The French New Wave is a film movement that began in the late 1950s when a number of young French film critics put down their pens and picked up their cameras. Their films were vastly different from contemporary films, and their impact on cinema has been a lasting one. Some of the characteristics of the movement include spontaneity, the director as the “author” of the film, experimentation with editing and camera styles, attempts to dissolve the line between documentary and fiction, and an adoration of cinema and its history. Two of the quintessential auteurs of the movement are François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard. Their films Jules et Jim and Pierrot le Fou exhibit many of the above traits of the New Wave.
Jules et Jim is a 1962 film about two best friends and their revolving romantic relationship with a woman named Catherine. The film is notable for its experimentation with editing and moving cameras. Two parallel sequences in particular use jump cuts to captivate the audience. When Jules and Jim go to an outdoor museum to see a particular statue, the handheld camera pans up and down, and left and right, searching for the enchanting statue. When they find it, Truffaut employs the vertigo effect followed by a series of jump cuts showing the statue from a variety of angles. The effect is that the audience is dazzled by the statue in much the same way the two main characters are. Only a few moments later, as the audience is first introduced to Catherine, Truffaut employs a similar method to convey Catherine’s beauty. After the narrator proclaims that Catherine resembles the statue, quick zooms and jump cuts show multiple angles of Catherine’s face in profile. The effect is startling and memorable – feelings presumably akin to those felt when Jules and Jim first meet Catherine. The idea that the beauty of a woman and the beauty of art or architecture can be analogous is an interesting one, and can be seen elsewhere in the New Wave.
Later in the film Truffaut uses a freeze frame technique to emphasize a series of faces and emotions Catherine is portraying. The freeze frames are random, playful and supportive of the notion that still photography can convey emotion. In the sense of the story, these fleeting images suggest that Catherine lives in the instant, while also proposing that these moments can last forever, like a still image.
The freeze frames also acknowledge the fact that the filmmaker can control and manipulate the world of the film, reinforcing the idea that the director is the author of the film.
Truffaut uses a fluid handheld camera to demonstrate the free-spiritedness of another lover earlier in the film. When Jules meets Thérèse, she performs a smoking trick in which she continually blows her cigarette while circling Jules’ room in the manor of a “steam engine.” Truffaut’s camera follows her in close up, spinning 360° throughout the bedroom. Besides representing freedom and youth, the handheld camera supports Roger Greenspun’s claim that circles “promote and enhance the abundant vitality of this film’s world and its creatures” (28). While this scene represents the joy or possibility of a new relationship, it dissolves into a scene with Jim and his lover Gilberte. They sit on a bed together in the corner of the room. Greenspun associates those characters in corners with being miserable, and Jim spends much of the film desiring Catherine while trying to stay committed to Gilberte (29). There are no encircling shots here, only pans left and right. Jim (at least at this point in the narrative) is in a position of little joy or possibility.
While Godard’s Pierrot le Fou retains a formal narrative structure, it also manages to be more amorphous in nature. In many ways the film serves as a visual essay – the characters are just as likely to speak to each other in drawn out literary passages, as they are to speak to each other in dialogue. For example, the film opens with a quotation from a book on the painter Velázquez accompanied first by images of two people playing tennis then by those of Ferdinand in an open-air book market. While the scene in the market is self-explanatory, the shots of the tennis players are more implicit in nature. The characters do not recur, and the purpose of the shot is open to debate. Perhaps it is to show that the film will depict two close friends in conflict: in this case Ferdinand and Marianne, two destructive lovers. The narration, which tells of a change in Velázquez’s painting style when he turns 50, could foretell of the dramatic change in Ferdinand’s life that awaits him. The result is a film much more explicit in its portrayal of the director’s personal politics and attitudes. This approach is much more free form in nature than classical Hollywood filmmaking.
Despite his desire to develop a style radically different from contemporary films, Godard possessed a passionate love and knowledge of cinema. In Pierrot le Fou, Ferdinand comes across American director Samuel Fuller at a party. When Ferdinand asks him what cinema is, he replies “Film is like a battleground. It’s love, hate, action, violence, death. In one word – emotions.” Not only is this scene self-reflexive because it features a prominent director playing himself, discussing film, but because Fuller’s description can be applied to the overall arc and themes of Pierrot le Fou. As Ferdinand and Marianne travel across the French countryside, they encounter and commit acts of violence, they fight, they love, and the film ends in death for the both of them. Elsewhere in the film, and tied into some of the violence, is a Laurel & Hardy reference. Marianne disposes of a gas station attendant using a diversion trick she saw from the slapstick duo.
References like those to Laurel & Hardy serve as proof that the characters are aware of the presence of scripted worlds. However, they also seem to be aware that they themselves are part of a scripted world. Some instances are ironic, as in when Marianne says of their fake car crash, “It’s gotta look real. This isn’t a movie.” Everyone, including the actors portraying the characters, the crew and the audience knows that it is in fact a movie. And of course, later in the film, the characters Ferdinand and Marianne join in on the joke too. At one point, Ferdinand turns towards the camera and says, “All she thinks about is fun.” When Marianne inquires whom he was speaking too, he responds, “The audience.” She then looks back and acknowledges the audience. At the beginning of this sequence is a shot of a neon sign that reads “LIFE.” By labeling the sequence as an example of life, and by pointing out to the audience that even the characters are aware they are in a film, the film takes on a more honest, realistic quality. It seems that the film is not out to deceive the audience.
