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Cinema Scope with Andy Nelson takes you on a captivating journey through the ever-evolving landscape of film. Moreover, it offers a unique and engaging perspective on the art of cinema.
Welcome to cinemascope where we embark on a revolutionary journey through film history. I'm Andy Nelson, your guide on this quest to bridge genres, subgenres, and movements, ultimately deepening our understanding of them all. Today, we're diving into the audacious world of the French new wave, of movements that shattered conventions and redefined the art of filmmaking. Join us as we explore the daring techniques, existential themes, and auteur driven new visions that characterized this groundbreaking era and discover its enduring influence on contemporary cinema. Embrace the rebellious spirit of the French new wave as we uncover the secrets behind its legacy.
Andy:Joining me today are 2 fantastic guests well versed in the Nouvelle Vague or French New Wave. First, Richard Neupert, recently retired film professor from the University of Georgia. Welcome, Richard.
Richard:Thank you very much. Glad to be here.
Andy:And we have Kelly Conway, professor of film studies from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Hello, Kelly.
Kelley:Hello. Great to be here.
Andy:So let's just first start, just learning a little bit more about both of you. Let's start with you, Richard. What first drew you to the French New Wave?
Richard:I was actually lucky. I grew up, across the lake in Madison, Wisconsin. And, really young in high school, I would go to college film series that they'd go and show all kinds of stuff. So I discovered it really as an un before even being an undergrad, late in high school, I'd start to watch the latest Truffaut movies or real Romer films or go to art films. It would be coming, to the art house in town or on campus.
Richard:You could go and see the older ones. So I kind of fell in at the time in the early seventies, mid seventies, when there were was a really great trend of films by already established new wave filmmakers. And then I can go back because of the campus film societies and sometimes catch their first thing. So if I saw the latest, Chabrol Louis, I could wait, and then sometime they'll be showing Le Beaucais or Cousins. So I was really fortunate, and that led me to taking French classes, French conversation classes, and getting more interested in French culture because of the movies.
Andy:That's fantastic. Kelly, how about you?
Kelley:I was less fortunate than Richard. I grew up in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere in Iowa. And I we had a little theater in town, but there were no screenings of films by Godard or Rivett or Chabrol in my town. So I, and I actually wasn't a cinephile as a kid. I I was a big reader.
Kelley:But when I got to college, I took a class kind of randomly called introduction to cinema. And in that class, I saw films by Jean Renoir and Jean Luc Godard, and it, literally changed my life. It made me understand that it was possible to think deeply about movies and, you know, they were an art form like any other, but also not like any other because they were, connected to a really complex, you know, industry in a way that painting and sculpture are not. So I was intrigued by all of that, and I I never looked back.
Andy:Yeah. I mean, it's it's it's so interesting to look into this this movement and start seeing so many threads throughout films after this point and, like, how it really ended up shaping and kind of moving a lot of different careers and just, like, the language of film in all sorts of different in interesting directions. As we start this, let's let's set up why the French French new wave is such an important part of history.
Richard:One One of the things about studying a French film class or a or any film history class or intro to cinema class is often they put things not only under directors, but a lot of times also under movements. So you've got German expressionism and the Soviets and neorealism and the new wave and then other new German cinema, etcetera. But somehow, the French new wave seems to excite, I think, students even more because it seems like, well, like, regular people made movies. And the notion of the French new wave, I think, has always been encouraging to young independent filmmakers that these people who did these great movies were younger than usual. They didn't have many resources.
Richard:They tried out new technologies. I think there are a lot of things about the French new wave movies that continue to kind of inspire filmmakers, and independent filmmakers. I do a lot. We have a new MFA program here. I've been teaching independent film, and it's really great to get them to also go back and look at other kinds of things and make connections to how somebody in 2024 might think about, oh, I don't have much budget.
Richard:How should I, you know, what should I where where should I stage my characters? What kind of story should I tell? And a lot of times, I just show examples from the new wave, and then they find it inspiring. So I think that's, at least for me, it's that it was youthful. It represented its era and society, etcetera.
Richard:But also it continues to really inspire people around the world. In short term, it inspired people in Brazil and and beyond. But also, I've met African filmmakers who were making feature films in the 19 nineties who said they were inspired by, you know, Further Blows and Breathless and things like that.
Andy:So, Kelly, what I mean, do you wanna just tell us, like, for for those who are tuning in who may not have, really dug deep into the, French new wave, what is it? Like, can you give us a sense as to what that what it really encompasses? I know that's a big question.
Kelley:It's a big question, and it's one that has received many different answers through the years. In large part, thanks to Richard Newport's book, a history of the new wave, where he did a complete revisionist history of the new wave. So there are two ways of thinking about it. There's the old way. The standard story of the new way would look something like this.
Kelley:In 1959, a rebellious critic named Francois Truffaut picked up his camera and made 400 Blows. And all of his friends were making films too, including Godard and Reid Bette and Chabrol, Eric Rohmer. And they changed the face of filmmaking through their mode of production and through their risk taking and their rule breaking. That story is not false, but it has been deepened and, told, with more detail and intelligence by, film scholars like Richard. And so what he added to the story was, well, first of all, there were more people involved in this movement than that core group of guys who wrote criticism for the important journal, Cailliers du Cinema.
Kelley:First of all, there there's this whole other group of people that some people designate the left bank, referring to the left bank of the Seine River in Paris. And this this would be Alain Renee, Agnes Varda, and Chris Marker. And even though they were not critics for the, they were part of the energy of that movement and they were making extraordinary films themselves. But also, again, as Richard, reminded us, the new wave had influences completely outside of that generational group. I'm thinking of people like Jean Pierre Melville or, they loved Robert Brisson.
Kelley:Brisson's films like A Man Escape and Pickpocket. He was experimenting with the soundtrack notably, but also acting and all kinds of things. Melville had his own production company. Right? He was making low budget independent films well before other people started thinking about that.
Kelley:And then also, yeah, Tati, Jacques Tati was really experimenting with the with, again, with the soundtrack and other elements of film style before the new wave came around. So, you know, there's been an expansion in the people that we think of as being associated, with the energy of filmmaking in the fifties sixties.
Richard:And and, yeah, Kelly's right. And there's also just this real cultural moment because the French new wave, it came from a term that was never first applied to movies. There really was a sense that the post World War 2 generation in France, like in England and around the world, was different and sort of a subculture. But there were also new novels were coming out in France. You got Robespierre and these people breaking down psychological realism, having these really cool novels, and there's new theater with theater of the absurd.
Richard:And people were saying, well, movies are so exciting in the fifties. Like, where's where's our fringe new wave in films? And it really was this whole generation that, even Express Magazine is trying to figure out who are the new wave generation, the people in their sort of late teens twenties, and they had surveys to figure out who they were. So there was this whole excitement about, you know, there was a new wave generation. And then pretty soon that once they assigned a new wave to film by 1959, 1958 with these new young filmmakers and a burst of activity, then it starts to get increasingly assigned to as a cinematic movement.
Richard:But in general, it really has a big cultural cultural shift. And I'll just say what is the French new wave also. It is 100 of first time filmmakers getting to make a feature film between the late fifties, 58 into mid sixties. So there's never been this many new people coming into the industry, making a first feature film with no professional background, you know, anywhere in film history. And partly, that's fueled by new producers, but it's also helped by the government, the French government, the the CNC, which helps give loans and low interest fine funding to filmmakers.
Richard:That helped fuel it as well, or there wouldn't have been this wave of hundreds of people helping each other. The government helped, and new producers did, and and a bunch of other issues, really were behind.
Andy:Yeah. I mean and that's an interesting element because, I mean, I I think we've seen in various countries, various times around the world when there's government assistance, like, really pushing the medium as an art that it can really help grow it in a lot of really interesting ways. Sometimes a little more controlled depending on how the government is is funding that, but I think that there are those times where you really see I mean, I I had an episode about Ozploitation a few episodes ago, and that was one of the interesting elements. Like, it's a lot of funding coming in from the Australian government that really kind of gave, rise to a wide variety of films coming out at that particular time. You you started talking a little bit about kind of, like, what was going on, like, how the French government was was helping and all of that, but let's kind of set the stage for where this came from.
Andy:Like, what was the general mood in France that led to this changing in views and opinions of of these filmmakers and wanting to tell these different stories? Because, you know, they were seeing Hollywood films and and the like. I know Truffaut had mentioned a film called the little fugitive, which is an American film that I I think when you watch it, you can see where he might have been inspired to kind of do something like the 400 Blows. But, obviously, the French were making their own films. So, I mean, what was the general vibe going on there that brought all this around?
Kelley:I think we need to take the story back to the post World War 2 moment, in fact, because, I mean, as important as these individual directors were, and they were, they were bold artists who wanted to tell new stories and use new stylistic and narrative conventions. But there's a lot of background factors that helped make this possible and helped create a situation in which people felt like they could and should do it. So after World War 2 so remember, the German occupation ended in 45. The Germans had controlled nearly every aspect of of French society including the film industry. One of the first things they did was control the film industry, set up their own production company called Continental and churn out films.
Kelley:So they understood that film could be an important part of what they hoped would be the new German. That did not come to pass. So, the new Germany rather. But so but after the war, the French felt strongly that they needed to think carefully about what what their national identity was and how do you rebuild an industry. How do you rebuild a country, in fact.
Kelley:Also, they needed to compete with Hollywood because after the war, Hollywood released a huge slew of films onto the French market, which made it hard for the French film industry to stay healthy and and viable financially. So the French government actually started these aid mechanisms in the late forties. I think in 1949 was the first one. You can correct me if I'm wrong, Richard. And then they had another set of government aid packages in 53 and then another in 59.
Kelley:And they they were really thinking, do we just reward people who have already made a successful film and give them money for their next film? Or do we give filmmakers money upfront? And and who should get them and how? And so there there was a lot of thinking and, shifting about how you support a film industry. But there was also so there was there were these kind of extra textual, extra director factors like the government sense that the the nation needed to be rebuilt.
Kelley:Film culture was really vibrant at the time. And by that, I mean, institutions like the Cinematheque Francaise, launched in 1936 by Langhua, but revitalized in the post war period. So there people had a screening space, an archive and eventually a museum. There were film societies or or what they called cine clubs, this vast network of clubs where ordinary people, teachers, college students, shopkeepers would get together every 2 weeks or every month and watch movies together and then talk about them. This was really, institutionalized film going and film discussion.
Kelley:So that was a really exciting thing. They actually had massive federations. I think 4 or 5 different federations of fin of cine clubs from multiple political cultural perspectives. So that was a really rich sector of the French film culture. In other words, an audience was ready and waiting to embrace the experimentation of the new wave.
Kelley:So I would say, yeah, film mechanisms like like institutional mechanisms like funding and film culture and the Cinematheque. Film festivals were really vibrant. The Cannes Film Festival had tried to launch in 39, but the war stopped that. They came the the festival came back to life in, I think it was 40 7, and and other festivals launched. So there was a really vibrant film culture that helped set the stage for this.
Kelley:But I don't know, Richard, maybe you can talk about why people would have even wanted to make new kinds of films. What was what was the problem with the French film industry in the fifties despite the aid packages, despite the rich film culture?
Richard:Well, you do you do a great job of setting this the the the floor there and setting the foundation. Yeah. Because one of the things that the the that then this new generation of kind of filmgoers and spectators is being taught to look for are alternatives. So, yeah, the nation wanted to give money to big budget movies to help compete with Hollywood but with real French themed. And that became lots of novels, The Red and the Black, Balzac.
