History and Development

French New Wave

The ‘New Wave’ (la nouvelle vague) refers to a group of filmmakers who, between the end of the 1950s and early to mid-1960s  transformed the French cinema and had a great impact on filmmakers throughout the world.

The term ‘New Wave’ was not invented by the film makers. It was coined by Françoise Giroud, a journalist in late 1957 who wrote a series of articles on French youth for the weekly news magazine L’Express. The association of ‘youth’ with New Wave cinema was sealed by the triumph at the 1958 Cannes Film Festival of Les Quatre cents coups (The 400 Blows), the debut feature film by the 27-year-old former film critic François Truffaut. A number of successful films by other directors followed, all of which enhanced the identity of New Wave cinema as ‘youthful’ and ‘modern’; these included A bout de soufflé (Breathless, Jean-Luc Godard, 1960), Hiroshima, mon amour (Alain Resnais, 1959) and Les Cousins (Claude Chabrol, 1959).

However, these new filmmakers had not emerged from out of the blue. They had all been involved in filmmaking for the best part of the 1950s, writing film criticism, making short films and documentaries. Truffaut, Godard, Rivette, Chabrol and Rohmer had all written for the magazine throughout the 1950s. The New Wave was in part characterized by the unusual phenomenon of film critics. Before outlining some of the chief ideas that these filmmakers advanced in their work as critics, it is worthwhile describing the film culture that existed in France after Second World War and which the New Wave would have a profound impact.

While France was under Nazi occupation between 1940 and 1945, the importing of American films was banned by the collaborationist government, they only had access to the 200 odd French films that were produced during the period of 4 years. Shortly after the liberation of France in 1945 this backlog of American cinema started to hit the country’s screens to the enthusiasm of French film-goers. This exposure to Hollywood films was a formative influence on the young critics who would become the directors of the New Wave in the late 1950s. 

For the generation of cinephiles like Andre Bazin, Alain Resnais and Eric Rohmer who had grown up in rich cinematic culture of the 1920’s and 30’, this lack of choice were added to their heartfelt sense of loss as a consequence of the war. Not to forget the banned American genre films everyone loved, this experience of loss led them to prize freedom of expression and truth of representation above all else, which became their central of later work. They were too young to know very much about the films that had come before the war, and had no reviews or criticism to guide them, but they instinctively cherished a handful of films made during the occupation like Les Visiteurs du Soir (1943) by Carne and Prevert, Le Destin Fabuleux de Disiree Clary (1941) by SachaGuitry, and above all, Le Corbeau (1943) by Henri-Georges Clouzot.

In 1944, the year of liberation, cinema became even more popular in France. Several French Films were produced while Italian and British imports were in demand. Meanwhile, the most popular of all were the stockpile of films streaming in from Hollywood after the ban was lifted by the 1946 Blum-Byrnes agreement where nearly a decade’s worth of missing films arrived in French cinemas in the space of a single year.

Film clubs on the other hand are highlighted as one of the important elements of French New Wave. The first film club named Henri Langlois’ Cinematheque Française opened its doors in 1948. Langlois believed that the Cinematheque was a place for learning and not just mere watching. They wanted the audience to understand what they were watching, so it became his practice to screen films with different styles, genres and country of origin. Sometimes he would show foreign films without translation or silent films without musical accompaniment. This approach was to make sure that the audience would pay more attention towards the technique used to film the movies.

In 1951, one of the most important and famous film journals called Les Cashiers du Cinema appeared and was set up by Jacques Doniol-Valcroze and Andre Bazin out of the ashes of La Revue du Cinema, which had closed down the previous year. The very first issue of the review with a distinctive yellow cover featured the best critics’ articles about films during the mid-1950s.

A group of young critics including Eric Rohmer, Jean-Luc Godard, Jacques Rivette, Claude Chabrol and Francois Truffaut all work for Cahiers du Cinema, critics the filmmakers where they said the traditional way of filming in the studio are old fashioned and unimaginative. Although some critics about the filmmakers were deemed harsh and had raised offences, those young men never failed to praise directors such as D.W Griffith, Victor Sjostrom, Buster Keaton and etc in the early years. Inspired by them, silent movies became an element for the New Wave directors. 

The concept of “Auteur” were also developed at that time, where there are some arguments between Andre Bazin and others about how a film should reflect the director’s personal vision, but it was Truffaut who mentioned it first. He said that the best directors have a distinctive style, and it is an individual creative vision that made the director the true author of the film. However, writing criticisms couldn’t satisfy those young impatient men and they started shooting short films by borrowing money from their friends and shoot on location. By 1959, Rivette filmed Paris nous appartient (Paris Belongs to Us); Godard made A Bout de soufflé (Breathless); Chabrol made his second feature, Les Cousins; and in April Truffaut’s Les Quatre cent coups (The 400 Blows) won the Grand Prize at the Cannes Festival.

