~1959 - 1964. apolitical – reflected new acceptance of leisure and consumption government...

~1959 - 1964

FRENCH NEW WAVE CINEMA

• Apolitical – reflected new acceptance of leisure and consumption

• Government sponsored first time directors

• New generation of directors: - estb. romantic image of the young director fighting to make

personal films that defy industry

- many did become mainstream

- yet some popularized a new concept in cinema AND provided innovations in film form and style

FRANCE, LATE 1950S

Main directors were film critics for the magazine Cahiers du Cinéma• Studied, critiqued, wrote about film • Strong advocates of the Auteur Theory

- a film is the personal vision/ creative force of the director

• Helped each other by financing projects, sharing crew/professionals

NEW WAVE DIRECTORS

Astruc: “a filmmaker should use the camera as personally as a novelist uses a pen”

Bazin: “the most distinctive nature of a movie was its form, not its content”

CONTEMPORARY CRITICS ON FRENCH NEW WAVE:

Movement more than a style - as director’s personal vision was valued - but some common characteristics…

• Shot on location• Little-known actors and small crews• Intimate • Usually shot silent and post-dubbed• Plots centered around chance events• Directors referred to prior film traditions

- aware of their debt to film history (ex of this and auteur, *)

CHARACTERISTICS

• Filmmakers' appeal with young audiences

• Based in Paris - chic fashion/cars, all-night parties, bars, jazz clubs…

• Themes: authority to be distrusted; political commitment is suspect; the femme fatale

• Open-ended narrative- ending of 400 Blows (freeze frame

technique a favored device for expressing an unresolved situation)

POPULARITY

Jean-Luc Godard

Breathless (À bout de souffle)

DIRECTORS

François Truffaut 400 Blows ( Les quatre cents coups)

Meaning: to raise hell, live a wild life, sow one's wild oats

Literal translation: to do the four hundred tricks

1959

Bogdanovich Article

THE 400 BLOWS