Mid Unit Assessment - Checklist:

At this stage of the year we would like you all to self-assess your progress by completing the checklist we that we have distributed (copy as above). If you have any questions please ask any of your HNC teachers.

The French New Wave: 3 Moments of radical change

1. The Blum-Byrnes Trade Agreement Of 1946 

• American imports were regulated during this post-war period. 
• 13 weeks were set as the maximum number for screening purely French films. 
• This corresponded to the production capacity of the French film industry, badly hit by lack of investment during the war. 
• TV was slow to take off. 
• Specialist press flourished. 
• Serious discussion of film flourished. 
• Most particularly “Cahiers du Cinema” (1951) 
• Cinema in France was taken extremely seriously for the first time. 
• Art screenings and discussions were common. 
• Created by University drop-outs this ‘counter-culture’ attempted to position cinema within the mainstream of French and European culture. 
• Andre Bazin, Jean-Luc Godard, Francis Truffaut (critics) 

2. The Nouvelle Vague (new wave)

• These critics went on to make films. 
• They dispensed with the technical hierarchies required by traditional cinema. 
• Divisions between – producer / director / editor / cameraman / actor / writer - became blurred 
• Worked from an idea - improvised - work on other films as (actors/writers etc) 
• Used their own apartments instead of sets & cast friends & girlfriends in starring roles. New actors and actresses employed. 
• Subject matter changed. Literary adaptation went out the window. They wrote about things that they knew: Relationships/lives etc. 
• They had the look of documentaries and explored the relationship between ‘fiction’ and ‘doc’ and ‘naturalism’ and ‘formalism’.
• They also incorporated a consciousness of the history of cinema – especially Hollywood. 

3. The Events of May 1968

• Many Directors demonstrated against the governments proposals to take over the film organisations Cinematheque. 
• Students/workers rioting. 
• Nouvelle vague directors were seen to be aligned with this new political radicalism. 
• Godard’s “Le Petit Soldat” (1960) was considered critical of the war in Algeria. Was not released till 1963. 

Issues

• Sexual politics/Gender/Prostitution/Homophobia 

Nouvelle Vague created

• The low budget art film 
• The director as auteur
• Introduced a radical approach to genre and narrative

Cities and Cinema: French New Wave

'Looking For Truffaut': Documentary

New Wave Editing

While Godard's films stand out for their opposition to cinematic conventions, particularly those that manipulate audience reactions, generalisations about the director's style must acknowledge that "style" is a convention he appears to reject by constantly changing what he does and the way he does it. Breathless offers a comprehensive catalogue of New Wave stylistic traits: rapid movements, use of handheld cameras, unusual camera angles, elliptical editing, direct address to the camera, acting that borders on the improvisational, anarchic politics, and an emphasis on the importance of sound, especially words. In light of Godard's later work, however, Breathless can seem rather more conventional in style than its reputation as an "experimental" film suggests, a paradox that demonstrates the extent to which Godard's language has entered all realms of filmaking, including the mainstream. "What makes Breathless a quintessential New Wave film," Dudley Andrew explains, "is not a particular technique or techniques but the energy with which it speaks." Thus Godard's "style" is characterized primarily by displays of artistic freedom and imagination. Nonmainstream filmmaking allowed (and continues to allow) him a freedom from the "constraints" that come with larger budgets.

An analysis of the opening scene of Breathless confirms that Godard both avoids and uses most of the traditional techniques for establishing a scene and character. Within a conventional film, the first shot might have been a LS (or XLS) of Michel sitting at an outdoor café along a harbor quay. Instead, Godard uses a MCU of the front page of the Paris Flirtnewspaper, which conceals Michel's face and the Marseilles location, offering instead a photograph of a woman in a swimsuit. Despite the lack of a traditional establishing shot, we can recognize from the weather and clothes in the subsequent shots that the time is summer, but we would be hard-pressed to know from any outward signs that the location is the port city Marseilles in southern France. However, the location is not as important as Michel's self-description: "All in all, I'm a dumb bastard. After all, if you've got to do it, you've got to." Next, when a couple get out of a big American car, a woman signals Michel, who hot-wires and steals the Americans' car and drives away. Godard uses a dissolve, that most conventional of devices, to get us from the city to the countryside and the open road.

Edited from: wwnorton.com/college/film/movies2

Constructive Editing: 'Pickpocket' (1959)

Constructive Editing in Robert Bresson's Pickpocket from David Bordwell on Vimeo.