Development and Impact of the French New Wave.

¶ … French New Wave

French cinema, by the time the second world war ended, was faced with a crisis fittingly summarized by posters that advertised Mundus-Film (distributors for First National, Goldwyn, and Selig). These posters implied that the cannon operated by America's infantrymen launched film after film targeted at the French. La Cinematographie francaise (soon to become the leading French trade journal) claimed that every week 25,000 meters of film imported mainly from America were presented in France for each 5000 meters of local French films. French-made films often constituted as little as 10% of the films screened in Parisian cinemas. Henri Diamant-Berger, publisher of French magazine 'Le Film', bluntly stated that France could be in jeopardy of turning into a 'cinematographic colony' of America (Nowell-Smith).

"French New Wave" is one of the film movements shaping the history of French cinema. Rejuvenating the prestigious French cinema, the New Wave that emerged in the late 50's to early 60's invigorated international cinema, film theory, and criticism. This reminds contemporary viewers of the impact of Italian neo-realism immediately following the second world war. A dramatic change in film-making was caused by the New Wave, both inside France as well as outside, encouraging new themes, modes and styles of production all over the world. All of a sudden, scores of young, new directors in their twenties and thirties, such as Claude Chabrol, Francois Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard and Louis Malle, began producing films and launching new movie stars, like Jean-Claude Brialy, Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jeanne Moreau. Because of the introduction of new norms for production, in addition to a group of new, young producers keen on participating in this spurt of film-making, approximately 120 first-timers began to shoot motion pictures of feature length from 1958-1964. Furthermore, several young directors presented a number of movies in those years; for instance, Jean-Luc Godard made eight feature films in just four years. Thus, the sum total of films created by the New Wave was staggering. A whole generation could experiment with story-telling rules, and also rethink traditional production norms and film budgets. An entire new range of options was born for movie aesthetics, often combining past tactics, which were restored and reinvigorated for the modern age (Neupert).

Partly owing to a revived interest in France's New Wave on the occasion of its 40th anniversary, this movement has garnered increased attention in recent times from several historians and critics, including leading French cinema scholarship figures such as Antoine de Baecque, Michel Marie and Jean Douchet. The French journal on cinema, Cahiers du cinema, published a special 'nouvelle vogue' issue. However, given the New Wave's significance, variety and depth, there are many aspects of this movement that haven't been examined. Large survey records essentially condense the era, along with its main figures to simple summaries. Texts such as French Cinema by Roy Armes, Republic of Images by Alan William, and The New Wave by James Monaco, devoted particularly to the New Wave or French cinema, show different perspectives with respect to the New Wave. Often they focus on those directors who, before shooting their first features, started off as Cahiers du cinema critics.

The New Wave, for James Monaco, really comes down to Claude Chabrol, Francois Truffaut, Eric Rohmer, Jacques Rivette, and Jean-Luc Godard; he is not concerned with describing the historic movement, or for that matter, its dates. The New Wave age of France is divided by Armes into different renewal clusters, coming from different new directors. However, for Armes, these directors come from criticism as their roots; thus, he too considers only those filmmakers having their roots in Cahiers du cinema as being 'pure' members. Armes avoids describing the movement as critical or historical. Williams' survey history is large and comprehensive, establishing major influences and grouping the most prominent directors as 'reformists'. Williams includes Chabrol, Truffaut, and Malle, as distinct from radical directors such as Godard or more marginal ones like Rohmer (Neupert).

Development

Paris-born Jean-Luc Godard, who belonged to a Franco-Swiss upper-middle class family, grew up in Switzerland. He was a student of ethnology in Sorbonne University, Paris; his growing attraction to films got him distracted from his studies. Initially, he was supported by is family, though when he turned 21, they stopped funding him. Refusing to take up a profession more suited to his middle-class standing, Godard pursued his interest in film, although the situation sometimes arose where he had resort to stealing money and food for survival. For a large part of the 70's, Godard was part of a revolutionary film-making team, Dziga Vertov Group, named in honor of Soviet's great documentary filmmaker. This group discarded the auteur film-making idea and instead, began making movies in the New Wave style. They claimed that it symbolized their group's political will, although since then, Godard has reverted to fictional features in the auteur style. Godard has increasingly blended fiction and documentary film, pushing storytelling in the direction of real life exposure. In the 2004 film, 'Notre Musique', for instance, Godard places news footage regarding several wars of the previous century alongside feature war footage and the story of a young, female Israeli journalist despairing over her country's incessant warfare (Nochimson).

