The Nouvelle Vague

[DanielRoffle]

Routinely hailed as one of the most important movements in modern cinema, routinely derided as pretentious macho wank.

I've seen tons of Truffaut and Godard, but very little beyond that: out of the "big five", I've only seen one Rohmer, and nothing at all by Chabrol or Rivette.

I've also been getting more and more interested in the people working close to the nouvelle vague that aren't actually part of the movement - I love Jacques Demy, and am really curious about Luc Moullet.

Looking at Truffaut's movies now, it's sort of hard to see what made them so revolutionary at the time: he's very much a traditionalist film-maker, a storyteller. Apart from Tirez Sur Le Pianiste his movies are pretty conventional, storywise; of course, this needn't be a drawback. So he's less immediatley exciting to talk about than Godard, but he's got a pretty big catalogue, and there's some really good movies in there. I actually love the second Doinel movie best out of that series; also big into Jules Et Jim and Les Deux Anglaises Et Le Continent. Out of his latter work, I reccomend Le Dernier Metro, which on paper looks a bit too much like a glamour movie (Truffaut directing Catherine Deneuve and Gerard Depardieu in a movie about occupation era France!), but is actually quite powerful and engrossing; and Vivrement Dimanche, a Hitchcock tribute with a beautiful beautiful Fanny Ardant starring.

Godard is a pretty clear case of love it or hate it, I guess. Unlike Truffaut his movies still feel radically different from anything else, though perhaps a bit quaint as well (they're such time capsules.) I suppose I would have less patience for the guy if his personal obsessions (classic Hollywood cinema, leftist politics, pop art, noir fiction) didn't overlap so much with mine, but I love the energy and wild creativity of his 60's stuff. And for all his critical theory, at heart the guy has a fondness for what makes for great genre cinema - guns, explosions, car chases, dudes looking badass and girls looking hot. His movies also tend to be extremley fast-paced, which I enjoy. And though he's mainly considered an intellectual director, Pierrot Le Fou is a film that I find myself very emotionally attuned to.

Anyway, here's the thread to talk about Godard, Truffaut, Rohmer, Chabrol and Rivette - and Louis Malle and Alain Resnais and Roger Vadim and whoever else can be snuck in, as well as actors like Jean Paul Belmondo, Jean Pierre Leaud, Anna Karina, Chantal Goya, Charles Aznavour, etc.

[Mark T]

I'll need to do a little homework before I can contribute meaningfully to this thread, as it's been a number of years since I've seen some of the key works, but for now I can definitely recommend Richard Brody's book on Godard, "Everything Is Cinema". It's the finest book on cinema I've read in recent memory, and while I'm generallly wary of having films "explained", the insights on the man and his work are invaluable.

I understand your confusion on exactly how revolutionary Truffaut's work is, but his early work is revolutionary not really in terms of content, but in their actual production, with French cinema at the time essentially being controlled by an almost hereditary elite.

I love Louis Malle's work, but I'm never really sure of his status within the New Wave. Is he considered a forefather, or an active participant? I think the same question applies to Melville too.

Finally, a big gap in my New Wave viewing is about to be filled as I just got hold of a Chabrol box set, never having seen his films before. 8 films for £12! Looking forward to getting stuck in.

[Malmordo]

Originally Posted by DanielRoffle

Looking at Truffaut's movies now, it's sort of hard to see what made them so revolutionary at the time: he's very much a traditionalist film-maker, a storyteller.

Chabrol is considered by some to be the 'father' of the New Wave simply on the basis of LE BEAU SERGE (1958) being the first New Wave film. But Chabrol - a director who specializes in mysteries, thrillers and the three-act structure, and who for years took almost any project just to keep working - is even more of a traditionalist than Truffaut. At his peak (from the late 60s into the mid-70s, probably ending with INNOCENTS WITH DIRTY HANDS) he turned out some of the most entertaining, psychologically challenging genre pictures. He's my favorite of the New Wave directors by far, and for me the most consistently watchable, even if most of his work is...well...'traditional'....

[Tarkovsky]

I'm a fan, but I've seen criminally little amounts of these films. Some Godard and Truffaut, but nothing by the other three. Would like to rectify that problem sometime soon.

[DanielRoffle]

Originally Posted by Mark T

I understand your confusion on exactly how revolutionary Truffaut's work is, but his early work is revolutionary not really in terms of content, but in their actual production, with French cinema at the time essentially being controlled by an almost hereditary elite.

I love Louis Malle's work, but I'm never really sure of his status within the New Wave. Is he considered a forefather, or an active participant? I think the same question applies to Melville too.

Finally, a big gap in my New Wave viewing is about to be filled as I just got hold of a Chabrol box set, never having seen his films before. 8 films for £12! Looking forward to getting stuck in.

That's interesting about Truffaut - when I first saw those movies I assumed that what made them revolutionary at the time were the frank representations of sexuality, broken homes, etc. But I've recently read some excerpts of his famous Une Certaine Tendence essay and he rails against what he perceived as formulaic shock value - at one point denouncing movies "made by the bourgeios for the bourgeios to shock the burgeios" or something to that effect.

I think Louis Malle was seen as someone outside the New Wave when it happened, though certainly his movies share a lot with that sensibility. Melville was a father figure - he trained a lot of the nouvelle vague guys and they admired his semi-indie production mentality.

[DanielRoffle]

Saw today: Manon 70, directed by Jean Aurel (who did a few scripts for Truffaut) and starring Catherine Deneuve and Jean-Claude Brialy (who shows up in every other Nouvelle Vague flick), so I say it's close enough. It's about a young journalist who falls in love with a high rent call girl*; she loves him too, but refuses to give up her vocation because, hey, she likes nice clothes and shit. It's a pretty stereotypically french movie (oh, the french and their sexual permissiveness) which struggles to attain some Blow Up type commentary on the shallowness of yoof. But it's pretty gorgeously filmed, the music (by Serge Gainsbourg!) is great, and the whole thing is handled whimsically enough to provide a few laughs and a general positive impression, even though the main characters (including Brialy, who keeps asking his boss at the paper for advance money and ends up not writing any stories) are pretty hard to love. Not a movie to seek out or anything, but worth a rental.

* Well actually this might not be the best term for her: she basically dates rich guys and lets them pamper her. Some are aware of the financial nature of the set-up, some aren't.

[D.S. Randlett]

I've been renting lots of French films via Netflix lately, as I'm trying to learn the language in my free time, and I've accidently been picking through Godard's in chronological order. He just keeps getting better. I'm still pretty early in his career, having watched Masculin Feminin last night, and it seemed like a real point of maturation for him. Not only is it a wonderful film with a great lead performance, but it feels absolutely current in its content, and is still a revelation in terms of its execution.

[DanielRoffle]

Godard is a great director to follow chronologically, because during the 60's he was so full of ideas and working so fast, so even the weakest films from that era end up being entertaining as snapshots of whatever thoughts were floating around his head at the time; he couldn't really get the breathing space to be truly tedious.