Richard:Things would be adapted for big budget French equals to Hollywood to compete with Hollywood. And that didn't necessarily please this new younger generation. So there was this sense that, okay, they might like Hollywood movies. I mean, a lot of these they love Howard Hawks and Hitchcock, etcetera, but they didn't wanna see France as just competing with mainstream melodramas and stuff. So you're building this new audience, but you also have these new critics.
Richard:And, so along with the cineclubs, there are new journals coming along. So Caillou du Cinema, Kelly mentioned, Prositif. The cine Club group has something called cinema that changes its name every year by adding the name. So it's cinema 57, 5058, 59. And you've got this whole new generation, not only of people watching movies and reading about them, but writing about them.
Richard:And that's where Truffaut gets going in the fifties. Jean Luc Godard writes criticism. Eric Rohmer writes criticism. Chabrol's involved with it. So you get this young generation who, as, Truffaut and Godard, they both almost said the same thing once, which was when we're writing criticism, we were already thinking like film directors.
Richard:They were critiquing movies, not just in terms of the story, but also in, like, they didn't like the camera placement or the cast and crew. So the but they would praise other things. So there became this real attention to storytelling, film style, mise en scene, the visual directing style that was kind of brewing. And so there became this kind of, within the popular press, a celebration of these big national successful movies. But then in the cinematic the the sort of cinema buff, cinephile press, they were celebrating the French movies that didn't fit those norms, the Jacques Tatis, etcetera.
Richard:And they were just kinda looking for their own new generation. So the film festivals are picking up on movies that are very different than the number one movies playing in Paris for the weekend from France. And that led to this kind of schism. And a lot of the young, writers were saying, you know, they used a bunch of really ageist phrases that French cinema is going through a sclerosis that, you know I mean, there was this there was this mocking. Yeah.
Richard:In my book, I've got this great cartoon I found where where there's a pregnant young woman who's got this fetus and this little boy inside her kicking at the old man who's in front of her, trying to already kick the old generation out of the way. So there's this real brash sense of move out the old guys, get rid of daddy's cinema, and create one of our own. And that led to so much excitement. Like, oh, identifying new people. Like, suddenly Louis Malle comes along, and Roger Vadim makes a pretty classic looking movie.
Richard:But because it had Brigitte Bardot and a new kinda sexuality and it didn't have the old makeup and the wigs on and stuff, it looked new and fresh and honest. So there's this real sense of looking for something authentic rather than studio shot movies with lots of makeup, people theatrically trained to stop, make their speech, and move on. They wanted something more lively.
Kelley:Also, we can't forget the influence of Andre Bazan. Right? So Bazan helped launch the film journal, Cahiers du Cinema, but his way of thinking about cinema was hugely influential on these people. He was first of all, he loved Italian neorealism and wrote about it with great eloquence and insight. And, he also appreciated certain kinds of Hollywood films that used deep space, long takes.
Kelley:He really got people thinking about style in a fresh way. Even if the new wave directors like Godard and some others didn't necessarily make films like the ones they were championing in the pages of Cahier. They all, in part, thanks to Andre Bazin, were really attuned to visual style, shot duration, staging versus editing, a new fresh kind of realism that, you know, was partly inspired by the Italians. You know, he was really crucial.
Andy:Well and, I I mean, just it's it's such an interesting way to see, like, the film criticism becoming so key to reshaping that. Because, I mean, you know, film critics exist in all over the place. And I I think that rarely do you find that sort of passion in a group of critics that ends up pushing into actual filmmakers and kind of just saying, this is what we're complaining about with all of these films. Let's just go do it ourselves. And I think that's just it's so inspiring to kind of see them Yeah.
Andy:Have that drive and passion to kind of push for that shift themselves.
Richard:No. That's a really good point. And Kevin's right there. Somebody like Andre Bazin made them think about the style and argue, but he but he's not trying to say everybody should make the same kind of movie. And I think that's what's really important.
Richard:They didn't have a cookie cutter and say, now we all have to make things that look like neorealism, but rather they have to really think about, you know, when do you wanna cut, where do you put the camera, etcetera. It was a really good point.
Andy:And that, you know, I suppose there's an element of this that leads to a conversation that ties into the auteur theory, which is kind of a part of of this conversation because it certainly had its rise with a lot of these voices as they were talking about it. And the idea that the the director is really the author behind it, they really pushed that as far as talking when they were looking at Hollywood's films with John Ford and and, Howard Hawks and Hitchcock about how they're really the authors. Like, it's that authorial central authorial voice behind those films regardless of the studio. And I think that was another element here because, I mean, we're looking at all of these different filmmakers. They're definitely making different types of films, and they have their own language, and I think that's what's another interesting element that, is important with this conversation.
Kelley:They really wanted to make films and maintain their own freedom to develop their authorial style. That was part of it. It was like a kind of it was an issue of power, I would say, on the one hand. They didn't wanna be cogs in a machine. They didn't wanna work as an assistant director to someone else in the French studio system for 20 years before being able to pursue their own vision.
Kelley:And they celebrated those Hollywood filmmakers like Hawkes and Ford and Hitchcock who'd somehow managed to rise above the constraints of the industry and make their own mark, you know, create their own distinctive signature. So they appreciated that and they wanted to do that. And, yeah, they they really wanted to it was when I say it was a power issue, I mean, they were really against screenwriters having having the last say in in what a film should look like. I I don't even know if that was happening in the French film industry, but they complained a lot about screenwriters and their their, excessive connection to authorship of the film. And so, yeah, they really did go a long way in helping us perceive the film director as an author, as an artist, as someone who deserves autonomy in the creation of the work.
Kelley:Yeah.
Richard:And if you're gonna be a young person who's trying to get into the industry or at least make your own movie that you want, you're not gonna get standard producers to support you. A lot of them didn't write conventional scripts necessarily in the same way that other people did. So you it's that's why they're gonna need to shoot cheap, and they're gonna look at Italian neorealism and look at other places. How did they make movies with almost no electricity and money right after World War 2 in Italy? You know, how can we shoot in Paris?
Richard:So they were inspired by other people around them, but, but Kelly's right. They they had their own auteur individual reasons to wanna do this stuff. So that even though Chabrol and Godard and Romer and Truffaut were all really good buddies, They never wanted to make movies that looked like each other. They wanted to all be authentic in their own way. So they might shoot on location because they can't afford a studio very much, but they'll shoot in different kind of places.
Richard:They, you know, do they're gonna go off to little towns or shoot in their neighborhoods or in their own apartments. But they're all gonna kinda tell stories that are important to them that they all feel are somehow, again, honest for their generation.
Andy:And what's nice about that is they all were like, they all had that desire to tell their own stories, but they were all also, like they all had each other's backs, you know, and, like, they all work together. Like, you you're watching these films, and it's like, oh, I recognize that guy. Like, they're they're in each other's movies as, like, you know, bit players and everything. So you could tell, okay, they were probably all, like, helping each other out. Like, hey.
Andy:I just need some I I need a hand to help me with this thing. And you can just see them all kind of working together throughout. And even some of the actors, like, what is the actor? 1 of our actors that is like he was in 6 of the movies that we watched, and I'm like, oh, well, he that's because he was just like a guy walking through a door in one movie and stuff. But it's like, clearly, they had kind of this group that was just very passionate about telling their own stories.
Kelley:They really had a big impact on, evolving styles of acting. But also, I I can think of one exception to what we've just described here, and that is Agnes Marta. She made her first feature in she shot it in 54, it came out in 55 in a very limited run. She was not part of that Caillier gang initially. She didn't write criticism.
Kelley:She didn't she hadn't even seen a lot of films. She was a photographer, and she loved art and art history and modernist literature. She drew on a slightly different set of influences. Notably for her first film, she used actors from the theater company that she worked for as a photographer, the Theatre National Popular, the National Popular Theatre. So but but again, your point is rely on your friends, bring them in, pay them very little or nothing at all, and let's put on a show together.
Kelley:We can we can make this happen on a low budget.
Andy:No. It's it's inspiring to see.
Richard:Kelly's example is perfect. La Puente Court by Varda in 54. She does bring in some people she met through theater to meet her 2 actors. One of them never made a movie before, but Philippe Noire went on to become one of the great French actors of all time. This generation is preparing the next generation's, stars.
Richard:But also the other half of her movie, she's shooting people just doing their regular job. She got like a neorealist. She just goes out and shoots normal people who aren't really acting. So it really challenged the whole notion of what is a performer at a time when, again, usually people wore lots of makeup and costuming. And these people were trying to get rid of costume designers on their on their sets because that's too expensive, as well.
Richard:But, yeah, in general, it is an auteur movement. But you're right, Andy, that they're helping each other out so that, you know, Godard Godard is gonna his producer is gonna say, do you know anybody else who wants to make a movie? He says, yeah. Jacques Demi's got a script, or Truffaut's gonna give an idea for to Godard to make Breathless. So they're helping each other out.
Richard:They're helping finance each other's movies. Claude Chabrol inherits a little money, starts his own little production company because Louis Malle had done the same thing a couple years earlier and it worked. He's then lend money to Romer and Privette to help make their first movies. So it's a whole bunch of buddies, working together outside of any kind of studio system. They're their own producers except for a couple of really important people that who do help them out, but also gonna rely on the state funding and things like that to to minimize the risks that are going on during this time also.
Andy:Yeah. An element that, I suppose is just worth discussing is, I mean, mentioning, Varda's early film and and some of these films, the film movement has kind of been cordoned off, I guess, we'll say through I I don't know who or how it ends up kind of being, described this way, but, like, 58 to 62 is kinda like the rough window that generally you say. This is this is kind of the window of the French new wave. But, obviously, I mean, talking about that early Varda film, there were already these rumblings. So what is it that makes that particular window?
Andy:Is that just, like, the core window when most of these movies were happening?
Richard:Yeah. I think a lot of this comes together because, like, Melville's making a movie independently. Varda's doing that. Louis Malle's gonna start doing that, but it's not quite a wave yet. It's just some independent genre.
Richard:They call them young fill new filmmakers. What really helps is the publicity of Cahiers starting to reinforce each other, some chance of certain people getting certain money. Truffaut marries a very wealth the daughter of a very wealthy film distributor. That helps him make his first short and then his feature film At the same time that Chabrol has just inherited money, these new direct new producers start to see, wait a minute. This guy made a $60,000 movie, and it's making a couple $100,000 movies.
Richard:I should start making movies. And the other thing that I discovered in my research is in 1959, the French franc was devalued strongly. And suddenly, for foreigners, it was like their their currency is worth 20% less. So now an American or a Canadian or a German can actually buy or take distributor can take a risk on a French movie at a 20% discount. So a lot of these movies they start to hear about, it's actually easier for small distributors now to pick these up.
Richard:So even if Warner Brothers kind of people don't want to risk them, small distributors do. So there are a whole bunch of different factors. The French government changes its rules and is a little more open to giving money to first time filmmakers. There are a bunch of different reasons that it becomes really a wave. And it's the and it's also the fact that they're all making a hell of a lot of movies.
Richard:I mean, like, Chabrol and Godard make it's not unusual if they make 4 movies in 2 years. In 1959, Claude Chabrol premiered 2 feature films. Beau Saers comes out in January, wins a big prize. And in March, the cousins comes out, and that goes on to be the numb number 5 hit in all of France that year. So the wave is also they're constantly making movies.
Richard:But our is the one that says, if you're not directing a movie today, you're not a film director. Like, you can't just make one movie and then wait for a while and think of the next one. You're constantly so they're they're working frenetically, and they're getting their friends to, and it's expanding. And that's why there's this burst of the number of new feature films by first time filmmakers. And those guys, whenever they can, keep making movies as
Kelley:well. As you say, they had extraordinary energy, and they were also prolific. But, also, I'm thinking, as you say, the, the publicity through film criticism was really important for them. And, also, I'm thinking about the importance of film festivals. I think I think Truffaut was rejected.
