Week 6 February 15th
Film Genres and Auteurs
The French nouvelle vague, counter
culture...Debord, Godard, et al.
Truffaut, Chabrol, Tati, and the
International avant-garde:
Cassevetes, Frank, Kubrick,
Antonioni et al.
Readings
Thompson & Bordwell Chapter 20 New Wave and
Young Cinemas. Hayward, Susan Key Concepts
“Auteur Theory” pp 12-20 “French New Wave”
pp135-141
Screenings: Jean –Luc Godard Breathless (1959)
Wolf Koenig and Roman Kroitor Lonely Boy
(1961), Robert Frank Pull My Daisy excerpts
from: John Cassevetes Shadows (1959); Francois
Truffaut Les quartre cents coups (The 400 Blows)
(1959-60), Michelangelo Antonioni.Blow Up
(1966)
Assignment Updates
• Assignment 2: In class Film Sequence
analysis (20%) Tuesday March 1st
• Assignment 3: Research Essay (25%)
Due: Tuesday March 29th
Kino-Pravda
Dziga Vertov's Kino-Pravda (Russian for "cinema
of truth"), a documentary series of the
1920sFrance and Quebec (particularly at the
National Film Board of Canada) in the 1950s and
flourished in the 1960s. The aesthetic of cinémavérité was essentially the same as that of the mid1950s "free cinema" in the UK and "Direct
Cinema" in the US. Some filmmakers in France
and Québec found the term cinema vérité to be
pretentious, and called it "cinéma direct" instead
Cinéma-vérité
• Cinéma-vérité is a style of filmmaking,
combining naturalistic techniques that
originated in documentary filmmaking, with
stylized cinematic devices of editing and
camerawork, staged set-ups, and the use of
the camera to provoke subjects.
Jean –Luc Godard Breathless
Wolf Koenig and Roman Kroitor
Lonely Boy
Between 1958 and 1961 Kroitor co-produced,
with , the Candid Eye direct cinema documentary
series for the National Film Board. One of those
films became the highly influential Cinéma véritéstyle documentary about singer Paul Anka: Lonely
Boy. This film's use of portable film and sound
gear, with lack of a narration voice-over, would
influence later documentaries like D.A.
Pennebaker's Bob Dylan 1967 feature Dont Look
Back. Lonely Boy was one of the earliest
examples of a rockumentary and was parodied in
the comedy This is Spinal Tap.
John Cassevetes Shadows (1959)
Francois Truffaut Les quartre cents coups
(The 400 Blows)
Auteur Theory
Auteur : A filmmaker, usually a director, who
exercises creative control over his or her works and
has a strong personal style.
Auteurism is the method of analyzing films based on
this theory or, alternately, the characteristics of a
director's work that makes her or him an
auteur/artist. Both auteur theory and auteurist
method of film analysis are frequently associated
with the French New Wave and the film critics who
wrote for Cahiers du cinéma.
Auteur theory draws on the work of André
Bazin, co-founder of the Cahiers du cinéma,
who argued that films should reflect a director's
personal vision. Bazin championed filmmakers
such as Howard Hawks, Alfred Hitchcock and
Jean Renoir. Another key element of auteur
theory comes from notion of the caméra-stylo
or “camera-pen” coined by Alexandre Astruc
the idea that directors should wield their
cameras like writers use their pens and that they
need not be hindered by traditional storytelling.
C.w. NSCAD Video sketchbook (Jan Peacock)
Francois Truffaut
1954 essay “Une certaine tendance du cinéma
français" ("a certain trend in the French cinema"),
François Truffaut coined the phrase “la politique
des auteurs”, asserting that the worst of Jean
Renoir's movies would always be more interesting
than the best of Jean Delannoy’s. “Politique” may
be translated as “policy” or “program”; as it
involves a conscious decision to look at films and
to value them in a certain way. Truffaut
provocatively said that “(t)here are no good and
bad movies, only good and bad directors.”
La Nouvelle Vague
A term coined by critics for a group of
French filmmakers of the late 1950s and
1960s, influenced (in part) by Italian
Neorealism. Although never a formally
organized movement, the New Wave
filmmakers were linked by their selfconscious rejection of classical cinematic
form and their avant-garde spirit of youthful
iconoclasm.