The film’s honesty takes a brutal turn later when Ferdinand asks Marianne is she’ll ever leave him. She says of course not, but then turns and looks directly into the camera, as if addressing Godard himself. She then repeats the action, suggesting artificiality to the routine. At the time of shooting, Anna Karina and Godard were married. They would be divorced later that year. Given this knowledge, this scene in which she turns to the audience/Godard and seems to admit her betrayal gains an autobiographical significance.
These are only a few instances of the characteristics of the New Wave found in Jules et Jim and Pierrot le Fou. The fact that these films are so dense with the stylistic traits of both their directors and the New Wave is proof that Godard and Truffaut are examples of true auteurs.
Works Cited
Greenspun, Roger. “elective affinities.” Sight and Sound. Spring 1963: 78-82. Print.
Later in the film Truffaut uses a freeze frame technique to emphasize a series of faces and emotions Catherine is portraying. The freeze frames are random, playful and supportive of the notion that still photography can convey emotion. In the sense of the story, these fleeting images suggest that Catherine lives in the instant, while also proposing that these moments can last forever, like a still image.
The freeze frames also acknowledge the fact that the filmmaker can control and manipulate the world of the film, reinforcing the idea that the director is the author of the film.
Truffaut uses a fluid handheld camera to demonstrate the free-spiritedness of another lover earlier in the film. When Jules meets Thérèse, she performs a smoking trick in which she continually blows her cigarette while circling Jules’ room in the manor of a “steam engine.” Truffaut’s camera follows her in close up, spinning 360° throughout the bedroom. Besides representing freedom and youth, the handheld camera supports Roger Greenspun’s claim that circles “promote and enhance the abundant vitality of this film’s world and its creatures” (28). While this scene represents the joy or possibility of a new relationship, it dissolves into a scene with Jim and his lover Gilberte. They sit on a bed together in the corner of the room. Greenspun associates those characters in corners with being miserable, and Jim spends much of the film desiring Catherine while trying to stay committed to Gilberte (29). There are no encircling shots here, only pans left and right. Jim (at least at this point in the narrative) is in a position of little joy or possibility.
While Godard’s Pierrot le Fou retains a formal narrative structure, it also manages to be more amorphous in nature. In many ways the film serves as a visual essay – the characters are just as likely to speak to each other in drawn out literary passages, as they are to speak to each other in dialogue. For example, the film opens with a quotation from a book on the painter Velázquez accompanied first by images of two people playing tennis then by those of Ferdinand in an open-air book market. While the scene in the market is self-explanatory, the shots of the tennis players are more implicit in nature. The characters do not recur, and the purpose of the shot is open to debate. Perhaps it is to show that the film will depict two close friends in conflict: in this case Ferdinand and Marianne, two destructive lovers. The narration, which tells of a change in Velázquez’s painting style when he turns 50, could foretell of the dramatic change in Ferdinand’s life that awaits him. The result is a film much more explicit in its portrayal of the director’s personal politics and attitudes. This approach is much more free form in nature than classical Hollywood filmmaking.
Despite his desire to develop a style radically different from contemporary films, Godard possessed a passionate love and knowledge of cinema. In Pierrot le Fou, Ferdinand comes across American director Samuel Fuller at a party. When Ferdinand asks him what cinema is, he replies “Film is like a battleground. It’s love, hate, action, violence, death. In one word – emotions.” Not only is this scene self-reflexive because it features a prominent director playing himself, discussing film, but because Fuller’s description can be applied to the overall arc and themes of Pierrot le Fou. As Ferdinand and Marianne travel across the French countryside, they encounter and commit acts of violence, they fight, they love, and the film ends in death for the both of them. Elsewhere in the film, and tied into some of the violence, is a Laurel & Hardy reference. Marianne disposes of a gas station attendant using a diversion trick she saw from the slapstick duo.
References like those to Laurel & Hardy serve as proof that the characters are aware of the presence of scripted worlds. However, they also seem to be aware that they themselves are part of a scripted world. Some instances are ironic, as in when Marianne says of their fake car crash, “It’s gotta look real. This isn’t a movie.” Everyone, including the actors portraying the characters, the crew and the audience knows that it is in fact a movie. And of course, later in the film, the characters Ferdinand and Marianne join in on the joke too. At one point, Ferdinand turns towards the camera and says, “All she thinks about is fun.” When Marianne inquires whom he was speaking too, he responds, “The audience.” She then looks back and acknowledges the audience. At the beginning of this sequence is a shot of a neon sign that reads “LIFE.” By labeling the sequence as an example of life, and by pointing out to the audience that even the characters are aware they are in a film, the film takes on a more honest, realistic quality. It seems that the film is not out to deceive the audience.
The film’s honesty takes a brutal turn later when Ferdinand asks Marianne is she’ll ever leave him. She says of course not, but then turns and looks directly into the camera, as if addressing Godard himself. She then repeats the action, suggesting artificiality to the routine. At the time of shooting, Anna Karina and Godard were married. They would be divorced later that year. Given this knowledge, this scene in which she turns to the audience/Godard and seems to admit her betrayal gains an autobiographical significance.
These are only a few instances of the characteristics of the New Wave found in Jules et Jim and Pierrot le Fou. The fact that these films are so dense with the stylistic traits of both their directors and the New Wave is proof that Godard and Truffaut are examples of true auteurs.
Works Cited
Greenspun, Roger. “elective affinities.” Sight and Sound. Spring 1963: 78-82. Print.
RSS Feed