Nouvelle Vague Realism or Formalism? - PowerPoint Presentation

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Nouvelle Vague

Realism or Formalism?

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1)

Nouvelle Vague

(New Wave)

2) Individualism and Innovation in Filmmaking

3) Realist or Formalist?

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Nouvelle Vague

The style

adopted by a

number of highly individualistic French film directors

in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

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Nouvelle Vague

Young filmmakers in their 20s and 30s and

Cineastes

.

Cinemateque Français

(1936 - )

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Their works were made under the influence of off-the-mainstream films – foreign language films, non-Western films, and American B movies.

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Their works were made as a reaction to the carefully scripted and carefully filmed products of the French film industry.

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With low budgets -- location shooting instead of building elaborate sets; contemporary drama instead of the historical one requiring period costumes; fresh young performers instead of stars

.

Similar concepts as in

Neorealismo

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Impact of Alexandre

Astruc

, André

Bazin and Cahiers du cinema. Camera-Stylo

(Camera-Pen) – Cinema must

‘become

a means of expression as supple and subtle as that of written language’

AstrucFilmmakers gain the status of authors.

Break away from the tyranny of narrative and develop a new form of audiovisual language.

Alexandre

Astruc

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Cahiers du

cinéma

founded in 1951 by Andr

é Bazin and Jacques Doniol-ValcrozePersonal authorship – filmmaker is the author responsible for the entire product, which reflects his personal thought and is made of his personal audiovisual style.

André

Bazin

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Film should ideally be a medium of personal artistic expression and that the best films are therefore those that most clearly bear their maker’s ‘signature’ – the stamp of his or her individual personality, controlling obsessions, and cardinal themes. François Truffaut, ‘

Une

Certain

tendance

du cinéma français’

(An Certain tendency of French Cinema)

François Truffaut

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Attack against the postwar ‘tradition of quality’ – ‘literary/theatrical cinema,

the

commercial scenarist tradition with heavy emphasis on plot and dialogue.

‘Cinema

d’auteurs’ against ‘Cinema de papa’

Jean

Delannoy

,

The Hunchback of

Claude

Autant-Lala, The Red and

Notre-Dame

(1956)

the Black

(1954)

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Nouvelle Vague

Common characteristics

Contemporary drama

‘Non-narrative’ cinema with no or little plot

Experiments with visual style (portable hand-held 16 mm camera shots, and casual or no elaborate composition), and editing (fragmented and discontinuous montage or long take)

Combination of objective and subjective realism and authorial formalism.

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1959:

the landmark year

François Truffaut’s

Quatre

cents coups (400 Blows)Alain Resnais’ Hiroshima, Mon amour

Jean-Luc Godard

A Bout de

souffle

(Breathless)

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Quatre

cents coups

made by the

27-year-old Truffaut

with $75,000, the loan from his father in law, is a lyrical but unsentimental account of a juvenile delinquent. Refreshingly casual, artless (filming with natural light and synchronous

sound

recording)

Typewriter scene

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Quatre

cents coups

,

truancy sequence

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Hiroshima, Mon amour

is about the relationship between time and memory in the context

of two tragedies.

Resnais

keeps the counterpoint between present and past by continually juxtaposing them and shifting between the objective and subjective narrative mode

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Shot in four weeks

for $

90,000 by Godard,

A bout de

souffle was in many ways the most characteristic and influential film of nouvelle vagueIt contains every major technique used frequently in nouvelle vague

films

.

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Scenes shot by a shaky hand-held camera

Location shooting with natural light and direct

sound

recording on location

Improvised plot and dialogueSidewalk

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Some long takes and some short takes (no uniform editing tempo)

Elliptical editing

Actions are

shown in a few brief shots rather than fully depicted.

From the opening scene in which Michel steals a car and the scene in which he kills a cop and runs away. A section of a single continuous shot is eliminated and then what remains is spliced together – jagged jump cut.

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Nouvelle Vague: First Films

Jules et Jim

(1961) – Truffaut’s third feature film and about two close friends falling in love with the same woman and trying to live together in

ménage

à

trois

after WWI.

Exquisite emotional lyricism achieved through the unconventional use of zoom lens, slow motion, fast motion, freeze frame, and anamorphic distortion.

Race on the bridge

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Realism or Formalism?

Some of the

Nouvelle Vague

films

set ‘actions’ in real streets and

among inhabitants. Dialogues are improvised on the spot.

Paris nou

s

appartient (Paris Belongs to Us, 1961) Godard

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Realism or Formalism?

Les Cousins

(The Cousins, 1959) –

tells the story of two cousins, the decadent Paul and the naïve Charles who newly arrives at Paris. Charles falls in love with Florence, one of Paul’s many girl friends.

People,

places, custom and ways

of life in

Paris are recreated as they are.

All alone

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Realism or Formalism?

Avoiding to become literary or theatrical cinema,

nouvelle vague

filmmakers based their work on original scripts rather than novels or plays, and resort to improvisation.

Eric Rohmer,

La

Boulangère

de

Monceau (Baker of Monceau,1962) tells the story of a man who hesitates between two women.

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Realism or Formalism?

Self-conscious use of filming techniques unconventional style or stylistic innovation

Quotations from other films

Self-reference –

nouvelle vague films are films about film, or films about filmmaking.

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Realism and Formalism

Realism -

Overall

documentary feel of

nouvelle vague

films

Location shooting, natural light, direct sound recording, grainy photography, casual composition

Long takes

Formalism - Self-conscious overworking of film

techinquesTheir unconventional useViolation of filmmaking ‘rules’