The New Wave
Many film makers also engaged in their work with
the social and political upheavals of the era,
making their radical experiments with editing,
(jump cut) visual style, and (improvisatory)
narrative part of a general break with the
conservative paradigm. C.w. Jazz
Some of the most prominent pioneers among the
group, including Jean-Luc Godard, François
Truffaut, Éric Rohmer, Claude Chabrol and
Jacques Rivette, began as critics for the famous
film magazine Cahiers du cinéma.
New Wave Characteristics
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Emerges in the late 1950’s
Many new wave movements
Rejection of studio bound filmmaking
Director as artist
Youth, energy spontaneity, laissez faire
Rejection of narrative and style
Influence of North American cinema
New Wave 2
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Location shooting
Non professional actors
Open ended narrative
Self-referential
Breakdown of taboos
Audience willing to view new type of film
reflecting the speed of modern life
New Wave Context
• Rejection of studio system in favour of
location independence French studio system
was too rigid and hierarchical
• Young film makers wanted to make film not
literary adaptations
• The influence of documentary and Dziga
Vertov’s Kino Pravda (film truth)
Film as Art
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Decline of traditional movie audiences
Rise of art house theatres
Rise of serious criticism and a film culture
Filmmakers such as Truffaut, Fellini,
Godard, Antonioni as seen as artists
Other art forms
• improvisatory new wave jazz
• Robert Frank The Americans book and Pull
My Daisy (film)
• Abstract Art to Pop
• Warhol, Rauschenberg et al
The Situationists (I.S.)
• About subverting the use of culture (as
commodity) under capitalism
• Guy Debord The Society of the Spectacle
• “spectacle is not a collection of images but
a social relation between people mediated
through images”
Subverting power relations
• Guy Debord
• “the entire life of societies in which modern
condition of production reign appears as an
immense accumulation of spectacles.
Everything that was expressed directly has
been distanced in a representation.”
Jean Luc Godard
Godard born 3 December 1930 is a French and
Swiss filmmaker and one of the most influential
members of the Nouvelle Vague, or "French New
Wave".
Born to Franco-Swiss parents in Paris, he was
educated in Nyon, Switzerland, later studying at
the Lycée Rohmer, and the Sorbonne in Paris,
where he studied ethnology. During his time at the
Sorbonne, he became involved with the young
group of filmmakers and film theorists that gave
birth to the New Wave.
Jean Luc Godard
“All you need to make a movie is a girl and
a gun”
“I see no difference between reality and an
image of reality…a picture is life and life is
a picture”
Breathless (1959)
À bout de souffle
Godard’s first feature film, À bout de souffle
(1959; Breathless), produced by François
Truffaut, his colleague on the journal Cahiers du
Cinéma, won the Jean Vigo Prize. It inaugurated a
long series of features, all celebrated for the often
drastic nonchalance of Godard's improvisatory
filmmaking procedures. Breathless was shot
without a script; Godard sketched the dialogue
overnight and revised it between and during
rehearsals.
Plot
Breathless recounts the misadventures of a
petty crook (played by Jean-Paul
Belmondo, often Godard's alter ego on
screen) who admires Humphrey Bogart and
is betrayed to the police by an American
girl. He meets and falls in love with Jean
Seberg.
Godard films
Bout De Souffle (Breathless) 1959. Black
and White. 90 minutes.
With Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean
Seberg.
Written by Godard and Truffaut.
Cinematography by Raoul Coutard.
Production design by Claude Chabrol!
Godard Films 2
Pierrot Le Fou 1965. Color. 110 minutes.
With Jean-Paul Belmondo and Anna Karina.
Cinematography by Raoul Coutard.
Vivre Sa Vie (Her Life to Live)1962. Black and
White. 85 minutes.
With Anna Karina and Sady Rebbot.
Cinematography by Raoul Coutard.
Godard Films 3
Mepris (Contempt) 1963. Color. 105
minutes. With Brigitte Bardot, Jack
Palance, Fritz Lang, Michel Piccoli
Cinematography by Raoul Coutard.
Alphaville 1965. Black and White. 100
minutes. With Anna Karina and Eddie
Constantine.
• Cinematography by Raoul Coutard.
Books
Godard on Godard: Critical Writings by
Jean-Luc Godard.
Edited by Jean Narboni and Tom Milne.
The Films of Jean-Luc Godard By Wheeler
Winston Dixon.
Speaking About Godard Kaja Silverman
and Harun Farocki.