In the 1950s and 60's a post-war movement began in France, lead by writer's for a French magazine Cahiers du Cinema such as Francois Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard (A Bout de Souffle) and Claude Chabrol . It encompassed a lot of documentary style film techniques in order to challenge traditional film styles and make audiences acutely aware that they are watching a media text which has been artificially constructed, as a backlash against the influence of Nazi propaganda.
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| A Bout de Souffle poster |
The idea of an anti-hero emerged form a lot of these films, having protagonists be morally ambiguous and focusing more on an aspect of audience identification rather than aspiration.
Some conventions of the movement found through research:
- Low budget
- pretty much all indie productions
- shot on site because of this (people's houses or public locations)
- cast was often people that the director already knew
- transportable equipment
- e.g. in Godard's A Bout de Souffle a scene shot on the Champs Elysees used a shopping trolley for a tracking shot
- improvisation (of lines, and spontaneity in filming)
- Themes:
- existentialism (often criticisms of organized religion, or nihilistic protagonists)
- gritty (disillusionment, abortion, rape, violence, poverty)
- Jean-Luc Godard did extensive research into Marxism and it is present in some of his films
- Techniques
- long takes (film reel was expensive)
- hand-held cameras
- fast cuts
- breaks of convention (e.g. the 180 degree rule) to subvert expectations
- jump cuts
- character asides
- breaking eye line matches
- Discontinuity editing (more on this in prelim blog post)
- Other:
- Lots of intertextual references
- e.g. A Bout de Souffle has quotes form Dylan Thomas, William Faulkner; music from Bach and Mozart, and lots of film posters as a part of set dressing
- They were black and white films, a lot of them made for television due to low budget
- The progression of time was often close to that of real life
- Cleo 5 to 7 follows 2 hours in the life of an actress/singer as she awaits the results of a medical test, however the narrative is divided into chapters follow her state of mind
Cleo from 5 to 7 screenshot - Open ended narratives
- some scenes are shown more than once but from the points of views of different characters - showing both the objective and subjective events
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British New Wave
British New Wave (1959-63) was inherently similar to French New Wave, as it was the spreading of the movement. Because of this most of the techniques used were the same, but some notable differences:
- Often had a focus on working class struggles, particularly those in the North of England
- e.g. Room at the Top has a protagonist from Yorkshire (though the actor's accent is inconsistent at best)
- Heavier focus on relationship and social drama (hence the name 'kitchen sink drama/realism)
- e.g. Billy Liar follows the life of a man with three girlfriends
- e.g. The L-shaped Room uses the social interactions between the protagonist and her neighbors to explore social conventions and challenge social status quos
