A young American director once jokingly claimed that his earliest memory was of being taken by his father to see Godard's A Bout De Soufflé (1960), recalling the impression this experience made on his emerging consciousness. Since his father was often absent, the visit was engraved even deeper upon his memory, and in this anecdote Godard's importance in fathering a new visual language is made explicit: one sees a humourous alliance of artistic and biological 'Fathers'. While this story smacks of a shrewd and playful self-mythologising on the part of the young film-maker, it also reveals the status which Godard's debut possesses: it, of all films is synonymous with youth, with 'The New' in cinema, yet is also now foundational. That the film is so eternally aligned with iconoclastic energies is both due to its themes and style. The story of an American girl and Frenchman playing at love and crime in late Fifties/early Sixties Paris, is conveyed through fast edited fragments, shards of scenes, and post-modern references to pop and 'high' culture. This single film is, for many, the figurehead of the 'French New Wave', ironically as iconic now in its imagery (the posters that hang on so many walls of Jean Seberg wandering Parisian Avenues, or Jean Paul Belmondo turning up his collar, tipping his hat; the pseudo-American gangster) as those posters, albums and films that it itself pastiches and references. But in placing such an emphasis on this one film, in assuming that it was the progenitor of the 'French New Wave', what complexities, what lesser-known filmic gems are being ignored? And what exactly was this New Wave, this 'Nouvelle Vague' which is accepted as ushering in some new era in cinematic consciousness?
The New Wave is generally conceived of as a movement, facilitated by several notable French film critics and film-makers which criticised traditional film making, especially French movie productions, and was inventive and energetic in its output. Aside from Godard, the principle members were Francoise Truffaut, Claude Chabrol, Alan Resnais, Marcel Camus, Eric Rohmer and Louis Malle. Common to most of this group was the fact that they all worked as film critics for the magazine Cahiers du Cinema , which was co-founded by Andre Bazin. Bazin was not a film-maker but a film critic and theorist and his influence in shaping the approaches to cinema that his journalists employed cannot be underestimated. There is a love amongst historians and academics of identifying trends and posthumously assigning labels to actually rather disparate or very lose groups, making 'movements' where there were really only individuals. However, there is a strong case for seeing the Nouvelle Vague as a cohesive movement, at least in its initial stages.
The idea of a coherent movement was helped greatly by two media campaigns. The first was a survey launched by L'Express, to identify and understand new French youth generally; their tastes and more relaxed attitudes. It was this group, the dynamic younger generation that was first named 'The New Wave.' As Francoise Truffaut has stated, "It [the French New Wave] was first an invention by journalists, which became a reality". However, it became applied specifically to film-makers when the Cannes Film Festival was created, and Unifrance-film, the national agency for cinematography gathered up-and-coming French directors together for a publicity junket. At this event were Francoise Truffaut, Claude Chabrol, Jean-Luc Godard, Marcel Camus and Cahiers du Cinema editor Jacques Doniol-Valcroze.
Despite Truffaut's protestations that "it never really corresponded to reality in the sense that.people seemed to believe there was an association of young French directors who got together regularly and had a plan, a common aesthetic, when in fact there was never anything like that and it was all a fiction, made up from those outside", it is possible to identify certain trends in the output of young French directors, (especially those involved with Cahiers du Cinema) which marks them out from films made previously, and which does make them more akin to each other than what had come before or since.
The principal defining characteristic of the New Wave directors was a desire to do away with the so called 'Tradition of Quality' that dominated French film making at that time. This tendency was for heavy-handed adaptations of classic novels, with high production values, and a very technical yet uninventive style. These films were much lauded, and the system in place (of producers, directors and screen writers) was staid, seemingly immovable. Although Godard was vocal in his attacks on this system it was Truffaut who really laid down the gauntlet (alienating himself severely in the process) by writing an article entitled 'A Certain Tendency Of The French Cinema' which criticised most involved in cinema viciously. What the newer directors found so objectionable was the lack of true 'cinematic' vision in the films: they remain 'literary' adaptations, with more interest in verbal than visual forms. The ascendancy of the novel is clear in the wordiness, the visual stagnancy and unimaginative editing, the total formal poverty identified by Truffaut. The alternative to this stagnancy is visible in Truffaut's own work: Jules Et Jim (1962) is itself a literary adaptation, yet in its energy, and in Truffaut's eye for spectacle (cars plunging into lakes, women pretending to be steam trains, puffing cigarette smoke from their noses, a camera that fluidly spins to capture the vitality of the young) it translates the story into a cinematic event, true to the tone of the book, but never nostalgic in its evocation of the past. The same is true of the characterisation: the dilemmas of the central ménage a trios, are informed by their epoch but eternally modern owing to their tangible 'human-ness', their humour, sadness, boredom and moments of exhilaration.