Kelley:He was kicked out of the Cannes Film Festival in 50 8 because he'd been he'd been so rude in his criticism and he talked about filmmakers. And then in
Andy:50 comedy was the the festival for people to be rude. Right? Yeah. Well, that too. Oh, wow.
Andy:We're not even gonna talk about Lars von Schur. But, no. Wait. Maybe I've got my dates wrong.
Kelley:I think No. It's it's true. No. It's true. He he didn't get a press they wouldn't give him a press card.
Kelley:That's right. They wouldn't give him a press card. And then the next year, 59, wasn't it, Richard?
Richard:Yes.
Kelley:He's back with 400 blows, his own first feature. You know? And then the neck and then Hiroshima Monomura is also there at the Cannes Film Festival in 59. And then in 60, it's Breathless. So once they took over, you know, they stormed at the gates of the Cannes Film Festival.
Kelley:They were in.
Andy:That's just fantastic. And as far as 1962, is that because, like, they were filmmakers and they kind of had a I don't know. They're in the industry, and it hits a point where sudden it's like, well, now you're kind of just a filmmaker. You're not necessarily the new fresh filmmaker that you were. So now you're just making things like Fahrenheit 451.
Andy:Oh, we don't know if we were gonna call that one French New Wave anymore. So, I mean, is that kind of, like, what happens? Like, why we ended at 62? And I know it's kinda rough, but, I mean, I'm just curious about the that ending that they say.
Richard:Kelly, where would you end it? I I usually say 64, but it there's not really an absolute.
Kelley:I think there are different ways to think about it. We could say we could just look at as as Richard does in his book, I think he looks at the number of first time films by young directors. That falls off. Some people like to think about the new wave as extending to May 68 when the political culture changes dramatically. There are, like, lots of demonstrations and people become increasingly political in their filmmaking, which which was different from how the new wave started.
Kelley:But I think my inclination is to have a very expansive definition of the new wave and say and ask whether, you know, it even ended ever. Because these folks set up it's an extreme view, I know. But these folks, established a way of working and a way of talking about films and a way of promoting their work and a way of foregrounding their vision that persists to this day. And, of course, they all kept making film.
Richard:No. It's a it's a good point because so for some people, everybody who ever made a new wave film is always the new waver. And that's where you define, is it a movement? Is it a cultural moment? Or is it a bunch of people?
Richard:And I try to get away from it just being people. But for a lot of people I mean, for a lot of French critics, they're always looking for, is this a new French new wave? Is this a new French wave in the seventies and eighties and nineties? They're still looking for a new one. But then Chabrol's out there being called the greatest French filmmaker of the 19 nineties, and they're still going on good art.
Richard:So, yeah, it's really hard to say. But to me, yeah, they're they're not they're not new anymore by 62, 64, 66. And the number of new filmmakers, Kelly's right, does drop off. So the conditions have changed by the mid sixties.
Andy:Well and and like you're saying, I mean, you know, on this show, I often talk when we're talking genres, talking about the cinematic family tree, like, where does that genre fit? And, you know, movement is a lot different than that. And but I it's interesting to look at, like, the different genres. I mean, even with the films we're gonna talk about, there's a variety of genres we're looking at. You know, we've got kind of this, some very personal dramas that we have.
Andy:We've got a film that feels a little more like a a crime thriller with elevator to the gallows. And so, we've got romance with Hiroshima Monomor. So even, like, with within the movement, these filmmakers are playing around with all these different, genres, and it's just fun to see what they're bringing to them because they certainly all feel, feel different.
Kelley:Yeah. Good point. There there's a lot of variety in terms of both the ways in which these filmmakers are using, the conventions of genre and then departing from them in radical ways. And also their, their style, you know, editing, cinematography, mise en scene soundtrack. They're really experimenting with those elements of style, but in different ways from one another.
Andy:Yeah. Yeah. And we'll definitely talk about some of that. Let's at this point, let's start talking about the films themselves and jump into them. And then as we talk through each of them, we can talk about what that particular director brought to the new wave, some of the different techniques they used, etcetera, and and really kind of dig into this a little bit more.
Andy:For everyone tuning in, we're we're gonna be discussing Louis Malle's Elevator to the Gallows, Francois Ruffo's The 400 Blows, Alain Renee's Hiroshima Mon Amour, Jean Luc Godard's Breathless, and Agnes Varda's Cleo from 5 to 7. And remember, we will be discussing an additional 5 films from the movement in our member bonus segment at the end of the show. Those films are Claude Chabrill's The Cousins, Jacques Rivett's Paris Belongs TO Us, Jacques Rosier's Adieu Phillippine, Jacques Demi's The Umbrella of Sherberg, and Eric Romer's Claire's Knee. So if you wanna hear that full conversation, you can learn more about becoming a member at true story dot f m slash join. Okay.
Andy:So as we discuss each of these films, let's talk about what stands out in the film that makes it French new wave. And, you know, per the outworked theory, as I said, let's let's talk about what each director brings to the film, some of their trademarks and everything. So starting with Louis Malle in 1958, elevator to the gallows. This is a French crime thriller starring, Jean Moreau and Maurice Ronette. This film follows Julien, Tavernier, who murders his lover's husband and then becomes trapped in an elevator while fleeing the scene.
Andy:Meanwhile, his lover, Florence, she's wandering the streets of Paris trying to figure out where he is. And then at the same time, there's a young couple who actually steals his car, and they go off on their own little mini crime spree, and it leads to a whole bunch of complications in the story. So let's start with this one. It's a fascinating film, and we're already starting in a place where we're looking at themes of, isolation, guilt, this psychological toll of of crime. On top of all that, cinematography, fantastic score by Miles Davis.
Andy:Lots of things to discuss with this one. And and then Louis Malle isn't a director that we rattled off in our list of a lot of those prominent directors.
Richard:That's a good plot summary, and then there's also the German couple thrown in with their Mercedes. But, anyway, yeah, it's it's an almost chaotic script in some ways. In other ways, it's very controlled. I'll just say that, yeah, Louis Mallet started out doing documentary film with working with Jacques Cousteau. He was a super rich kid.
Richard:Okay? This is his his family had lots of money, the big sugar company, but he didn't it's not like he wanted to make movies like a rich person. He made a really inexpensive film. He bought his own production company. He fit within a low budget to make this.
Richard:He had a brilliant cinematographer, Dicay, who could work in low lights. So we should say a little bit more about the techno techniques, which is, a lot of what they're doing here is trying to avoid studio sets with 3 point lighting and standard establishing shot, shot reverse shots. So longer takes and less lighting are cheaper and to to stage, etcetera. So he's doing that stuff, but he's also really into genre films. Film noir in the United States, I mean, was you know, had been defined by the French.
Richard:They're doing a lot of low budget detective movies of their own. So he makes kind of a stylish detective film or a crime drama that's got kinda tongue in cheek. Your main character's stuck in an elevator for the whole movie as well. So it's really a stunning movie on lots and lots of levels. One of the things that's important, he also had a good buddy who was into the arts and music who knew about Miles Davis being in town.
Richard:So he gets Miles Davis to come over. And in one night, in the studio, in the production studio, they showed clips of the scenes, and Miles Davis and his band just spontaneously ad libbed music to these images. And so, like, there's 8 what? 18, 20 minutes of of non diegetic music from Miles Davis in it, but it are it's some of the most striking images in the in French filmmaking with Jean Moreau walking along the street, sometimes talking to herself. You can see her lips moving, but you just hear this kind of sad, you know, thoughtful, mournful music.
Richard:So it was really a radical thing. And, on the there's, like I think it's on the DVD. There's a release of the French television series. The French television shot sent a crew over there. This was such an unusual production that they actually had a crew there that one night interviewing him in the control booth while Miles Davis is behind the glass, you know, playing his trumpet to this silent film that they're looking at, and they're just explaining, this is a brand new way to make movies.
Richard:So it was already part of the press too that here's this young guy. He goes on to win the the was it the deluxe award? Yeah. The Louis deluxe, which is one of the top awards for innovative filmmaking. He's 25 years old.
Richard:His movie comes out, and he gets the Louis de Luc award. And everybody who's ever written about Miles Davis said, this was a turning point in his career, that it really made him rethink the visuals in his music. So biographers of Miles Davis point to this movie. Film people point to it. And a lot of the critics said, look.
Richard:Louis Malle blew the doors open for what would become later the French New Wave. So, yeah, it's a it's a really important movie on lots of levels.
Kelley:I love this film so much. And every time I show it to my students, they they just can't believe how cool it is. For me, the the strategy that Mal uses that evokes new wave filmmaking, the most would be those those those moments that Richard already mentioned in which Jean Moreau wanders through the streets of Paris at night. And I think I I think we can believe Henri Duque, the the, cinematographer when he says that they used only available light. So he really had figured out how to use sensitive film stock.
Kelley:I think he used Tri X film stock at that time and then used the light from the caches and the bars and the street lights at you know, to to illuminate the scene, so that was radical. But also just the idea that you could take a film that was about a killing and, you know, and this these kind of these scrappy young people who steal a car and they're off on their own journey. I mean, these are elements of genre that we've seen before. But the fact that Louis Malle could just sort of stop the narrative and ask us to watch Jean Robert wander and think and worry and talk to herself in Nocturnal Paris to the music of Miles Davis. I mean, it's just stunning.
Kelley:And it it's just this moment to breathe and think and feel, and I just think it's brilliant, a brilliant choice.
Andy:One of the other elements of this from my understanding is the as far as, Jean Moreau, and I I apologies. You 2 both have much better French accents than I do. I never studied French, so my mine's gonna be a very American. But as far as, like, her look in the film is without makeup and just kind of, like, very natural look. You had mentioned not having costume departments, but also, like, hair makeup.
Andy:Like, they were just, like, having them look like themselves. And and seeing someone like Jean Moreau on screen who hadn't been made up to look like, you know, a movie star on the screen was also kind of a new thing that people were not used to. Like, she just looked like a real person walking through the streets.
Richard:That's it's a really good important point, and Kelly might wanna build on this. But, yeah, there's this this sense that, somebody like Jean Rowe, she she had done theatrical acting more. She'd been on some movies, but a lot of people had told her, you're not very pretty. You know, you can't be a leading lady in movies, but on stage with lots of makeup and far away, you can. And here within a couple years, she and and Brigitte Bardot are the 2 stop top women actresses in France.
Richard:So, yeah, you're right. They did away with all that. It's also another one of those wave boy things that Louis Mal and she started a relationship during this movie, and then they they were still together when they made their next movie, The Lovers. So the it became also this you know, there, there's a romantic aspect to it as well. But, yeah, she really did an amazing, amazing job and was liberated.
Richard:And I think a lot of young women, a lot of people talk about the sexism of the new wave, but, a lot of these actresses really found that they didn't have to play the usual kind of role and look their usual way and have the usual lighting, and they could represent a new generation. So, no, it's it's a really daring use of the female body, in lots of ways. And it's a really yeah. It's just a really meandering movie. And the fact that you've got jazz for a script that's not carefully controlled is gonna be typical of a lot of the new wave films to come.
Richard:They're not gonna have the sort of controlled soundtracks because you got characters who wander. Your music should be loose, as well. So for a lot of people, jazz became the soundtrack of the new way.