The Nouvelle Vague gave a new lease of life to French cinema, which had survived the 1950s with declining audiences but which with the spread of television was about to lose its mass audience for good. The government supported the industry through enforced quotas, bank had invested heavily and there was a flourishing business of international coproduction. New Wave directors shot films much more quickly and cheaply then did reigning directors and could be designated as ‘art movies’. Moreover the young director helped one another out and thus reduced the financial risk of the established companies. Thus the French industry supported the New Wave through distribution, exhibition and production. (Forbes, 1998)

The final moment of radical change to affect the French cinema was the revolt of May 1968. Filmmakers were involved in a number of ways, they demonstrated in support of Henri Langlois, the director of the Cinematheque and against government proposals to take over the organization. Many filmmakers like Jean-Luc-Godard were involved in making so-called Cinetracts or film leaflets. These were film records of events in the streets and public buildings that were intended to serve as a counterweight to the strongly pro-Gaullist ORTF television service. This long term effects of May 1968 were to throw into sharp relief the ideology of the Nouvelle Vague. It marked the divergence of the careers of the Nouvelle Vague directors, and had revealed how fragile and temporary the apparent homogeneity of the group had been.

Characteristics of French New Wave Cinema

Editing

Unlike all classical Hollywood films, French New Wave films tend to diverse the rules of continuity editing and using free style editing.One notable technique to emerge from French New Wave was the jump cut in which two discontinuous images juxtaposed.The definition of jump cut is a mismatch in which the shift from one shot to the next fails to maintain smooth continuity in space or time and this especially seen in Jean Luc Godard's A Bout De Soufflé (Breathless, 1960)

While jump cuts are regularly used in film and television editing today, at the time, they were very jarring to audiences, who were used to a smooth flow of images onscreen, rather than to editing that calls attention to itself.The directors of French New Wave often drew attention from audiences by discontinuity, reminding them that they are watching a movie. In the film A Bout De Soufflé jump cuts are used during a lengthy conversation in a room and in a scene in a car driving around Paris.

New technology

Nouvelle Vague directors took advantage of the new technology that was available to them in the late 1950’s, which enable them to work on location rather than in a studio. They used lightweight hand-held cameras, faster film tocks, which required less light, and light-weight sound and lighting equipment, which encouraged experiment and improvisation, and generally gave the directors more artistic freedom over their work. In A Bout de Soufflé (1959) the cinematographer Raoul Coutard was pushed around in a wheel chair-following the character down the street and into the buildings. Innovative use of the new hand-held cameras is evident.

Improvised Dialogues

In their revolt against what they perceived as Hollywood-style filmmaking, New Wave directors often leaned toward story lines that were open-ended and not tidily wrapped up at the climax. Stories tended to be unpolished and loosely structured. Characters were often eccentric or odd, and usually included a focus on young men dealing with personal chaos.The actors were encouraged to improvise their lines, or talk over each other’s lines as would happen in real-life. In A Bout de Soufflé this leads to lengthy scenes of inconsequential dialogue, in opposition to the staged speeches of much traditional film acting. Monologues were used, as were the voice-overs expressing a character’s inner feelings.

Use of Location

An important influence on the French New Wave was Italian Neorealism. New Wave directors learned from Italian directors who shot on location, not in the studio, for practical and financial reasons. Some actors were non-professionals who improvised their lines. Not only did shooting outside of a studio save money, but it allowed directors greater creativity, freedom, and a degree of realism. Unlike the controlled studio sound stage and back lot shooting that characterized Hollywood filmmaking during this era, the French New Wave directors also were dedicated to shooting in natural locations and using natural lighting as much as possible. Sound was also recorded live on the scene, which was unusual during this era

French New Wave -Breathless by Jean Luc Godard

The FNW used forms and structures that defined cinema and elevated them to create a new stylistic advancement in film. Jean Luc Godard's film, Breathless, is one of the defining movies of the French New Wave, a film that comprise all the elements of the movement and did so with mainstream success.

To help satisfy audiences, Breathless is in many ways the opposite of the classical Hollywood cinema, which functions in specific ways. A typical, classical Hollywood cinema includes such film making techniques as continuity editing, highly motivated character-driven stories and a coherent narrative structure.

Narrative transitivity is a sequence of events in which each unit follows one after the other according to a chain of causation. In the Hollywood cinema, this chain is usually psychological and is made up, roughly speaking, of a series of coherent motivations. The beginning of the film starts with establishment, which sets up the basic situation which is then disturbed. A kind of chain reaction then follows, until at the end a new equilibrium is achieved.

From the opening scene Breathless challenges the "chain of causation". Michel, the main character in the film, is seen at the very beginning but given no introduction. He is seen standing outside reading a newspaper, with a cigarette dangling from his mouth. There is a woman in the scene, whose name is never mentioned and never shows up in the movie again. They make continuous eye contact as if trying to communicate something to one another. It turns out to be some kind of scheme as she distracts a police officer in order for Michel to steal a car.

