GROUP MEMBERS

GROUP MEMBERS:

Annie Teo Hang Seng   1201146

Lavanya Ravi Kumar    1300828
Ooi Boon Chun         1204984
Wendy Tan Sheun Feng  1201964

Yeoh Su Wen           1300888

INTRODUCTION

In the late of 1950s, a group of French people and filmmakers are trying to break all the traditional filmmaking techniques in shooting a film. It is called French New Wave. They are few directors like Francois Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Chabrol, Eric Rohmer, Jacques Rivette, Louis Malle, Alain Resnais, Agnes Varda and Jacques Demy have been tried out this new way of filming, most of them were being influenced by the movement, both in France and abroad. In generally, they are trying to explore another type of movement rather than follow all the typical traditional camera shots in order to fulfill the specific genre.

The directors have created a new cinematic style by using breakthrough techniques and a new approach to convey the story. This kind of techniques will able to express the ideas in more complexity in both direct and emotionally. Besides that, they are also using jump cuts that are seldom exist in the traditional films because they feel that it is very bored and will lose attention from the audiences easily. Oppositely to French New Wave filmmakers, this is the point they would like to emphasize.

Out of the first time, the filmmakers do not rely too much on big studios. They do not hire professional actors and actresses. They do not want to mix any sounds in studio. They do not focus too much on the quality which is being edited nicely. They want things onscreen to be as real and natural as possible. A simple example is that if there is a shot that shoots a character walks alone on a street, there is possible to have other street people pass by. These young men love films and wanted to get something different into French commercial cinema.

History and Development

French new waves started off during the period of 1950s to 1960s and it was one of the most significant film movements in the history of cinema. The New Wave actually not began with films, but articles and magazine survey until this ideology turned to be a slogan “The New Wave Arrives! ” that gave a hit to the new youthful generation in French, especially a group of young directors.

The import of American films had been banned during the occupation by Nazis. After the ban was lifted by the 1946 Blum-Byrnes agreement, cinephiles had the opportunity to watch those previously unreleased movies at the Cinematheque Francaise, a film archive and public theatre in Paris. (Hitchman, 2008)

In the 1950s, there was a documentary movement that happened in France and many filmmakers were making documentaries of Nazi death camps, cinema verite and sane man in lunatic asylum. (Bordwell, 2013, p.486) In the mid-1950s, a group of young generation writers who wrote critiques for magazine such as Francois Truffaut, Jean-Luc Gordard, Eric Rohmar, Caude Chabrol, Jacques Rivette and etc. This group of critics and theorists had started to write forCahiers du cinema -- a French film journal (Monaco, 2000). They mentioned that directors should be innovative to create new film movement and rejected “Film system”. Cahiers du Cinéma is the most important and popular film journal that first appeared in 1951 which set up by Andre Bazin and Jacques Donial Valcroze. (Hitchman, 2008)

Bazin, one of the authors and is the father figure of these critics. In 1953, Francois Truffaut, a critic from younger generation which wrote an essay entitled “A Certain Tendency of the French Cinema”. Bazin blames this tradition of adapting safe literary works, and filming them in the studio in an old fashioned and unimaginative way. (Hitchman, 2008) Truffaut had argued that, this style of cinema does not have visual enough and he had relied too much on the screenwriter. Hence, they labeled it 'cinema de papa', and argued that film should be directors' independent creation (Hitchman, 2008).

There are two principles held at Cahiers du Cinéma. The first one is theyfeel that real cinema should rejects montage aesthetics, and favoring mise-en-scene. They want the audience to think and to feel it and let them know that they are watching a film. The second principle is personal authorship which explained an ideology of “Policy of Authors” or Auteur Theory states that film should be a medium of personal artistic expression, bearing the filmmaker’s signature which is personality controlling obsession and cardinal themes. This is about the personality of a director and auteur theory was a radical new approach to cinema. An auteur usually did not literally write scripts but managed nonetheless to stamp his or her personality on studio products, transcending the constraints of Hollywood’s standardized system. (Bordwell, 2013, p.486)

From Bordwell, D. Thompson, K. (2010). Film art and film history: The French New Wave. Film Art: An Introduction (9th ed.), it stated that writing the criticism did not satisfy these young filmmakers, they decided to make their own movies in a low budget by borrowing money from friends as well as shooting on location. In brief, these group of young filmmaker using several new techniques like editing style, long take as well as shot composition to film a movie. This is their way to express their creative thinking and ideas.

During 1959-1960, 67 filmmakers made their first feature film, only 55 per cent came from backgrounds not directly from the field of film-making. Another 45 per cent was made up of short-film directors like Alain Resnais or Agnes Varda and film assistants. Their cinematic sensibilities are sharpened through long hours spent in the various Parisian cinematheques and film clubs. Everything from movies by realist Italian directors like Roberto Rosselini to hard-boiled noir and B movies from America, as well as early silent classics and even the latest technicolour Hollywood musicals had deeply influenced the filmmakers. (Hitchman, 2008)

New Wave film-makers were largely non-politicized. If their films had any political aura it came down to the fact that some film-makers carried on the 1930s tradition of criticizing the bourgeoisie. Nowadays, the filmmakers place their narratives in contemporary discourses by viewing the bourgeoisie from the youth point of view. The other reason why the New Wave might have been perceived as political, is that there were in fact two New Waves.