Andy:Also, I think it shows how immediately affecting it can be even in Hollywood. I just rewatched anatomy of a murder last night. And another I mean, there's a Hollywood film with fantastic jazz score running through it, right, with, Duke Ellington. I mean, it's just interesting to see how quickly these influences can happen. And I think that's one of the things that's so exciting about about the just the industry and just how global it can be, you know, and and how welcoming people are to these ideas.
Richard:No. That's true. That's very true.
Andy:We get as far as the the kind of the camerawork and everything, I I think, you know, the you already mentioned the the great cinematography, but, I mean, you're getting, like, some great deep focus and long takes. And, like, a lot of those long takes, like, on the street and everything, and that's that's also another important element that we're going to see kind of continue throughout these films. There's there's a lot of that that sense of allowing the camera to live a little bit more. Well, I say that, then, of course, we'll be talking about Breathless soon. But, I mean, there's there certainly is that element that we see in a film like this.
Richard:No. That's really true. The long takes, and Kelly can mention. Right? You you don't have you don't have professional actors who've been stay trained necessarily hit their mark.
Richard:So you kinda stay back and let them move and watch them with longer takes.
Kelley:Right. And I think also this kind of goes back to Bazan celebrating the long take and depth staging and but but yeah. As you say, Andy, but they're perfectly capable of departing from that long take style and using very brief shots as we'll see when we talk about breathless. And so I think it's just a willingness to it's just really hard to to generalize about the style of these films because there's so much diversity in it, and they're they're just really exploring. They're they're constantly exploring and experimenting and thinking, but what does it mean to tell this story?
Kelley:How can I tell it differently? How can I refresh, the codes of editing? How can I what happens if I what happens if I shoot the main couple of breathless in bed for a full one third of the film and nothing really happens? Let's try it. You know?
Kelley:They were just very open to experimentation.
Richard:Yeah. But also Louis Mal I just think Louis Mal in this movie and lovers, he really is taking literary notions of internal monologue and trying to figure out how to do it. The soundtrack comes and goes. And people don't celebrate his movie the way they do Godard and Renee. I mean, there are times when characters are speaking and suddenly you just don't hear it.
Richard:The music comes in. The just watching the title sequence where you've got this young couple talking the couple talking themselves, and you don't realize they're talking about he's gonna kill her husband, and then they're gonna go away.
Andy:Yeah. Right.
Richard:Right. Music just sort of stops. And she keeps talking on the phone, and you don't hear it. And he does that throughout the lovers, his next movie too. He really will play with, you know, diegetic music that, you know, it's right there, then it's gone.
Richard:Same thing with breaking up time. You have long takes, but then you don't there's a big gap until your next scene. Andre Bazan used to talk about that in terms of, like, the new way or in the neorealism. We'd say, what's great about the stories is it's kinda like they put these these scenes together, but there's gaps. It's like how you hop across a river, a stream by jumping from rock to rock to rock.
Richard:That's how their stories are put together, that there's these gaps in between. And that's really one thing that the new wave moves movies learn, I think, is to have a loose episodic kind of story structure. But you can also, yeah, spend a whole lot of time just watching somebody have a conversation without having shot reverse shots and have the usual editing riddle.
Andy:And, I mean, Louis Malle, I'm glad you you mentioned him because, I mean, just as far as, like, the filmmaker himself and and talking about, like, their styles and what they're bringing to their different films. I mean, we can see I mean, even if you jump into the eighties with, like, Atlantic City or My Dinner with Andre, you're still seeing a lot of that same sensibility in storytelling and the way that he is choosing to kind of come at the stories that he's telling.
Richard:No. That's really true. He's got a long, I think, a long fascinating career. And, yes, he's always gonna feel like, you know, he was innovative and he wants to continue to be innovative, I think, throughout his career. He's also he he's always gonna have, like, you know, another alter trait.
Richard:He likes he likes strong women characters, in a lot of his movies as well. But, yeah, I think he's a fascinating figure who gets overlooked too much. Yeah.
Andy:And, I mean, especially just like talking about those names that that we're addressing. Going back to that point, like, he isn't one of the names that you regularly think of as the French new wave. So it's interesting, like, looking at this as, kind of the first in our series of films because it was it was the earliest that we are gonna be talking about, but it's like, this is French new wave, and it's already happening before we even get to Fran Francois, to Truffaut's first film.
Richard:Right.
Andy:Speaking of, let's shift over to, Truffaut and the 400 Blows. This is a fascinating film, probably the one I've seen the most of all of the films, that we're talking about here today. It's his debut film. We've already mentioned that a number of these are first films for these people. This film follows the story of Antoine Duynel, a misunderstood adolescent in Paris played by Jean Pierre Laud.
Andy:Antoine struggles with a difficult home life, including an indifferent mother and a stern stepfather, and frequently ends up getting into trouble at school. As he faces increasing challenges and feels more alienated from the world around him, he ends up turning to petty crime and truancy, which builds to, the fantastic finale that we have when he ends up in, off to a boarding school and then running from it and just the that perfect way for the film to end. Alright. We've got this very raw, very honest portrayal of youth here. We're definitely seeing kind of, like, the the pain, the loneliness, the rebellion, also just the desire to have fun in our protagonist as he's kind of navigating this this world that he's in.
Andy:I hear that there's kind of an autobiographic element for Truffaut in this. What is he bringing to this? I mean, I mean, he this is he did a short film before this. This is his first feature, and this is the story that he wants to tell. So what is he what is he really bringing here?
Kelley:Yeah. Well, apparently, this the film does have many elements that correspond to Truffaut's biography. He he was a troubled kid like Antoine Duano. He had a complicated family situation. He didn't feel loved.
Kelley:He ran away. He went AWOL from the military at a certain moment. Andre Bazin was a kind of father figure to him even taking him in and letting him live with him and, you know, helping him find his way through the world. Truffaut was a huge cinephile, a huge film buff. He started his own scenic club very young, I think 16 years old.
Kelley:And he he did this thing that's kind of, it's it runs parallel to what Antoine does in the movie 400 Blows. Antoine steals a typewriter. But what Truffaut did that got him into so much trouble was he decided to show a film by Jean Cocteau, I think it was Blood of a Poet, at his inaugural Cine Club screening. And he is gonna be on Sunday afternoon and and and, but he didn't bother to actually get his hands on a print or, you know, he didn't go through the Scenic Club Federation to get the print. I and and, you know, he thought somehow that maybe Jean Cocteau would just loan him his personal appearance.
Kelley:I don't know why he thought that. None of that happened. You know? Then people showed up and there was no Cocteau film, and they were really mad. Also then he would do other stupid things, and he his bills.
Kelley:He ran up his bills. He really spent money he didn't have to rent films and to run this club. And eventually, he had to shut it down because he he had made all kinds of financial errors. And so he did that as a teenager, but he he eventually found his way, obviously. The film was shot on location in the 9th district of Paris, which around Place de Triches, and that was I think he grew up in in that that neighborhood in large part, and so that was his his stomping ground.
Richard:He did have a questionable he was never quite sure who his biological father really was. That comes out in the movie where, he hears them arguing about him, etcetera. He did have a troubled relationship where he was raised for a number of years by his grandmother and then may or may not have stolen from her too just like Antoine talks about doing in the movie. So there were there were family things, but it's also a lot of the things in it were anecdotes from his family or his cousins, but also he had a best buddy growing up. And so Rene, the the little boy who's got the eccentric older parents, apparently had older parents, who were less attentive to him.
Richard:So so, he so his buddy also helped in in with with writing script and putting in anecdotes. So a lot of it was very personal. But it's also, as Kelly mentioned, he was a film buff, and he put in shots, I think, that are, you know, quotes from certain neorealist films early on when the school teachers are just sort of hanging out, the kids are playing at the school. You get these these kind of shots that look like they could come out of, out of a Daesica or Rossellini movie from the forties. So it he's putting personal stuff in.
Richard:He's also doing what the Cahier critics often do, which say, gee. I wonder how Hitchcock would shoot this, or I wonder how Rossellini would shoot this, and then doing it. Renoir or Godard loved to do that later. So it's it is a personal tale. It's a very you know, it ended up getting like, the Catholic church gave it this big award because it's saying people should care about families and children more and stuff like that.
Richard:So it was an earnest movie even though it's funny. Again, it plays with genre, but, but it's also really an amazing performance from not only Jean Pierre Liaut, who plays the boy, but really out of everybody. So, so he took some first time filmmakers and some with a little career, but he's also trying to show how he starts his own film company. He he creates his own actors. He's gonna use Jean Jean Pierre Leaut, becomes the face of the new wave in many ways for years to come.
Richard:He's in many Truffaut films. So once again, just like, Louis Malle getting Jean Moreau into a movie and then putting her in to star his next movie, Michelle Moreau's gonna do that with people. It's also building a whole new generation of actors that, are gonna be part of your own kind of mythical filmmaking career.
Andy:Yeah. I mean, we'll see his the the actor who plays his teacher pop up a few times in some of these films too. So there's another one of those actors who Yes. And I didn't even mention in when we were talking about elevator to the galleys, but it's Jean Claude Briali who who pops up in that one, and he ends up
Richard:Briali's everywhere.
Andy:All the way through. Yeah. He's he's quite popular here. This is a great example of shooting on location and just kinda like that sense of realism that we get here. I I've never had as much a sense of a tiny Parisian apartment as when I watch this film, but I see his room is, like, right by the front door, and you gotta, like, step over him in his bed even to get inside when he's in bed.
Andy:It's like, it's so great to see, but you really feel like the I mean, it just feels like you're there, and it's it's kind of astonishing because you just you see that, but, like, you're watching Hollywood films even of this period, and they're all sets and the houses and everything. They're they're so spacious. Everything is so spacious. Even if it's like a a house of somebody who doesn't have a lot of money, it still is more spacious than it ever would be because the it's easier for the cameras to move around. But here, you're really getting in there, and you're in these little spaces and these these amazing places.
Richard:No. And that's it's a good point. And one of the things is that, you know, just look at how Paris is so different depending whether it's a Chabrol or a Romer or a Truffaut film, etcetera. But also you mentioned the the camera. I mean, they're shooting whenever possible with lightweight, handheld 35 millimeter.
Richard:This is on Ray Duque again. We just did elevator to the gallows and other movies with Melville, somebody who knows how to shoot light and quick without a lateral reversals, without 3 point lighting, setups, etcetera. And they're also starting to shoot with cameras that are really made for news gathering. So this is an era also after 59. Another reason is that they have new little Nagra tape decks that you can now have a quarter inch tape instead of big optical tracks on 35 millimeter recording.
Richard:You You can actually do sync style recording with battery packs. And you've got, like, one person has this tape deck around their shoulder and a microphone, and they're synced up to a 35 millimeter lightweight camera and sometimes 16 millimeter. And you've got a camera crew that's 2 people now. So you can get into small cramped spaces, without having fake walls and stuff like a Hitchcock might do in rope. So, yeah, it's it's a new technology these people are gonna use.
Richard:They're shooting in real apartments rather than renting studios whenever possible, and that's really important. And, also, Truffaut, in this movie and others, when he decides, well, I gotta shoot out a street and you got a shot of, like, Antoine and his buddy maybe walking in a long distance along the street someplace, well, you don't just ran pick a street by you know, you but, randomly, you pick a street where you know somebody who lives there. So you can go up into their apartment, put the tripod in their window, and watch them from a distance. So you're it's not only their spaces they're using that they're gonna act in. You're also using friends' spaces and stuff to use for to put your camera to have this you know, to have people walk by.