New Wave Crime Thriller

Among major anti-heroes belonging to the New Wave, Michel Poiccard (played by Jean-Paul Belmondo), is seen as a liar, thief, and murderer - a protagonist with behavior opposite to that of established norms. In one particular frame, just before popping into his friend's room, Michel casually, and with a free-floating, strange immorality, murders a motorcycle police officer, as he was being chased by the policeman for speeding away in a stolen vehicle. The situation hardly provides Michel the motivation to kill; the murder is made possible by mere chance - finding a pistol in the car's glove compartment. Michel is portrayed as a live-in-the-moment type of individual -- heedless of consequences, free-spirited, and an adventurer. The first impression made by Michel's 'lax' life is how dangerous it is. New Wave films, just like those from Hollywood, seem fascinated by the freedom accorded by modern culture. Unlike Hollywood, however, New Wave auteurs do not permit the viewer to be lured into acceptance of the characters' wild lives, despite their charm (Nochimson).

As improvising and working with a camera on Parisian streets (where considerably less control can be achieved as compared with studio shooting) were central to New Wave filmmaking, chance was also usually a central theme in the films' events and stories. Godard has clearly not been interested in that sort of convention. Though narrating 'Breathless' by employing a tightly-structured formula, as employed by Hollywood, would have proven to be easier, Godard places his characters as well as film-viewers in a radically uncertain state. The camerawork also mimics Patricial's and Michel's casual glances, the natural eye motion believed by Andre Bazin to be indicative of the finest cinema, as distinct from Hollywood's careful framing and shot-editing; this highlights what is important for the story (Nochimson).

The New Wave does Modern Women

Chance, freedom, cinematic reflexivity, and women, are also central themes in the 'My Life to Live' era. If perceived carefully, this can be noted not just on the page, but in the movies themselves. Karina became a New Wave symbol as the favorite actress of Godard, acting for some time against the expectations of audiences. She is shown speaking philosophically, right from Plato's ideas to the notions of 17th century philosophers, rather than soliciting men as clients (Nochimson).

"New Wave" is popular as the expression first alluded to that generation, which was born prior to the war, and entered adulthood following liberation. Being the latest generation just before the boom of birth rate, the New Wave soon found itself dethroned by the generation of baby boomers. It is, however, the very first generation that was, in its totality, understood to be a sociological phenomenon. By the ending of 1957, two media organizations - L'Express and Institut Francais d'Opinion Publique (IFOP) - which embodied the American style of modernization among the French - launched an exploratory survey together, in a bid to classify the characteristic traits of the generation of individuals born from 1927 to 1939. Francois Giroud's 1958 publication, which offered explanation of a sample representation of 15,000 letters L'Express received, provides a very evident difference between the responses of women and men to film. This prompted her to separately represent them, stating that isolating the New Wave age's women from men belonging to the same age group, was not only 'not artificial', but also necessary (Sellier).

The reflection of Giroud regarding the phenomenon observed indicates that neither L'Express' journalists, nor IFOP analysts had, in advance, considered the aptness of categorizing responses on basis of gender. This shortcoming makes IFOP's survey results unhelpful in this case. Nevertheless, it suggests a solid narrow-mindedness with regards to the significance of gender, as revealed by this survey of 15,000 L'Express letters. Francoise Giroud's letters, in fact, give evidence of young men's dominant conservatism with respect to their view of the relationships between men and women, irrespective of their social class or political opinions. In contrast, most women point out that the fair fortune felt by them is theirs, living in a women's emancipation era. Even if most women don't question their foremost responsibility as mother and wife, their declaration accompanies a sound claim to their right to higher education and worthy employment. Very often, they talk about the unbearable challenges of their circumstances - their dilemma with regards to their will to be an ideal mother and wife, responsibilities weighing them down, as well as their longing for emancipation (Sellier).