In the mid-1960’s, the French New wave started to die down from being a major movement. New wave directors had their own production company or hired by production companies and started to involve themselves in film industry. At the beginning they did not want to involve themselves in film industry because they rejected film system. Later it turned to become more commercialized then they started to work in production house. Jean-Luc Godard’s films are the only films which are nationally and internationally recognized as radical and political.

Characteristics

• Handheld Cameras In French New Wave films, the camera moves a great deal, panning and tracking to follow characters. Portable equipments such as hand held camera is preferred to make mobile shots. In The 400 Blows, the camera explores a cramped apartment and rides a carnival centrifuge.

In Breathless, the cinematographer held the camera while seated in a wheelchair to follow the hero's winding path through a travel agency (11.32). This kind of camera style made some scene look like shaky and unstable but at the same time, it create a more spontaneous or realistic film style.

The making of Breathless 1960 with handheld camera.


 • Long Takes In this “long take”, the camera keep shooting a scene for long time. In long takes there is little or no camera movement to shoot a scene with no mistakes. For instance in Breathless 1960, the film goes from having two or three second shots with police and secondary character reactions to having seventeen or even fifty second intervals of Michel running. Instead of cutting to the end of the chase, Godard decided to prolong Michel’s running scene and let his audience feel the exhaustion the protagonist feels. This scene, shows the desire of French New Wave filmmakers to break with tradition and hone in on the aspects of film that can make the story feel real to their audience. The scene is look natural and realistic for the audience.

 Example of long takes in Breathless 1960.
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbmiRCh_OeQ

 • Jump Cuts French New Wave films do not practice continuity editing but use free editing style such as jump cuts. Jump cut is an abrupt cut between two shots that calls attention to itself because it does not match the shot seamlessly. The narrative is transposed from one time and space to another without any explaination such as a shot or voice-over.

The directors of French New Wave often drew attention from audiences by discontinuity, reminding them that they are watching a movie.

For example, in Breathless 1960, they used many jump cuts. Example of jump cuts in the video below.
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=diNUplP7GZ8

 • Location Shooting & Available Light The main feature of a French New Wave films is their casual look. Shooting on location became the norm. The directors choose put their settings in actual location compared to shooting in studio. The sound in French New Wave film is live recorded which was unusual during this era. The sound of some scene in Breathless (1960) is louder and some is softer. The glossy studio lighting was replaced by available light and simple supplemental sources. For example in Paris Belongs to Us, the setting was in dim apartment and grimy corridors.

 Michel and Patricia talking to each other at crowded street.

Retrieved from http://www.criterion.com/current/posts/2462-sight-sound-poll-2012-breathless

 • Improvised plot & Dialog The storyline of a French New Wave films is planned in a very short time and not planned well. Directors of French New Wave films often allow the actors to improvise dialogue and even to make changes in the plot. Actors were also encouraged to talk over each other to get a natural sense in the movie.The ending of the French New Wave films is usually ends ambiguously. For example, in the movie Breathless, 1960, the storyline was very casual as its planned on the shooting time but not during the pre-production.

French New Waves Video

French new wave video

If the video is not clear, click http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQXlVVkFeCY  :)

Description of Video

This video is a tribute to French New Wave movement. We applied most of French New Wave characteristics in this video. The aesthetics of French New Wave in this video is most of the scenes in shooted in the real location such as restaurant and play ground. 

Next, only direct sound and available light used in shooting this video. As you can see from the video, the main character is sleeping in his room with natural room light from the window. Then he goes to a restaurant. We can clearly hear the noise of the restaurant showing that the noise was not removed in the editing. We use handheld camera to shoot the whole video.We can see the scene that the main character is chased by a group of people, is very shaky and unstable. The shaking of the camera demonstrates the low budget shooting typical of French New Wave films. We can see from the beginning to the end of the video that the dialogues are very natural where is it not planned earlier. The actors are asked to talk on the spot when shooting so they can create their own dialogue. We can also see many jump cuts in the restaurant scene. This is to attract the audience to give attention to the video. 

The main character is a young anti-hero and loner who does not have family ties. He behaves spontaneously and act immorally. He cheats people money by asking them to give money to him for investment and he gambles to earn fast money. But he still cares about a girl who stays in the same orphanage by giving her money and take care of her. This shows that although he does immoral activities, he still have someone who cares about. This video ends with the main character whacked by people and he walks away alone. It is an open ending story and no answer to be found what is his real characteristics.

French New Waves is truly a great film movement which has unique characteristics. We are honored to make a video as a tribute to French New Wave. Hope you all enjoy our video.

REFERENCES

References

Bordwell, D. Thompson, K. (2010). Film art and film history: The French New Wave. Film Art: An Introduction (9th ed.)

Bordwell,David &Thompson, Kristin (2012) Film Art An Introduction, 10th ed., USA: McGraw-Hill

Hitchman, S. (2008). A History of French New Wave Cinema. Cashiers du Cinema. Retrieved from http://www.newwavefilm.com/about/history-of-french-new-wave.shtml

Hitchman, S. (2008). A History of French New Wave Cinema. New Developments. Retrieved from

http://www.newwavefilm.com/about/history-of-french-new-wave2.shtml