Richard:So it's a it's a new different kind of filmmaking of just problem solving, how to do things, little money. And how many of these movies? This one, elevator to the gallows, people are walking down the street, and people turn and look at the kids or look at the, Jean Moreau. Like, what's going on here? They're like, they don't quite get there's a movie being shot.
Richard:They're not closing down streets and hiring extras. They're just going out on the street and shoot. And I think that gives it this this also this liveliness. He's got, again, this soundtrack, that Greta Gerwig's gonna bring back and Francis and stuff. He's got this great soundtrack that's gonna be loose like the meandering of the boys during the day.
Richard:A lot of things in this movie remind us of some things in Louis Malle, I think, elevator to the galleys.
Andy:And another element with that is how they shoot Paris. And I think that's kind of interesting here because we do have shots in this film of, like, the opening credits we're kind of seeing we're doing a lot of drive bys, and we see, oh, there's the Eiffel Tower in the background. And it's they kind of have these these iconic parts of Paris in the films, but it's never shot in a in kind of the tourist with the tourist's eye that you'd get, like, in an American film coming over and filming in Paris, where those are, like, so iconic that it has to always be in the background or something like that. It's and, I mean, I'm sure as somebody living in Paris, they're probably used to it anyway, so it's it's less interesting for them to keep showing these things. But I do think it's interesting that they allow them to be there, but kind of from the streets is like a real person might see it.
Andy:Like, oh, it's kind of in the background several blocks back. It's way back behind those buildings.
Kelley:Right. And I don't think Truffaut returns to an iconic shot like that after the opening. Right? I think it's just in the opening credits where we see that Eiffel Tower. And then after that, he's in, decidedly untouristic neighborhoods like Pigalle and Plastic Tichy, you know, the 9th.
Kelley:I think it's it's a very fresh look at Paris for sure.
Andy:Yeah. This film is also speaking to kind of societal institutions, the way that you view schools, the education system. I I feel like that's kind of a thread that we see throughout. Was that a big part of what these French new wave filmmakers were looking at?
Kelley:I'm not so sure. I know that, of course, in 400 Blows, school is a space of repression. Prison, you know, this this this place where he has to go in the country is a space of repression. And, you know, the ending of the film suggests that he's broken free from that for the moment, but who knows what's next. You know, the military, we can imagine.
Kelley:But, yeah, I'm not sure if that is a a trend that I would identify as being part of the new way, the kind of systematic critique of of institutions. I think the films are so loose and the stories are they're telling are so quirky that, I would hesitate to to assert that. I mean, we could think talk about Godard's le petit soldat, the little soldier, you know, definitely criticizing the Algerian war and all that that has wrought in a very subtle way or or even umbrellas of Cherbourg sending off its one of its protagonist to the Algerian war and, and and thereby, kind of undermining the central romance of the film. But I'm I'm not sure I would say there's something systematic going on.
Andy:Well, Well, it's definitely an interesting element here in this one because you get this sense of I I guess in this particular film, it definitely just feels like part of this the the reality for this kid. It may not be a French new wave thing, but definitely, like, the education system just seems like it's not understanding him. His parents aren't helping out at all, and everyone's frustrated by him. And so he's just he's lost at sea and has to figure his life out for himself. And it's it's a very interesting element of this story as as we watch this boy figure out how to grow up.
Andy:Yeah.
Richard:And you're right. You're right. And and much of the new wave kind of at least questions bourgeois norms of what is a family, etcetera. But they're not overtly always as political maybe, as some people wanted them to be. But, yeah, they do kind of, I think, acknowledge, and especially for Antoine.
Richard:He can't go I mean, he makes fun of the priest. Teachers aren't there for him. There's nobody he has no safety net. His parents have their own problems. So, yeah, I think it's it's not showing that there's some easy solution to social problems.
Kelley:I would say, Andy, I think your point about, institutions is is making me think a little bit more deeply. It's a good one. The one institution that a lot of new wave films question is, of course, the institution of marriage and the traditional romantic couple. Right? For 400 blows, you see that is that's a broken marriage.
Kelley:It's not really working very well. And also they, like, they lie to each other, they lie to him, they're on different tracks, that that husband and wife. But also I'm thinking back to La Poincourt, Varda's first film which pits, a a deteriorating marriage of a Parisian couple against the lives of fishermen and and which and they have their own problems. The Lovers by Louis Malle and Elevator to the Gallows there too. We've got, you know, these these rebellious women who are leaving their marriages for something else or killing their husbands even or having their you know, participating in the killing of her husband.
Kelley:And then later, you know, I'm thinking about a film that Richard has written about extensively, Le Bonheur, Happiness by Varda, which is a subtle and scathing critique of the, monogamous traditional marriage. So, yeah, that runs through a lot of these films. What does it mean to be in a couple? What is marriage? I think about viv vivre sa vivre and also A Woman is a Woman.
Kelley:All A Married Woman by Godard makes a film called A Married Woman in Femme Mariet. So, yeah, that is definitely a thread running through these films.
Andy:Interesting. Okay. Well, we'll be sure to talk about that as as we kind of continue through this because inevitably, we'll hit it again at some point. Let's shift gears to our next film, same year, 1959. This is Elaine Renee's Hiroshima Mon Amour.
Andy:This is a romantic drama written by Marguerite Durand starring Emmanuel Riva and Eiji Okada as a French actress and a Japanese architect who engage in a brief intense affair in post war Hiroshima. As they navigate their relationship, they grapple with the memories of their past traumas, she as someone who faced humiliation for her love of a German soldier during World War 2, and he, a soldier who experienced the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Through a series of conversations and flashbacks, the film explores themes of memory, trauma, love, and the human condition in the aftermath of war. Very innovative narrative structure with this one. And I suppose that's a great place to start as far as what Renee is doing here.
Andy:Richard, do you wanna talk about what kind of this style that Renee is playing with?
Richard:Sure. And I also say I teach this often, and I've always been amazed at how many, especially women, want to go when they who are doing production classes say it really affects their own script writing. That it really seems to impress a lot of of of people even today, but especially young women, kinda surprises me. Duras, who is a very famous, new novelist of the era and, as well, and Renee. Well, he started initially, it was supposed to be a documentary.
Richard:He had done night and fog, one of the most famous films about concentration camps. And the producers had some money stuck in Japan, and they needed to make some kind of movie with about a French theme, but in shot in Japan. But they wanted to do some kind of, initially, a a documentary. And then he and Dorothee just said this this, you know, he just couldn't do it about Hiroshima. So let's do a love story with the the Hiroshima bomb in the background.
Richard:So it's it's a it's a really a new novel, and Rene is brilliant as a filmmaker, but he also is one of the few of these new wave people who put so much of his trust in collaborating with a screenwriter, a novelist. Because his next film is gonna be, Last Year of Marienbad with Alain Robrier, the other really famous writer of the era. So so it's as much Dura's story in some ways as it is as it is a Renee film, and they really did collaborate to, to work out this this real amazing drama, as well. And he chose the the actors mostly by their voices. Oh, really?
Richard:Apparently. And the Japanese actors spoke almost no French, and he just had to memorize his lines phonetically, which also creates this kind of kind of a strange, nope ness once in a while, I think, in the movie as well. So but, yeah, I think it's it's just a really puzzling narrative that doesn't follow a typical structure like a lot of these scripts, and it's a great, great representation of characters with very little psychological background in lots of ways. He doesn't even name them. Right?
Richard:I mean, they don't have names, I don't think. Right? They're just him and him and her, as well. So it's also it's a real product of the French new novels getting away from Balzac and psychological realism, getting away from so more than some of the other filmmakers, I think this movie is is not aware of and and breaks far from any genre rules in lots of ways.
Andy:And that's one of the things that really caught my eye was the the way that he played with those those mental flashbacks that were just incredibly quick that are throughout the film. And that today's eyes, I mean, we see plea people filmmakers doing that all the time, but reading about this, it's like this was kind of a a very new technique that that he was playing with here of of, like, these incredibly quick cuts. And sometimes it's puzzle pieces for us as we start figuring out what they're thinking about. Like, for her, it's like we see when she's looking at at, this, architect in bed and he's sleeping and his hand is moving, she there's a quick shot of somebody else's hand also kind of moving, and we're like, I don't know who that was, but she's thinking about something. And all these puzzle pieces that we as we start figuring out, eventually, we learn, okay, that was this German soldier that she had fallen in love with who ends up getting killed.
Andy:And and that was such a fascinating element of the story that really puts us into their heads as we're seeing these images that kind of just creates a mental space for them.
Richard:Yeah. And it's it's it's also it's the opposite of a classical Hollywood flashback. This is not not Casablanca where he suddenly starts to feel, now you're back in Paris.
Andy:So yeah. The dreamy the dreamy dissolves.
Richard:There are many times where you cut back and forth. Like, is this France, or is this a a street in Japan by the end of the film as well? And even just the opening where you've got this really stunning opening of 2 bodies with some fallout or something on them. And some woman is saying, you know, I I went to the museum and you see documentary shots of a museum, and he says, no. You didn't.
Richard:But you never actually see and she says, yes, I did. You never see her in a museum, but we see shots of a museum. Like, you don't know. What can you trust? Who's is this really her flashback?
Richard:Is her thinking? And I don't know of another movie where the soundtrack and the visual track are so different. Because a lot of what she's doing is she might be talking to the Japanese guy about what happened to her, but you we see images of her jumping over fences and meeting the lover and all these other things that he doesn't see. So, like, what is he what can he make out of what she's telling sometimes? So it's about a traumatized woman who is somehow reliving parts of that trauma.
Richard:But the amazing thing is we never get to know much about him. He's married and he seems to pick up a lot of women whilst that she's out of town or something. But we know nothing about him. The whole movie is really about her trying to deal with some kind of trauma, but it never comes to a foreground. And we never know.
Richard:Is she worse off or better off at the end of the movie? So Antoine Duenal is just frozen on the beach. To a certain extent, she's kinda frozen in her hotel room. I'm not sure what what she's gonna do tomorrow either. And that's another trait of these new wave films.
Richard:Robrier, the new novelist, when people when he made movies, people say, well, what happens next? He says, well, nothing. It's a movie. It stopped. You know?
Richard:All you can do is put on the first reel again. And the same thing here. Duras and Renee never wanted to say, does she go back to France? Does she stay? They said, we we're not sure we even agree.
Richard:So it's not this sort of realistic world that they're presenting to us.
Andy:Speaking of trauma, and, Kelly, I'm curious about your thoughts with this because there's, you know, she's she talks about over the course of the film, we're getting this sense of her trauma that she's experienced from, having fallen in love with this, German soldier, him getting killed, her being kind of locked up because of this and all of this sort of stuff that had gone on. But, also, at the beginning of the film, especially, we're getting a lot of, like, kind of very intense images of everything that the the aftermath in in Hiroshima. And it's, I mean, it's graphic and and difficult to kind of take in, really. But I think it speaks a lot to just trauma in general. I mean, how does that how does that end up affecting you as you watch this?
Andy:And and what is it what are they saying about trauma?
Kelley:I think Renee is asking us to hold 2 different expressions of of trauma in our heads at the same time. And it was risky if you think about it. And he was asked to make a documentary about the bomb. He said no, people have done that. And who am I to make that documentary?
Kelley:But, you know, I'll work with Margarit Doss and we'll tell a different kind of a story. So he found a way to do that. But he so he's asking us to think about the atomic bomb and then one woman's loss of her German lover. So that was risky. Right?
Kelley:And in fact, some of the critics at the time said, wait a minute. Are you saying that her loss is the same as Japan's loss of 100 of 1000 of people? That's outrageous. But I don't think he's saying that these are the same order of tragedy. But he is asking us to think about the commonalities of the traumatic experience whether on a national level or an individual level.
