My French New Wave ‘Hero’: Jean-Luc Godard
The French New Wave Movement, used to describe a new wave of French filmmakers in the 1950s and 1960s, was characterized by its directors’ rejection of traditional cinema, social commentary, and desire to capture the moving image in new and inventive ways. The image that should be coming to mind is one of wealthy French men and women in their mid 20’s in either a coffee shop or roaming the streets of paris, cigarette trailing behind. The whole point of the movement was not to go against traditional cinema, but rather take it and use it in ways that no one had ever though of before.
Let me be honest — I don’t know nearly enough about this movement, nor have enough of an appreciation for it in the way that I wish I did to legitimately chose a hero for it. I mean, a hero has important shoes to fill if they’re going to represent an entire cultural movement, or at least do so in a large capacity.
That being said, let me tell you a bit about Jean-Luc Godard, because I know that he’s a big name in the French New Wave movement.
Who He Was
Jean-Luc Godard is a Franco-Swiss filmmaker and one of the leading members of La Nouvelle Vague. He criticized the French tradition of valuing quality over innovation, and to respond to this ideology he made some pretty radical films, delving into french politics, Marxism, film history, and the nature of human relationships. In his youth he wasn’t all that fond of movies, but was a fan of Outline of a Psychology of Cinema, and La Revue du cinéma. In the 1950s he joined a few of the ciné-clubs popping up in Paris, including (our favorite) the Cinémathèque, but his early work in cinema started with film criticism, writing in Gazette du cinéma. Around 1952 he started making short films like Opération béton, a short documentary-turned-commercial on the construction of the Grande Dixence Dam, and Une femme coquette. His most celebrated works, like Breathless (1960) and Week End (1967) were born between 1960 and 1980, when things started to get weird for traditional filmmakers. Politics were always present in his films, either in a commentary on the nature of the Algerian War for Independence, or from his Marxist ideologies.
By 2002, “He is said to have “created one of the largest bodies of critical analysis of any filmmaker since the mid-twentieth century.” -Wikipedia
Innovation
Some techniques that he developed or borrowed include the following ;
- References to films within the film (through citations, movie posters, etc)
- Handheld camera movement
- Minimal, mostly natural lighting
- Jump cuts
- Character asides
- Breaking the eye-line match cut
and so many more
