Postwar French Art Films
In the minds of ordinary spectators, the French New Wave or La Nouvelle Vague will create an aesthetic black-and-white image. From beautiful people smoking to themes of existential crisis, François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard eschew the traditional conventions of narrative film. Instead, they use asynchronous sound images, elliptical edits, and montages to upset our balance.
Talented filmmakers working under strict aesthetic criteria are tired of many limitations. They will continue to advance, and their ambitions only serve to alienate and confuse us in any way they need to. To kick off a tradition, the French New Wave is a movement that shines brightly. However, the movement is brief. Postwar French art films marked a significant turning point in wider perception.
It deals with the language capabilities of film and has a lasting effect on public attitudes. People began to acknowledge the acceptance of cinema as art when the concept of the auteur emerged. The term serves as an important difference between film as an art form and a mere form of entertainment. Truffaut began his film career in 1953 before entering the world of filmmaking.
Under the influence of André Bazin, Truffaut wrote for the highly influential journal Cahiers du Cinéma.
Manifesto for the French New Wave
The magazine served as the highly controversial zero-year manifesto for the French New Wave. Apart from being a strong line drawing in the sand, it calls for French filmmakers to choose another side. On the one hand, the emergence of sound initially saw French cinema emulate Hollywood conventions. Without any attempt to establish a unique identity for itself, Truffaut’s article’s influence aims at giving French cinema an identity in distinguishing it from its competition.
Besides providing theology in determining which fellow New Wave pioneers to gather with, Truffaut’s spleen ventilation is not a one-sided iconoclasm. Godard and other New Wave filmmakers had a love-hate relationship with the influence of Hollywood iconography. They are trying to create a new language in French films. Indeed, they also try to be free from the burdens of the past.
However, classic Hollywood has instilled such a love for the medium that the iconography proves too tempting for us to escape. Godard began to stare in awe at the picture of Humphrey Bogart that the cinema hall was showing. Godard would use iris strokes in the transition between the start and end scenes to reinforce the debt if the relationship needed clarification.
Vivre Sa Vie
In addition, he uses the camera as an active player in visual information. It is not about being an invisible mode of representation. For example, in Vivre Sa Vie, the camera takes on the role of the third character. It closely follows the conversation between the two characters. They eavesdrop without participating, along with the camera fighting for permission to enter the opening tableau scene.
In the conversation, the camera records the entire back of Paul and Nana. A series of side and front profile close-ups introduce Nana. It shows a triptych that paints and reminds the viewer of the auteur’s presence from the beginning. Godard’s use of an intertitle to set forth the upcoming act is an epic theatrical device. It aims to unsettle the audience and draw attention to media fraud.
Such practice could have destroyed the tension in following the narrative. However, Godard interrupted the narration to remind the audience that they were watching an artificial construction. He also incorporates his personality into his narrative in a non-fictional but precise manner. We can see a break with classic narrative conventions when Godard uses representational mode. It was to break down the barrier between the fourth wall and the director.
Pierrot le Fou
In another case, Pierrot le Fou is proof of Godard’s willingness not to hide anything from the eyes of the cameras. He also ruined his relationship with his muse and long-term partner, Anna Karina. His improvisational approach to convention allowed Godard to cross genres from gangster, politics, thriller, romance, and comedy. At first glance, Jean-Paul Belmondo has the attributes audiences expect from a substitute audience.
His voiceover opens the film, and his death closes it. However, it is the antithesis of a classic protagonist. Ferdinand Griffon, a.k.a. Pierrot, is a protagonist who does not have a complicated decision-making mechanism. Ferdinand slides aimlessly from one scenario to the next in keeping with classic convention. Instead of instigating action, he uses consistently illogical judgments that confuse us.
At the moment, the implied interior meaning of Godard is that Ferdinand did not have any more control over his destiny than we do. When establishing the personal style of an auteur, more is needed to examine one film in isolation. However, it is very important to consider the overall work of the filmmaker. Like Hitchcock and John Ford, they deserve auteur status. On the subject of interior meaning, the ideal auteur is someone who signs a long-term contract.
Heights of Spontaneity
They direct whatever script they turn in and express themselves by pushing a small quantity of style into the cracks of the plot. If their style conflicts with the subject matter or storyline, it is better to have more opportunities for suspense. For Godard himself, the long gap separating Pierrot le Fou‘s conception from its realization became a period of aesthetic and personal transition.