Kelley:And, of course, he spends most of the film exploring her trauma. I mean, although you're so right to point out, Andy, that those kind of quasi, documentary shots near the beginning of people in a hospital who have been injured by the bomb. Those are really challenging, and they really do ask they insist that we think about the cost of that decision. So it's not as if he's ignoring that kind of, trauma on a personal level in the Japanese setting, but he after that, he spends most of his time on the woman's trauma, which is on a more personal level. And, what I find interesting also is that, you know, he uses, as you say, he uses flashbacks in many different ways, many unusual ways.
Kelley:But he also he puts her experiences back in World War 2 out of order. It's not like the flashback sections are in chronological order. We as viewers are asked to put together that story. And I would say this film, more than many New Wave films, has a distinct division between plot and story. And by that, I mean, you know, the plot is the film before us.
Kelley:The film in the order that the director is telling us. And then the story is that other thing that we create in our heads through inferences, through assumptions, through the dialogue that we hear. We put together the whole big story in our mind by the time the film is over. Okay. So directors have different ways of treating that plot story distinction.
Kelley:But Rene, in both Hiroshima and, Last Year at Marienbad, really plays with a a radical disjunction between those two things. So he he asks a lot of the viewer. He assumes that we will work hard to understand what is in front of us. And, to his credit, I think he he pulls it off in a magnificent way. Even if we don't know anything about, World War 2 in France or what happened to those women who had relationships with German men.
Kelley:We are asked to feel that. And we we are there momentarily, and we are in Hiroshima, and we see the effects of that bomb. And so I I think so it's it's both a moving look at historical trauma and personal trauma, and it's a film that rewards the active viewer.
Andy:And there's a sense of in both characters as they as this relationship continues over, I don't know, 24 or 36 hours, something like that, of their journey to try to put some of that behind them. Like, not necessarily forget about it, but just kind of, like, move past it in some way. And it it feels like by talking about it and, like, having these conversations and the even just their entire relationship feels like there's this element of it that is both of them working on airing it so that they can move on. And I I found that to be powerful.
Kelley:Absolutely. It's very powerful. At some points, the Japanese man seems to be behaving as her therapist. He he even, you know, the the the, personal pronouns shift to the certain moment when she's telling her story. And pretty soon he's like, you are in the room and, you know, and where am I?
Kelley:He kind of takes on the persona of the German soldier, in a certain way. So, yeah, there it's very it's a very talky film in a certain way. I I mean, there's a lot of dialogue, but it's not handled conventionally. But there's a kind of sense that, you know, it's very literary dialogue, full of repetition, and it's it's just a gorgeous script. It's very Poetic.
Kelley:Stylized. Yeah. Poetic. Extremely poetic. But, also there's this implicit sense that, what is happening is is is similar to the talking cure or a therapeutic situation.
Andy:Yeah. Yeah.
Richard:No. That's true. And it's also very self conscious because, I mean, you've got an actress. She's playing an actress who's from France coming to make a movie about peace in this world movie about the bomb. So, yeah, it's also very self conscious and in in lots of ways.
Richard:So it it it knows it's a movie at all times. It reminds us it's a movie at all times. And at the same time, we, yeah, we start to really care about her getting her hair head shaved or being thrown in the basement again. So it's I think it's a real good for a spectator's position. It's a really fascinating movie, and it was really popular.
Richard:This is what students don't believe me. This thing was he this was like Time Magazine said, this is the New Wave's masterpiece. It sold more tickets in New York City than Breathless, 400 Blows, any of them. People went multiple times. And, also, a lot of people came because they were French professors, and they heard about Duras, and they're gonna see it for that reason.
Richard:But it was really, really popular, and so was Marinette. These difficult movies that today nobody would try to make, much less sell globally, was huge. And and then also so it shows just how exciting the French mille wave was to have all these different kinds of movies following one after another on American screens at big cities.
Andy:Yeah. It's that new voice that people it's just kind of a breath of fresh air. You're getting something new and exciting. I hadn't seen this film before, and it's I I I'd seen night and fog, which is a a powerful powerful gut punch of a film. And so I wasn't sure if I was gonna be getting some of the same here and, certainly, like, when it starts.
Andy:But then what was so fascinating is, like, once we get to that point where he goes to visit her on set and you're seeing, like, these reenactments of protests and all of this sort of stuff, and then but it started making me think, was I looking at real documentary footage at the beginning, or were they recreating some of this? Like and it starts it's and I suppose this is also a new wave element of, like, blurring the lines. I mean, we definitely see that with someone like VARDA where they're really playing with these lines of documentary fiction. How can we kind of combine these things in in these stories?
Kelley:Yeah. Absolutely. Renee got started by making, art documentaries. There was a a certain trend in the forties. He he's a bit older than some of the other filmmakers of making documentaries about individual paintings or filming artists like Picasso at work.
Kelley:I think Renee made a film about Van Gogh and, many others. He made 4 or 5 of these art documentaries. And then, of course, as you say, his 1955 Night and Fog was a monumental account of the Holocaust. But he he made others. He worked with, Chris Marker, another New Wave filmmaker.
Kelley:He made they made a documentary together about the French National Library and, about, African art. And, you know, he he was really, a very, very skilled documentary filmmaker. So, yeah, you see that in in the fiction films too.
Andy:Right. Yeah. Yeah. Let's shift gears and go to a very different type of film, Jean Luc Godard's 1960 film, Breathless. This is, again, his feature film debut.
Andy:This film stars Jean Paul Belmondo as Michelle, a small time criminal who models himself after Humphrey Bogart, and Jean Seberg as Patricia, an American student working in Paris as a journalist. After stealing a car and then impulsively killing a police officer, Michel hides out in Patricia's apartment trying to convince her to run away with him to Italy. This film follows their interactions and the tension that builds as the police close in on him. This film is very famous, for its jump cuts, the handheld camerawork, the acting that feels very spontaneous, very naturalistic. Again, not necessarily having the hair and makeup department come in and do stuff and very much breaking away from a lot of the traditional, filmmaking techniques.
Andy:It's definitely capturing so much in so many ways, the kind of the youthful spirit of the French new wave, I think, here. But you you my understanding is, like, some of the stuff like the jump cuts were because, like, the film was too long, and he had to figure out a way to cut it down and and shorten it. So just cut parts of a long takeout to make it shorter, which also speaks to kind of just, like, the the rebellious way of the movement. What is Jean Luc Godard like? How does his entry into, we'll just say, the the French new wave really kind of market and kind of re start reshaping things moving forward.
Kelley:So what's so cool about the dark well, first of all, it's an audacious, energetic film that students still love to this day. And, yes, his jump cuts were important and they but by now, it's become such a normal trend. I mean, you see jump cuts in perfume commercials. There's nothing radical about it these days, but it was definitely radical back then. And he, what I love one of the things I love so much about this film is it shows so clearly the love that Godard had for Hollywood B movies.
Kelley:So he dedicates this film to Monogram Pictures which was a Hollywood studio that made low budget, pictures including Gun Crazy. Fabulous film noir. Right? And so you may remember from Gun Crazy there's a moment in which there's a camera in the back seat of the car. We're watching the getaway car and we're we're in the car with them.
Kelley:And they've robbed a bank again, kind of a, you know, Bonnie and Clyde style setup where these 2, young lovers, are committing crimes and then they're on the run. Well, in fact, Bonnie and Clyde were, of course, influenced by gun craggy. But anyway, at a certain moment, the the female criminal is looking back over her shoulder over the back seat and the camera is ready is there and ready to capture her excitement, the excitement of crime. And it's it's just thrilling. And so, Godard in Breathless sits in the back seat or asks his cinematographer, Raul Koutar, to sit in the back seat of that car and film Jean Seberg's face as the 2 of them are riding around Paris.
Kelley:But he doesn't just copy gun crazy. He adds his own twist to it, which is to violate an editing convention in continuity editing or Hollywood's conventional style of moving the camera at least 30 degrees when you move from one shot to the next, so as to avoid the jump on the screen. So he he he used jump cuts, in that scene and many others, and it really adds a kind of vitality and freshness and kinetic energy to the film.
Richard:Yeah. And if I can just give a good example, I just wanted to again, student filmmakers either really love it or really say, if this is terrible, he's ruining all the roof he's wrecking everything. But so, yeah, at one point, the the the Belmondo character is driving with Seberg and mentions, he says a bunch of traits about her, and you get all these cuts of her from you know, that he's just taken out visually to to to to to to, but the soundtrack is continuous. So this notion of, like, it raises a kind of question that Louis Mal did early on. Like, where is the sound versus the image?
Richard:So this notion that you can have if this if the image track is broken up and pieces are missing, but the soundtrack is consistent and he's supposed to be him talking, It just throws everything into question, and it's it's a really marvelous use. It's not just a random use. That's why I've I've never been quite convinced of that whole idea of, well, he just said to cut things out so he made jump cuts. But because that was funny story, though. Did it in a very clever no.
Richard:Everybody says so, and he's claimed so. But it it it it must have led to a completely different production process. So, yeah, this is a movie that, Time Magazine again, the American press is fascinated with this stuff and said it's a cubistic thriller. So they're trying to make it into this sort of art thing as well. But, yeah, it's a movie that is gonna be very aware, as Kelly says, of other genre stuff, but it's also gonna play with constantly calling attention to the fact that I know I'm a movie.
Richard:So Belmondo's gonna talk to the cam his character's gonna talk to the camera, etcetera. You gotta go in and out of translation at certain points. Soundtrack will disappear. You get a tribute to, to Bogart. So it's about movies, and it's quoting movies, and it's also about being a movie in lots of ways.
Richard:And I think there's a there's a really good the first big new wave book in English, by Monaco. He said, look, The 400 Blows was fresh and new. Breathless was revolutionary. So for a lot of people, this movie just consistently the storytelling, the style. Kelly already mentioned earlier that, you know, long takes of them just having conversations in bed, and how is this advancing the the the narrative?
Richard:And, again, it's a very different kind of Paris than we've seen in the other movies as well. But, no, I think I think on every level, it becomes a primer. And Godard is the one who famously said, because France is one of the best films one of the most famous film schools in the world, EDAC, it was back then. And he said, you know, the best thing that ever happened to me was not getting accepted into the film school, Edeck, because then I would've learned where to put my camera. I would've learned to light like everybody else.
Richard:I would've learned how where to put a microphone like everybody else. So so that notion of, like, I didn't get into the school, so I'm gonna not follow rules was part of a personal publicity stunt maybe. But at the same time, there's a sort of pride with a lot of the New Wave people of, we're gonna find our own solutions informed by other movies we've seen, informed by our own personalities, and informed often by the spontaneity of the actors as well. So, yeah, Godard was a tough director during this as well. It's famous Seberg and Belmondo both were, like, ready to quit.
Richard:Belmondo said, you know, he's making a movie like it's 1915. We shoot everything silent. He says, don't worry. You'll fill that log in later. But he also did things like you know, there's the beautiful scenes of them walking down the street where he put the camera operator inside of a mail cart and with a little hole cut to follow them up the champs Elysees while everybody else is doing their other stuff.
Richard:The cinematographer is pushing a camera operator up the street, and Godard is walking next to him. Near the end, there's this great scene with circular logic where, she's trying Patricia's trying to explain to him why she's turning him into the police, etcetera, and they kinda go around the room. Well, he shot it in a wheelchair. So suddenly, things like wheelchairs are every film school in America got a wheelchair. You know?
