New Wave Cinema
Film Realism and Formalism
Table of Contents
1) Nouvelle vague
2) Nouvelle vague’s contribution to film
realism
3) Realism or Formalism?
Nouvelle vague
• ‘New Wave’ Cinema
• Films in the late 1950s and 1960s which are
loosely linked by their self-conscious rejection
of conventional film-making methods.
• Radical experiments in narrative construction,
mise-en-scène, montage, and subjects and
themes (political)
Nouvelle vague
Jean-Luc Godard
(1930- )
François Truffaut
(1932-1984)
Nouvelle vague
Eric Rohmer
(1920 - 2010)
Claude Chabrol
(1930 - 2010 )
Nouvelle vague
Jacques Rivette
(1928 )
André Bazin
(1918 - 1958)
Nouvelle vague
Film journalists and
critics for Cahiers
du cinema
a) Attacked the films
of many master
film makers of the
day
Nouvelle vague
• Reappraisal of:
- certain directors considered as outdated (Jean
Renoir and Max Ophüls);
- eccentric directors (Jacques Tati and Robert
Bresson);
- those were considered unimportant or inartistic
(Howard Hawks, Otto Preminger, Samuel Fuller,
Nicholas Ray and Alfred Hitchcock).
• CINEASTE - watched a huge number of films at
Cinématèque française (Henri Langlois’s creation)
and had a encyclopediac knowledge of world
cinema.
Nouvelle vague
1958
• Claude Chabrol’s Le Beau Serge
• François comes back to his home village after a
decade to find that his village hasn’t changed but
his friend, Serge has.
Nouvelle vague
1959
• François Truffaut’s
Quatre cent coups
(Four Hundred Blows)
• Semi-autobiographical
film about a boy who
is neglected and
misunderstood by his
parents and teachers,
skipping school,
stealing a typewriter
and being sent to
institution
Nouvelle vague
1960
• By this time, those
young film makers
had become a force to
reckon with.
• Jacques Rivette’s
Paris, nous appartient
(Paris Belongs to Us)
Nouvelle vague
• Jean-Luc Godard’s A
Bout de souffle
(Breathless)
• A small-time thief,
Michel Poiccart steals
a car and murders a
policeman. In the end,
he is betrayed by his
ambiguous girl friend,
Patricia.
Nouvelle vague • Claude Chabrol’s Les
Cousins
• Charles comes to Paris
to share an apartment
with his decadent cousin,
Paul. He falls love with
Paul’s friend, Florence.
Paul does not care much
about a serious
relationship and his
cousin’s interest in his
girlfriend.
Contribution to Film Realism
• CASUAL LOOK
- the lack of tight narrative structure
- ignoring technical conventions
- the heavy reliance on improvisation
Contribution to Film Realism
• CASUALNESS → to give nouvelle vague films
a great sense of presence = a significant instance
of reality effects.
• For reality ‘is’ more casual than well-structured.
• The sense of presence similar to the one found
in a live TV programme, a documentary film or
an amateur film.
Contribution to Film Realism
• Hans Holbein Portrait of a Gentleman
• Edouard Manet, The Balcony
Contribution to Film Realism
• Auguste Renoir, Dance at the Moulin de la Galette
Contribution to Film Realism
• ‘All artistic discoveries are discoveries not
of likenesses but of equivalencies which
enable us to see reality in terms of an image
and an image in terms of reality.’
E.H. Gombrich
• ‘If you ask me what the world looks like to
me, it looks like a painting by Pissarro.’
Ernst Gombrich
• Camille Pissaro, Boulevard des Italiens
Contibution to Film Realism
A) The lack of narrative structure: Truer to
actual situations
Unclear narrative goal - e.g. the protagonists
drift aimlessly, start actions on the spur of the
moment (Chabrol's Les Cousins, Rivette’s Paris,
nous appartient)
Improvisation - unpredictableness
→ naturalness
Contribution to Film Realism
• Constant detours and digressions from the main
gangster film narrative (Truffaut's Tirez sur le
pianiste, Shoot the Piano Player, 1960)
Contribution to Film Realism
b) Unconventional mise-en-scène
Location shooting and opposition to studio
film making: the influence of Neorealist film
makers (Rivette's Paris Belongs to Us and
almost all other Nouvelle vague films)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trxPuwQYRAk
Contribution to Film Realism
• Studio lighting was replaced by available
light and some auxiliary sources. Filming
without artificial lighting was made possible
by the availability of fast film stock.
• e.g. Quatre cents coups
Contribution to Film Realism
• Frequent and agile camera movements - panning
and tracking by a hand-held camera or a light
camera.
• Eclaire camera (mainly used in documentary film
- direct cinema)
Contribution to Film Realism
• The long tracking shot with a hand-held camera
of Antoin Doinel in Quatre Cents Coups
• Impressive stop-motion (formalist ending)
Contribution to Film Realism
• Hand-held elcaire
camera captures
Patricia and Michel
walking along
Champs Elysée
• Passer-bys gaze at
them and walk in front
of the camera.
Contribution to Film Realism
• Claude Lelouche’s Un
Homme et une femme
(1966)
• Images go occasionally
out of focus or shot
against light or the sun
Contribution to Film Realism
• Direct sound recording
with noises not being
erased
• Eric Rohmer’s films
• Compare two
restaurants scenes in
Rohmer’s Aviator’s Wife
and Rob Rainer’s When
Harry Met Sally
Realism or Formalism?
• Nouvelle vague filmmakers - self-conscious
film makers
• Do not hide that their films are disguised
reality and not reality itself.
• They rather manifest that their films are
‘films’ - something artificially created and
invented
Realism or Formalism?
• Films are created not only from imitating
reality but also from referring to other films
- a form of artifice
• Films are not representations of reality but
commentaries on the film and the process of
film making
Realism or Formalism?
• François Truffaut’s Jules et
Jim (1962) - encyclopedia of
film techniques (freeze
frame, wipe, masking, swish
pan, the insertion of
newsreel footage and still
photos, etc.)
• Casual composition and out
of focus photography shot
by zoom lens.
• Film as play and joke (e.g.)
Realism or Formalism?
• Jean-Luc Godard’s Pierrot le feu
• Samuel Fuller’s cameo appearance commenting
on filmmaking.
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPXV_Tm6iIw
Realism or Formalism?
• A film is made of quotations from other films.
• A bout de souffle and Humphrey Bogart
• Phillip Marlow in Big Sleep and Michel in A
Bout de souffle