Three godfathers of the Auteur Theory & the New Wave
(See notes on Auteur Theory)

1. Henri Langlois -- Cinématheque Française
2. André Bazin -- Cahiers du Cinéma
3. Alexandre Astruc -- caméra stylo

1959-60 New Wave (Nouvelle Vague) breaks

1. Alain Resnais, Hiroshima, Mon Amour (1959)
2. François Truffaut, The 400 Blows (1959)
   Author of "A Certain Tendency in the French Cinema" (Cahiers, 1954)
3. Jean-Luc Godard, Breathless (shot in '59, released January '60)

Jean-Luc Godard

• b. 1930
• 1946-55 odd jobs at studios, beginnings of film criticism
  • Gazette du Cinéma (1950, only 5 issues)
    
  • Cahiers (1952 on)
  • Characteristics of Godard's Criticism
    1. Attacked "Tradition of Quality"
    2. Auteurist re-evaluation of US Film
    3. Emphasis on visual style
    4. Eclectic points of reference
• 1st Feature film
  • Breathless, directed in '59, released in January 1960
• 1960-'68 one-two films per year
  • Reinvented "language" of the cinema, rejects classical cinema
    • Hand-held camera
    • Location shooting
    • Jump cuts
    • Direct looks at the camera
    • Graphics (text and images)
    • References to other films
  • Bertolt Brecht -- Epic Theatre
    • Playwright/theorist
    • German, trans. into French in early 60s
    • Cahiers issue on Brecht in '62
    • Against Aristotle, against Dramatic Theater
    • Alienation effect -- Verfremdungseffekt
      • Rejects strong identification
      • Distanciation
      • Marxist revolution
      • Russian Formalists in ‘20s
        • Ostranenie
        • Defamiliarization--making the familiar strange
  • Vivre Sa Vie (1962) = Brechtian film?
    • Godard sees:
      Dramatic theater = classical cinema
      Epic theater = counter cinema
    • Narrative
      • Breaks story into 12 sections (narrative segmentation)
      • Digressions
      • Quotations
        • E.g., Edgar Allen Poe's The Oval Portrait
      • Aperture (not closed)
    • Visual Style
      • Cinematography
        • Unconventional framing
        • Extremely long takes
        • Jump cut
          • Opposite of the match cut
        • Direct looks at the camera
• May 1968 France nears socialist Revolution
  • Strongly affects Godard and other New Wave filmmakers

Last revised: May 5, 2008 14:48