L'Express, in the month of October 1958, issued a special edition dedicated to that particular film and the social issues excited by it. Focused, as stated by its director, upon young people's inability to emotionally commit themselves, the film's central theme was a youth's narrative flashback (with Jacques Charrier playing the young man), following the demise of the woman who he loved. However, it offers viewers privileged entree to the viewpoint of the malady, and brings to mind the difficulties that the new generation's young women face in shaping an identity outside femininity's conventional norms. The remark of the character is quoted, that she would not mind a death like that of James Dean, speedy, and at a young age (Kristin Ross, 1995, 54-55), therefore identifying with Dean's self-reliant, mutinous teenager, in spite of the difference in gender (Sellier).

The Male Hero of the New Wave

The cinema of the New Wave, the character's tragic dimension, the element eliciting the spectator's empathy, is methodically shifted to the male protagonist, the alter ego of the director, even when a woman dies, as is seen in Tirez sur le pianist and Le Petit soldat. The way American actress, Jean Seberg was used in Godard's A bout de souffle, is, for instance, representative of the above contradictions. The young actress had just earned fame in her part in Bonjour tristesse, Preminger's 1958 film, based on the novel by Sagan. She is the film's narrator as well as heroine, and is linked with an American convertible, white in color, to signify her joyful complicity with her on-screen father. Seberg was successfully bagged for the role by Godard in his earliest full-length movie, however, the actress lost the key role played by her in Bonjour tristesse, instead becoming the object of the hero's (Belmondo) amorous fixation. It can be said that this film of Godard puts Sagan's female character back in the place Western culture traditionally assigns to women - not as the narrator and central subject, but as the male character's object of love or hatred. The significance of borrowing Preminger's young actress is clearly over-determined, as it also is connected with Godard's association with American cinema. In France's cultural context, however, the reassertion of male dominance through fiction does not look neutral. By assigning Jean Seberg to play Patricia, Godard not only expresses the erotic effect of American actresses on young critics of the Cahiers du cinema or more broadly, on his generation's youth, but also hostility and fascination for the independent young woman, successfully brought to life by Francoise Sagan in 1954 (Sellier).

Impact of New French Wave

A reason for the French Wave's worldwide effect in the 60s was its revelation of the possibility of making dynamic, innovative and exciting films outside an established system of film production. French cinema's situation before the New Wave's onset was one wherein the country's film industry was almost inaccessible to the young and ambitious filmmaker. Heavily regimented and chiefly studio-bound, the industry offered a difficult path to becoming a film director. This included serving as assistant to a director, in a long-duration apprenticeship, before seeing any possible prospects to independently direct films. This production system was changed by the New Wave. As movies made in a particular context of production, New Wave films could be investigated from two perspectives, which are complementary and essential for any filmmaking consideration: (a) the role of technology in filmmaking; and (b) circumstances of production. Among the most typical two descriptions of films belonging to the New Wave, are that these films were produced on 'low-budget' and made 'outside' of the traditional French system of the 50s and 60s. These two features predominantly appealed to many directors wishing to release 'personal' and 'independent' films for the masses (Darke).

A general agreement was that, while the cinema industry of France was in a financially good health during the middle to late 50s, in terms of creativity, it was less healthy. There were, however, directors who had set a paradigm of the production style that later became a characteristic of France's New Wave. Jean-Pierre Melville was one such filmmaker, who defined the characteristics of the films of the New Wave most concisely in a 1960 interview, stating that the movies possessed an artisanal production system, shot without stars on location, on super-fast stock and minimal crew, without necessary distributor line-up, servitude or authorization of any sort (ibid.: 45). Melville was Jean-Pierre Grumbach's pseudonym, who was the director of films such as Bob le Flambeur (1955), Le Samourai (1967) and Le Silence de la mer (1947). His influence as the predecessor of France's New Wave was acknowledged explicitly by Godard, who gave him a cameo in his debut film A bout de souffle (Darke).