When he is finally able to make the film, his original ideas prove useful not only to him. Godard said that he was completely freaked out when he started the film a week before. He did not know what to do. In his previous films, Godard relied on an established framework. It guides the spontaneous discovery of the Hollywood genre and intellectual modernism, as in Vivre Sa Vie. By the time Godard began shooting the film, film noir conventions had inspired him.
Under the circumstances, his theoretical references changed due to his political outrage when the Vietnam War escalated. The result of Godard’s intellectual, cinematic, and personal turmoil is an immediate creation that reaches lightning discovery and new heights of spontaneity. Even for himself, it was largely an attempt to compensate for his inability to be methodical, even in the usual terms of the methods he practiced.
Quasi-metaphysical Dream
Hollywood’s classic form could not sustain Godard as in his previous film, Alphaville. It relies heavily on the conventions of the sci-fi and secret agent genres. Not only is his absorption of all classic cinema unhelpful to him. However, Godard’s experience as a filmmaker could have been of more use. He felt as though making his first film had lost its cinematic navigation. Pierrot le Fou reflects a very broad quasi-metaphysical artistic dream.
It is pseudo but cosmic of all majesty. In the first scene, it announces Godard’s quest for another kind of cinematic art. It goes beyond the visual presentation of characters and objects to a higher relation of musical ideas. Indeed, the film is a project that will take the director another decade and a half. We begin to become aware of many personal transformations, sufferings, studies, false starts, and descriptions.
However, the film’s heart is what takes place in the serene natural splendor of the pristine lands of southern France. The film has its attributes and art, whether Picasso’s works on the walls or the pictures or repeated references to Ferdinand. In addition, there are references to Beethoven and the film’s primary and white color scheme.
Rejection of Sublime Imagery
When Ferdinand paints his face blue, everything indicates that Godard roots his film in a high literature and art tradition. It goes beyond the customs and conventions of cinema. Indeed, many of the cartoon’s devices and references indicate what Godard thought of the standard issue narrative he used. It served as an indifferent frame for his accusations and speculations. In the film, he tries to reach something far beyond the boundaries of forms, conventions, genres and cinema we are familiar with.
The film is a battlefield of death, violence, action, hate, and love. Instead of having actors act out emotions on screen, Godard wanted to find ways to express emotions. Thus, it awakens the film to the audience. Emotions will pass from the filmmaker to the audience, not analogously. However, it is in a form with the properties of sublimation and concentration of force. The rejection of naturalistic drama favors insert shots, vocal pronunciations, and fragmentary images that do not fit.
It seeks to provoke and evoke the spectrum and intensity of romantic emotions that we cannot describe. Beyond small-scale personal identification, the film is rife with contradictions, such as stark petrol mists and sublime imagery.
Godard’s Footage
The film repeatedly mentions the Vietnam War, which we view as Godard’s footage. Pierrot le Fou is a work of divided people, and the film falls into its character abyss. Godard could be so attuned to time that he was at war with himself if he was at war with himself. However, his crisis reflects the crisis of the times, viewing it as his reflection. It is a bond from Godard that only drastic action will free him.
The film signifies an age of ideological rigidity and self-denying political violence. At least in itself, it will replace lost trust. In September 1965, people booed the premiere of Pierrot le Fou at the Venice Film Festival. The film proves a tough ticket in Paris. However, it inspired one generation after another, including Chantal Akerman. Unrestrained form-defeating romanticism, artistic self-awareness, and a mix of self-ridicule and emotional cool become the missing boundaries between destruction, reality, symbol, sincerity, and irony.
Bibliography
- Brody, R. (2008). Everything is cinema: the working life of Jean-Luc Godard. Metropolitan Books.
- Morgan, D. (2004). ‘No Trickery with Montage’: On Reading a Sequence in Godard‘s Pierrot le fou. Film Studies, 5(1), 8-29.
- Narboni, J., & Milne, T. (1972). Godard on Godard.
- Sarris, A. (2008). Notes on the Auteur Theory in 1962. Auteurs and Authorship: A Film Reader, 35-45.
I haven’t seen any of Truffaut’s or Godard’s since I was a young cinema buff, and had mixed feelings about them then–appreciated them but didn’t particularly enjoy them. Wonder how I’d respond now.
That’s mostly the majority of views when watching or appreciating the aesthetics of all Godard and French New Wave films, and I don’t blame you. I just need a lot of time to understand how the French New Wave became one of the most influential movements in the history of cinema. Anyways, thank you.