Most criticised by the New Wave directors was the lack of empathy visible in the Cinema of Quality, the reliance on stereotypes and the seemingly distant directorial involvement. But it was not simply an attack on all past cinema, all previous generation's work: many New Wave directors deeply admired thirties film-makers such as Renoir and Jean Vigo, and reflections of their more nuanced approach to human affairs are seen in many New Wave films, principally of course, in Truffaut's semi-autobiographical Les Quatres cent coups (1959). This follows a bright, adventurous but neglected young boy's descent into juvenile detention, a subject not previously deemed worthy of filming, or certainly not in such an even handed, quietly observational manner.
Claude Chabrol also displayed this exacting interest in human behaviour, as seen in earlier work such as Le Beau Serge (1958/9) and Les Cousins (1959), which concentrates on the rituals of young Parisians, the clubs, parties, posturing and facades of the myriad characters performing for his camera. Le Beau Serge , his debut, tells of the dilemmas a young man faces when he returns from the city, an urban sophisticate, and attempts with partial success to reintegrate himself into his old, impoverished, rural background. Chabrol went on to couple his interest in class rituals with his passion for detective stories. Hitchcock was greatly admired by most New Wave directors, and can be seen as the formative influence on Chabrol's great series of murder mysteries, which concentrate on the emotional realities of often absurd or tragic situations. As well as the widespread admiration for American directors such as Howard Hawks and for Alfred Hitchcock, what distinguishes the New Wave group was a defiant love and elevation of certain elements of 'low' culture. American B-movies, detective or Sci-Fi, were considered and referenced with great interest. This democratisation and engagement with mass culture, this Pop aesthetic can be seen in works such as Godard's Alphaville (1965) and Resnais's Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959).
From this analysis one sees that although there was a great variety in themes and methods of the New Wave directors, what unifies them is their struggle to make films which were truly of their time, with a fresh unprejudiced attitude towards contemporary lives and culture. Although there was a great media furore over their works, many films such as Truffaut's Tirez sur le pianiste (1960) and Godard's Une femme est une femme (1961) were commercial failures, leading critics to further denigrate their attempts. The tenuous unity of the group was also not long-lasting, with Godard and Truffaut often publicly criticising each other and many directors ending up pursuing either more obscure or populist paths. Godard has continued to produce films steadily since his debut, yet has often been unable to find distribution for his work in the UK . He turned, in the seventies to a film-making which demanded more from the viewer than many were inclined to give, which is not to diminish the intelligence and relevance of his work. Increasingly overtly political, he could be said to produce essay style cinema, which nevertheless continues to utilise many the cinematic possibilities. His recent Eloge a l'amour (2001) was more approachable and more widely seen than his 1980s work, and was thrilling viewing. Using many different textures (black and white, video, digital film) and again eschewing conventional narrative structures, it mounted a still-potent attack on American cultural imperialism, whilst playing with US cultural forms.
Returning to the New Wave as it began, one could level the criticism that for all the radical ideas in play within the works, not all prejudices were overturned; there is still discernable a lack of truly original female roles, despite certain interesting female characters. However, the achievements of the New Wave cannot be dismissed, and we can still see the legacy of its artistic impulses today, whenever someone makes a truly interesting film interested in expanding formal boundaries and certain cultural assumptions. What New Wave directors did was to identify the prejudices and doctrines, the entrenched ideologies of cinema, of cinematography, editing, set building and even acting, and to question them. It is for this reason that, even if the films now have been aped, if their originality is slightly jaded, one can still feel their freshness, their desire for a more empathetic, truer cinematic reflection of the world as it is.
Joanna Coates
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