The scene ends with the woman saying goodbye to him, and she is never seen again. Hollywood cinema would rarely contain such a scene. In a Hollywood film, if a connection is established between a man and a woman early on, the film's audience is almost always aware of the characters' names, identities and motivations, and the couple will usually have interaction with one another throughout the course of the narrative.

Some of Michel's dialogue in the scene involves him speaking directly to the camera, looking straight into it. Classical Hollywood cinema is invisibility of the camera. It wants to tell a fictional story but wants the viewers to take it seriously without acknowledging that it is a film. By having Michel talk directly to the camera, he acknowledges its presence and seems to relish it.

Michel's character seems to be a combination of different movie characters. The idea is seen in a scene in the film. He is walking down the street past a movie theatre and stops to stare at a poster. He looks into the eyes of the actor in the poster and quietly says the words, "Bogey," to himself. He then tries to mimic the expression of Bogey in the poster, as if he idolizes the man. It shows that Michel is new to acting and tries to act as though he's a living interpretation of the actor on the poster.

Michel murdered a police officer and is trying to meet up with a female friend in Paris so that he can get some money and flee the country. He shoots the police officer in cold blood and makes no excuses or apologies for his actions. He shoots the cop because he doesn't want to be arrested for stealing the car . His relationship with Patricia (the female lead in the film) throughout the film is mainly based on sex and money, which are quite possibly his only interests.. This establishes that he is a liar and a crook from the very beginning. Most characters in film wouldn't have these qualities unless they are villains..This character also defies most leading male characters not only in classical Hollywood cinema but cinema in general. He is arrogant, rebellious, reckless, crude, a thief and a murderer.

Jump shots were another common element of French New Wave cinema and particularly prevalent in Breathless. In one scene Michel is driving in a car with Patricia. He is describing her beauty and the features that he likes about her, and as he gives each detail, the camera does a jump cut. The jump cuts don't add to the narrative or continuity of the scene in any way; they are just continuous cuts to the same shot. The edits flow with the rhythm of Michel's voice, and serve to punctuate everything he says, making each word more noticeable than if the shot just held steady.

The way the director uses camera work and editing in the film is another way that he uses forms and standards to emphasize attention to technique which refers to the way in which the editing exists in time and space. Editing in Breathless is not used to advance the storyline or show continuity between scenes, but to create a relating rhythm of everyday life

Much of the scene and the film is shot on the streets of Paris or in a single apartment. It was shot on location with the natural lighting and little props. The last scene takes place solely in the street, and required very limited props or expensive factors. This clearly defies the Classical Hollywood standard. The tracking that takes place as Michel runs away from the police and Patricia does not appear to be perfect as if the camera was placed on shopping trolley. It isn't smooth like movies nowadays, and this clearly shows the low budget, unprofessional feel incorporated with the movement.

Other camera techniques are used in the film that helps give it a distinctive rhythm. During the scene when Michel first meets up with Patricia, they are seen walking down the street of Paris in a very long take shot by a handheld camera. This is in contrast to the scenes with jump cuts but remains a nice visual counterpoint. The jump cuts at different parts in the film allow for releases in tension when characters are sitting still and talking to one another. When Michel and Patricia walk down the streets having a conversation, the shaky handheld camera seems to be in rhythm with their footsteps. The jump cuts and long takes, while different technically, both serve the purpose of giving the film a unique rhythm and flow.

The end of the film breaks tradition. It is not happy; the protagonist dies, insults his lover, and leaves her to ponder in confusion. This kind of dissatisfaction with life throughout the movie is influenced by the lifestyle in France after World War II. Breathless not only ends with the protagonist dying, but also end with an insult which cant be understood neither the Police nor Patricia and the audience. The death, the distance between the lovers, and the short of resolution makes this film fell real and scandalous which was what the director and film-makers of French New Wave wanted to accomplish.

Reference

A BOUT DE SOUFFLE. (n.d.). Retrieved March 25, 2013, from new wave film.com : http://www.newwavefilm.com/french-new-wave-encyclopedia/breathless.shtml

A HISTORY OF FRENCH NEW WAVE CINEMA. (n.d.). Retrieved March 28, 2013, from new wave film.com: http://www.newwavefilm.com/about/history-of-french-new-wave.shtml

Dawson, J. (2002, March). À Bout de souffle (Breathless). Retrieved March 21, 2013, from sense of cinema: http://sensesofcinema.com/2002/cteq/breathless/

Ghosh, P. R. (n.d.). International Business Time. Retrieved March 27, 2013, from ibtimes.com: http://www.ibtimes.com/appreciation-breathless-1960-french-new-wave-film-launched-careers-godard-truffaut-belmondo-seberg

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