Godard and the French New Wave

Two weeks in and things are going well. Add three more to the tally to make twelve.

All About Steve
A Woman is a Woman
Band of Outsiders

Six per week is a blistering pace, and I’m sure I won’t keep it up.

Something I am doing right now is going through the films of the great French director Jean-Luc Godard. Godard is one of the pioneers of the French New Wave film movement that began in the late 50’s and ran through the middle of the 60’s. The French New Wave was very influenced by Italian neo-realism which was a movement in Italian cinema about a decade earlier where films were more “real” and a little less literary and polished. Old Hollywood also influenced this movement quite a bit, especially directors like John Ford and Alfred Hitchcock.

The point of French New Wave was to make excellent films about real people on small budgets. Dialogue is huge in this movement, as well as doing wonderful things with simple cameras and being very creative in the editing room. Godard specifically did what was called a “jump cut” where he would cut a scene seemingly in the middle of it and jump to the next scene, but without compromising the script in anyway. He did this a lot in his film “Breathless” which was a New Wave pioneer film from 1959. Godard also did some really creative if not risky things with music in his films where he would stop a song right in the middle of it for effect, then pick the song back up again, almost as if a record skipped, but its obviously intentional.
Francois Truffaut was another director that was very influential in New Wave cinema, especially with his first feature film, “The 400 Blows”. After I watch my way through Godard’s films, I’m going to watch more Truffaut, and I'll write about my experiences with both as I go. I’m excited about diving more into this movement.