope to see you in my Zoom conference, and we will talk then very precisely about these two films, The 400 Blows of François Truffaut and Breathless of Jean-Luc Godard. I hope you enjoy this little talk of trying to simplify what is a very complex movement and we’ll see you very soon on the Zoom conference. Thank you.
Kit: Thank you for listening to Questioning Cinema. Please remember to visit our website and social for more information. If you would like to discuss what we covered in this episode further, watch Breathless and The 400 Blows and join our Zoom chat on June 6th, link available on our website. Thank you, see you next time! [11:00]