Richard:That was unprofessional. You had to have tracks. So it really also taught people that you could, you know, you could use different equipment, shoot in different places. They go in an elevator at one point where he's gonna follow a guy up in the elevator. I mean, it's one of those tiny French elevators.
Richard:Well, you got a jammer operator with a camera on his shoulder up against the wall so he can show these 2 other guys go up and down the elevator. It's it just reminds you constantly, you know, that they're shooting in an unconventional fashion with no conventional lighting, without conventional microphones. So it's all a real marvelous experiment, and it's just a rousing kind of fun film.
Andy:And I suppose in the scope of guerilla filmmaking that you were mentioning, I'm assuming based on the way that they were shooting some of these things, like putting the you know, have the camera inside a mail cart and stuff that they also weren't necessarily getting permits. I mean, we've kind of talked about, like, not not using any extras, but just actual passersby. So, yeah, it just seems like they're probably just running, gunning. Like, let's just get this shot real quick.
Kelley:Absolutely.
Richard:That's really true. Yeah. Yeah. And I can say say, Truffaut had a very famous article in the 19 fifties before he made his first movie saying, you know, get out of this telling other filmmakers, get out of the studios, go out in the streets. You know?
Richard:She should use sunlight. It's free. You don't have to have lighting. And so when he got a chance and Godard and all their buddies, they really had already this this sort of aesthetic of liberate yourself, liberate your actors, liberate the camera, liberate your editing. You know, you don't have to follow all the usual rules.
Richard:And the fact that they made money I mean, Truffaut, they sold his North American rights alone for a $100,000 the first day at Cannes, cost him 50,000 to make the movie. So he's doubled his money before ever shown in a movie theater. Same thing with Roche Malone Award gets the top prize for for critics award. Breathless is gonna be just be this huge hit. So you've got these new movies made really risky fashion that are also proving incredibly profitable, which leads to a bunch of other people saying, well, I can make a $50,000 movie.
Richard:Do you wanna make one? So that's, again, part of that wave thing. These guys keep making new movies themselves, but inspiring a whole bunch of other people to try their shot at it.
Andy:It's it's amazing the way that they that it keeps, evolving and and changing. Let's jump into it. The last film we're gonna be talking about is Cleo from 5 to 7. This is Agnes Varda's film from 1962. It follows Cleo, in real time.
Andy:She's a Parisian singer, and, it's essentially 5 to 6:30. It's not really 5 to 7, but she's waiting for this, results on this medical test, to determine whether or not she has cancer. The story unfolds over those 90 minutes, during which she confronts her mortality. She meets various people. She wanders through the streets of Paris, and she's grappling with her fears and the possibility of her life being cut short.
Andy:And so it's a very transformative journey as she's kind of reflecting on her life, all of the decisions that she's made, shopping for hats, all of these wonderful things. And it's really reflecting, and it's all through this kind of this feminist eye and a number of different chapters over the course of the film. Fascinating way to kind of construct the the film and explore. So, let's talk about what Varda is doing here with this film and this shift that she's kind of made of telling us a personal story in real time of this woman waiting for this test.
Kelley:One of the things I love about this film is that Varda uses this characteristic mix of documentary realism, Cleo walking through the streets, etcetera. Cleo in the hat shop while the Republican Guard's horses go by, and so Varda is able to capture that, take advantage of it. In fact, she didn't plan that. So this kind of looseness that we associate with documentary, kind of spontaneity and street life, the students running around the Latin Quarter, harassing her as she's in that taxi. That funny moment.
Kelley:All of that was spontaneous. And yet, Varda is a planner, and she knows what she wants. And she's got a very carefully constructed narrative with Cleo's trajectory through, that part of Paris. All it's all, like, written and, planned, but also it has this sense of spontaneity. And also, another striking thing about this film is that it shows you how Varda was able to take advantage of opportunities and still leave her mark on a film.
Kelley:So she initially wanted to make a film in color that would involve multiple locations in multiple countries, and it would have a lot of music. It would be very expensive in other words. And so she went to the New Wave producer, Georges de Beauregard, and said, here's my vision. I think it was Godard who introduced her to, de Beauregard, back to your idea, Andy, of people helping each other out. And so he said, okay.
Kelley:You know, I'll let you make a film. Here's some money, but it can't be in color. It has to be in black and white, and it can't be shot in all these countries. It has to be, you know you know, in Paris. These are my constraints and here's here's the budget, which was small.
Kelley:And she figured it out. Just that's what, gave her the idea to create a story that takes place in one day or, you know, an hour and a half actually as you say. So she she worked with constraints that she was facing to create this really inventive tale of a woman confronting her fears, but also walking through a fascinating Paris. So that that to me is the strength of the film. The looseness, the documentary, plus the fiction conventions, and then, just this extraordinary, view of of Paris.
Kelley:I just I love whenever I miss Paris, I just watch Cleo because, you know, you really feel like you're there walking down the route of Rivoli near the beginning. You know, when she's going to that cafe, we get that high angle shot of her of Cleo walking and being talked to by extras who you know, non actors in the film. It's just that she really captures the energy of Paris.
Andy:And I like that she was able to sneak some color in at the beginning of the film with the tarot reading, which is which is fun.
Kelley:Yeah. That's true.
Andy:Richard, is I was just gonna ask you for your thoughts on this one and its and its place in the French new wave. Yeah.
Richard:And I and I also just wanna acknowledge, I mean, Kelly Conway is one of the great VARTA specialists and was a very, very close friend of hers, as well. And she even launched the 1st international conference for VARTA back in, what, 2002 or something.
Andy:Wow. Okay.
Richard:But but, no, I I where it fits is really fascinating. As as Kelly mentioned, I mean, it's I mean, Jacques Demi and Godard were good friends. I mean, Godard was her her, third lover and and then husband at this point. Godard was a good friend of hers and Anna Carina. So they're all hanging out and and, again, talking to distributors and producers and trying to get things made.
Richard:This film also for her first one, Le Plant Court, Ellen Renee was her editor, and I think she taught him a lot and he taught her a lot. But the editing here is also just amazing where you also have inserts. So just like Roshan Mamounamour where you suddenly get shots of, like, the museum or something. I mean, there are moments here where, she's gonna walk down the sidewalk and there's this incredible montage. Some are shots we've already seen in the movie.
Richard:Some are never in the movie. Is this her mind wandering? What's going on? So the editing is is also just, you know, kinda mind boggling sometimes where she breaks up that real time and space that is carefully told, here's the next 7 minutes of the movie. It tells you how many minutes that next scene's gonna be for each chapter.
Richard:And yet she breaks up this sort of mental subjective stuff too that we're not sure whose vision is this. So the editing, I think, is is one of those things that also we've got beautiful, beautiful long takes, etcetera, near the end when the camera pulls back and stuff. But you're also gonna have, her muse an actress who was in Jacques Demi's movie. So the she's also like the new way people creating new actors, but also some of them aren't gonna be professional actors the rest of their lives. So it fits a lot of things about the New Way, but especially that cheapness and the fact that many of them want to shoot in color.
Richard:Color is contemporary. Color is cool. These are contemporary filmmakers with the language of their era. They have spontaneous dialogue and slang and all this stuff, but they have to kinda shoot in black and white, which is the language of the past. So it was frustrating for many of them, Jacques Denis, especially, but but even Varda.
Richard:But she managed to do, yeah, again, do a great job of making this really beautiful female centered movie, which is also, really important for this era.
Andy:I'm glad you mentioned kind of the subjectivity because as we go through the chapters, that changes. And, it it particularly affected me when we got to that last chapter, and it was the 2 of them. I'm like, oh, that's just really nice. Like, the way that they they build to that. Because I wasn't expecting that to kind of turn into just kind of, like, this connection between the 2 of them, the way that he kind of thrust himself upon her.
Andy:It was just like, you know, such, you know, somebody who just one one of those people is very talkative and just wants to chat with you. And you're just like, I'm not in the space for that right now, but I but it it worked, and it built to that wonderful end of the 2 of them going to the hospital and everything. It's just really beautiful story that really gave us this sense of this this woman who's very complex. And I I think, like a lot of these films, I suppose there's this sense of kind of an existential exploration of what is life that we're kind of getting. And I think I don't know.
Andy:It was just a really touching powerful film.
Richard:It is. And it's also, again, very personal. Antoine the the guy who who's who the the soldier who's about to go off to Algeria was a former lover of hers and the father of her daughter. So they're, like, close. It's also got that suspended ending a bit like Antoine at the beach.
Richard:We're not quite sure, like, what's gonna happen with her. Is she gonna survive this cancer and how long will it be, etcetera? But it also has this movie has one of those great, great scenes just like the rotor in 400 Blows, where she breaks into song and and then re rebels in the middle of the movie. And she when she sings this sad, sad song, Cri D'Alour, in the in the middle, and suddenly, this orchestra comes up and you know? So it plays with this artifice.
Richard:It acknowledges it. That's one of the great things about The French New Way that has a bunch of shifts in mood, but it also keeps acknowledging we're just a movie. And she Kelly knows this very well. She was very angry at the end when she looked at the last brushes of that beautiful last shot of the doctor supposedly pulling away, and you could see a track in the background over the shoulder. And later on, she reshot it, but it just didn't see feel as good, so she left the track in there.
Richard:And the same thing happens in Umbrella Sherberg early on. You can see a camera track on the ground, but they just figure, hey. You know? We know we're a movie. We'll just leave it in there.
Kelley:Right. So she's, getting back to the idea of the kind of cross fertilization that was happening between these directors. So Varda was married to Jacques Demi, but their film styles were really different. But they both, of course, loved music, and Vardo wrote most of the lyrics to the songs that you hear in Cleo and many of her other films. But, also, remember in Cleo when the composer and lyricist come over
Andy:to
Kelley:help Cleo, who is a popular singer, there there were to rehearse with her. The pianist was Michel Negron who, collaborated with Jacques Demi, Barta's then husband, on so many fabulous musicals. So there's a there's a real connection there. And Bartle wrote the lyrics to the song, a song, that appears in Lola, Jacques Demi's wonderful film with Anouk Aimee, which takes place in part in a kind of cabaret. Varda wrote the song that MA sings, call me, you know, c'est moi, c'est la la.
Kelley:She wrote that. So there it was a rare moment of, Varda contributing to Demi's work because their their visions were very different about what film could be. Varda's work was much more rooted in documentary realism and a certain kind of experimentation. Jacques Demi was more interested in fantasy, fairy tale conceptions of of life, and and the Hollywood musical. But I love how in Clio, there are 2 paths cross in a certain way.
Andy:Yeah. No. That's really it's it's awesome how that happens because that's a it's a great little scene when when they're sing standing around the piano and and, they're all together.
Kelley:Right.
Andy:It plays really well. So kind of starting to kind of shift into our, the last part of our conversation about, like, the influence it had. We recently lost Varda. In fact, we've kind of hit in the last few years, a point where we've lost all of these last these, these, French filmmakers. But I think that, as you said, Richard, earlier on, like, these filmmakers kept making films and were making films all the way up through all of these decades and influencing people all through.
Andy:So, I mean, the French new wave itself went on to influence many different things. From my understanding, it played a part in the birth of the Japanese new wave and the Czech new wave, which were 2 of these, different new wave movement movements that we ended up having. But, you know, I think that there's a lot of other elements that you can see. I mean, even I I had a conversation a few episodes ago about Mumblecore, and this whole conversation feels like Mumblecore all over again. It's just like these filmmakers who just wanted to do something new and just, like, tell these stories, and it's just it's amazing to see.
Andy:So, I mean, talk about, like, just the influences that it had at the time and then just kinda like those waves of influence that it's had over all these decades.
Richard:I would at least I would say that one of the initial influences was in American independent cinema, so the Cassavetes of the world, people like that, to look around. One of the great ones is also, you know, Roman Polanski who famously said, well, if they can make a movie for $50,000 in Paris, think what I can do in Warsaw. So so it influenced a whole bunch of people around who just suddenly they looked around and said, you know, where I live could be cinematic too. You didn't have to have some place that, that, you know, looks like a magnificent postcard. You tell stories about where you live.
Richard:And I think that honesty, looser script influenced just about all kinds of modern filmmaking and contemporary filmmaking. And this is also the era when Hollywood's falling apart. That you get Hollywood, the big studio system is broken down, and by sixties, people are really grappling with where's the audience and what are they gonna do? And you wouldn't have had The Graduate. I mean, you know, the whole notion that, you know, even in The Graduate and much less Bonnie and Clyde, I mean, you know, they wanted Truffaut to direct it.
Richard:So American films wanted this French influence. American magazines are full of stories about these actors and directors, etcetera. So it's not just that they're gonna influence the sort of third world filmmakers or eastern or Eastern European filmmakers. There's really gonna be the sense that they were doing something important and others should do it as well.
Kelley:Yeah. I would say that, we should also, note that Varda, for example well, all of these filmmakers, as Richard said, influenced other people who were inspired by a low budget mode of filmmaking. All of a sudden, it it what used to feel like a very closed, industry and an impossible dream became imaginable for generations of people. And that's a that's a wonderful thing. But I can also say that Varda, for example, explicitly influenced a lot of, female filmmakers who can, you know, historically have been a little bit more shut out of the film industry.
Kelley:So I think in France alone, you can see influences on the work of Claire Denis, Celine Sciamma, Leticia Marson. And in the in the US, independent filmmakers like Kelly Reichardt, even Madonna loves VARTER and and thought about remaking Cleo and with with, and she would be she would star as Cleo but it never happened. So there's that idea too that if you want if you have stories to tell and you're clever and resourceful, you can you can find a way to do that. And that was particularly inspiring to women, I would say. Yeah.
Andy:Well, the in independent film movement as as you mentioned, I mean, I think there's a lot of that. I mean, you look at, as you said, other low budget things, Dogma 95 is another one you could say, you know, they're wanting to break the system and do something new. But, also, I think there's, like looking at the new Hollywood filmmakers who came in after this, like I mean, even Steven Spielberg, I mean, definitely not a low budget filmmaker. Brian De Palma, Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, all of these filmmakers in the late sixties, early seventies who saw what they were doing. And, I mean, you can see kind of like that period of the seventies in Hollywood really as a reflection of what the new wave what the French new wave had been, how they had influenced that.
Richard:That's really, really true. And, you know, I mean and more recently too. I mean, not only y'all Tarantino naming his company after a Godard movie and stuff like that.
Andy:Sure.
Richard:Students playing it's cool. But he might mean Sean Baker. I mean, I mean, to shoot a 2 shoot a movie with an iPhone, for tangerine on the streets, with non professional performers, I mean, is just the ultimate kind of, you know, tribute to the French new wave, I think.
Andy:Yeah. And talk about, like, that Godard energy in that film. Right? I mean, it's like
Richard:full of it. It's just like Sound versus image. Yeah. Bang bang. Yeah.
Richard:Clashing. Right. Right. Yes. So so no.
Richard:I I think it's, you know, it's one of the things that's like montage from the Soviets. You can say it's everywhere. And the new wave spirit, I think, is is also, you know, everywhere. And from beer commercials to, to Tarantino movies, you can see the influence. That's true.
Kelley:Yeah. I think as time goes on, you know, most movements only last about 7 years. You know, Italian neorealism, 45 to 52, Soviet Montage. Like, you know, maybe, we can argue about when that ends too. But then also, the new wave, roughly 58 to 62 or 3 or 4.
Kelley:But, always, there's, depending upon the, shifts in technology, shifts in funding availability, There there are these periodic bouts of energy around filmmaking that, I think about the development of digital technology as another moment. One that affected BARDA in 2000 when she picked up a digital video camera after kind of having retired, she starts making, digital documentaries that are stunning and that completely reinsert her into the world landscape of filmmaking. So I think the new wave is not unique. I mean, it it is uniquely fabulous I would say in terms of the films it produced but it's the the way that these filmmakers drew on new technologies, new methods of financing and, certain other kind of socio cultural things in the air of the time, the desire for reaffirming a new idea of national identity for example. I think all those things can come together in different periods and they do.
Andy:Yeah.
Kelley:Thankfully.
Andy:Right. Yeah. Absolutely.
Richard:And can I just say one one other one other in what just one other influence within France is that the CNC has always, ever since, realized how important this was? They give funding. They give a special program every year to first time filmmakers. They want 25% of their money to go to first time filmmakers still to this day. And that's why, Frank, it's a lot easier to for anybody to make a first feature film in France than anywhere else in the world right now.
Richard:It might be hard to get your second one. Wow. But you get special. So and the film school is also wants 50% women directing, etcetera. So I so there's this real sense of what was the new wave and how it should influence stuff.
Richard:And and the the system itself wants youth and new influences in their industry, and they're very aware of us. That comes from New Wave.
Andy:Yeah. This is just kind of a side question, but because so many of these, filmmakers started, in, like, the Caiad Cinema, Would you say that there was an influence in in film criticism and writing about film as well?
Kelley:Oh, definitely. I mean, actually, French film journals had been thriving for 50 well, going back to the twenties. The French kind of invented a certain idea
Andy:of film criticism, I have to say.
Kelley:And going back to criticism, I have to say. And going back to 1915 with Louis de Luc and Jean Marc Du Lac and and, Epstein and other people creating, film specific publications and writing really astute criticism. It goes way back. But certainly, the French new wave revitalized the notion that criticism was important and a space of experimentation in and of itself. But I think between 4560, there were something like, a 100 I wanna say a 185.
Kelley:No. I I know this because I just have, co edited a collection of essays on, the history of film magazines. I think in 58, there was something like a 190 film magazines in France.
Andy:Wow.
Kelley:Film publications. It's insane. Right? So this has to do with the, vibrancy of film culture of the time. But, yeah, I think I'm I'm I don't think that was completely unique to the era, but it it was somewhat distinctive, I would say.
Andy:Yeah. Yeah.
Richard:And the attention to detail, the attention to mise en scene were I mean, the I think the French criticism was not just about the story, not just about the stars and the history of the director. It was really about, you know, mise en scene choices, directing choices, as well as auteurism in a way. And and I think every filmmaker has been very aware of how they're gonna be looked at as an auteur. Do they have their own camera movements? Do they have their own use of depth?
Richard:Do they what what is their editing aesthetic? So I think it did just like film students. I think it really made filmmakers think differently. And so it helped educate audiences, as Kelly said, but it also, I think, helped educate filmmakers.
Kelley:Right. Also, I think something that might be unique to that period is that you can see this in the magazines. Magazines like the one Richard mentioned, cinema, which was linked to a a cineclub federation. You can see people believing that all kinds of films are worthy of our attention. Popular genre films, Hollywood films, Japanese films, and films from all Indian films, short films, feature length films, fiction documentary.
Kelley:There you see in the journals, attention is being paid to all kinds of film making. I think in 1957, there was an issue of cinema that featured John Gabon on the cover, the famous actor Right.
Andy:Right.
Richard:Who
Kelley:was so important in poetic realism and through the fifties, major star. So he's on the cover, and the magazine issue publishes excerpts from his memoir. And also, a really astute essay about this documentary film, codirected by Renee and Chris Marker on, it's called the Statues Merle of Sea. Statues also die. Is that what we call that in English?
Kelley:Yeah. Yeah. This film that was criticizing the art market in in Africa and also celebrating the aesthetic qualities of statues themselves. So, like, this is a magazine that can hold, you know, in in one hand, the star approach, you know, kind of fan, a fan ish kind of approach to the cinema and really astute film criticism about a challenging film. And there were also articles in that journal about the need to improve the film education of technicians in the French film industry.
Kelley:There was a call for, you know, new energy to be put into e deck, that film school. So, like, really practical calls calls for change. So, you know, all these kinds of discourses were floating around in one magazine. So it wasn't just Cahier. It wasn't just Pozettif.
Kelley:It was a it was a whole ecosystem of attention to film in all its forms and in all its glories. It it was a magnificent moment, I have to say.
Andy:Wow. And and just to have so many people excited and passionate about film, you know, that's that's what's really cool. So Yeah. Well, both of you, this has been a fantastic conversation about French new wave. A lot of really interesting information.
Andy:Thank you both so much for being here. I definitely appreciate it. Before we go, I want you both to have the opportunity. If you have, books or or any place on the web that you, want to direct people, do you have any anything you wanna plug?
Richard:For New Wave Books, Michel Marie, one of my former professors, and Kelly knows him, has a book in that was in French. I published 20 years ago, I think now. He has a French New Wave in Artistic School by Michel Marie, and I have a book called, yeah, the history of the French New Wave Cinema. Those are good places to start for general new wave things.
Andy:Fantastic.
Kelley:I should say, if you wanna know what happened before the new wave, Richard has a one another wonderful book that just came out recently called French Film History 18 95 to 19 46. And it's a book that come it's it's based on, you know, really in-depth research of the industry, aesthetics, reception. It kind of, like, looks at all kinds of films with a fresh eye, and it's gonna it's kinda like gonna be the new textbook in in classrooms that pay attention to French film. I just put it on my syllabus, Richard. But, also, let's see.
Kelley:If I wanna if I wanna plug anything, I wrote a book about Agnes Varda in a series, published by the University of Illinois Press based on living filmmakers. She was then still alive. Alas, she's no longer with us. But that's called simply Anya Svarta and it's a study of her key works and and specifically her working methods, her mode of production. How did these films come to be?
Kelley:How did they emerge? So you can check that out. But you know what? This we're really in a moment of, a flourishing of scholarship on on Varda. People will never stop writing about Godard and Truffaut, but I think true, Varda has come into her own now and she's the object of, many many monographs, collections of essays, exhibitions.
Kelley:She's everywhere. She was at LACMA, the Los Angeles, County Museum of Art, massive exhibition on her work at the same time as the Cinematheque Francaise had an exhibition on her life and her career. So she's gone, but she definitely lives on, as as do many, New Wave filmmakers. I mean, we're there's believe me. There's more to say about all of these filmmakers and their extraordinary work.
Andy:Yeah. No. Absolutely. Speaking of, remember, everybody, if you wanna hear us continue our conversation, talk about a few more films in the member bonus, segment, you can, go to true story dot f m slash join and learn more about that. Next month, we will delve into the twisted technicolor world of Italian giallo films.
Andy:We will be unraveling the tangled web of mystery, madness, and murder that defines this stylish and suspenseful horror subgenre. From the lush cinematography to the pulse pounding scores, we will explore how Giallo's audacious aesthetics and psychological thrills redefined the horror landscape. Prepare to be captivated by the genre's iconic masked killers, labyrinthine plots, and the seductive allure of its glamorous yet deadly heroines. Join us as we embark on a chilling journey through the blood soaked streets and shadowy psyches of this unforgettable cinematic style. But be warned, once you enter the world of jalo, you may never see horror the same way again.
Andy:Thanks for joining us on CinemaScope, part of the True Story FM Entertainment Podcast Network. Music by Orcus and Kyle Preston. Find us and the entire the next real family of film podcast at true story dot f m. Follow us on social media at the next real, and please rate and review us if your podcast app allows. As we part ways, remember, your cinematic journey never ends.
Andy:Stay curious.