French New Wave: A Different Trend of Cinematography - Essay Example

The New Wave: A Different Trend of Cinematography The New Wave of Cinema which specifically refers to French cinematography can be understood betterby studying the path of film industry and movies itself in France. Sixty percent of the movies being shown in France are US- based yet it is interesting to know that the investment to film is quite big and perhaps double in figure compared to UK even with the number of movies that is made available to the public. Also, not like other countries, censorship is not too much to be considered which give people more chances to be unlimited in the case movie watching. Furthermore, the festivals being celebrated can add up to the spice of movie business, one of which is the famous Cannes Festival where the very valuable Palmed'Or is given. But it is always argued the Canne's is not a festival but a screening of films that will be made available to public. In addition, there are too many film fests where people can feast their eyes on such as Rencontres Internationales d'Art Contemporain from June to July. In the towns of Paris, there is also Crteil celebrated on from March to April. The La Ciotat which is also called as silent film gets to be seen in July. The Reims or thriller movies have their place from October to November. All these make up and add up color to the film business in France. (1) In addition to this, French people also value not just the contemporary movies but also the old ones. Old movies or the valued films are kept in Paris Archives du Film which has the largest collection of silent and old movies in the world. It can be remembered that in the year 1992, they launched a program which aims to transfer the pre-1960 collection of movies to acetate to keep from rotting or disintegration and the program itself cost 17 million franc equivalent to 2.5 million euro. (1) It can be remembered that cinema, being considered as a French invention is regarded to be one of France's valuables and it has indeed a high regard from artists, old and contemporary. It can be traced back in the year 1985 when the Lunmiere Brothers matched photography with the amazing lantern show that was shown first in the Lyon using crackly images. It gave the image of a train leaving factory where the audience reacted by ducking for cover. That was the first sign of the power of image through cinema. Post World War I avant-garde artists immediately took advantage of this so called masterpiece and the obvious product of this taking advantage of the visual potential are in the persons Jean Cocteau through "Blood of a Poet in 1930 and La Belle's "Beauty and the Beast" in 1945. Director Robert Bresson also continued the said art even after World War II. (1) This was followed by the movement of the famous Gerges Melies who mastered the special effects through the adaptation of Voyage of the Moon by Jules Verne and it was considered as part of the mainstream in the year 1902. Then the French movies became known all of a sudden due to the New Wave Movement which owes its name to Nouvelle Vague in the 1960s. Vage is a post-war director was himself awed in the Les Quatre cents Coups in 1959 by Jean Claude Truffaut and Alain Resnais who created the Hiroshima Mon Amour. This was followed by the morally controversial films of Erich Rohmer where more scandalous and erotic topics followed, specifically from the director Roger Vadim. But this didn't continue due to a life and moral-saving films with good narratives from Jean-Luc Godard in 1960 with his film Breathless. It was also the same time when sexy French stars came out of the masterpieces like Brigitte Bardot and Alain Delon. Bardot starred in the Movie And God Created a Woman. (1) Then there is also the considerable late New Wave era from tehe 70's to the early 90's. It is the time when actor Gerard Depardieu came in to the scene and his career started in 1965 and he first became known through the movie Martin Guirre in 1981. This was followed by Danton in 1983 and Jean de Floretta in 1985. A new pool of directors came about in the middle of 80's and among them were Luc Besson who put to fame actor Christopher Lambert to fame through the movie Subway. He also made thrilling and superficial films like Nikita in 1990 and Leon in 1994. (1) To define and understand the meaning of New Wave is a big deal because like what was said a while ago, it is like understanding the history of cinema and film industry of France as a whole. Below is the significant definition of the purpose and identity of New Wave. The New Wave is generally conceived of as a movement, facilitated by several notable French film critics and film-makers which criticised traditional film making, especially French movie productions, and was inventive and energetic in its output. Aside from Godard, the principle members were Francoise Truffaut, Claude Chabrol, Alan Resnais, Marcel Camus, Eric Rohmer and Louis Malle. Common to most of this group was the fact that they all worked as film critics for the magazine Cahiers du Cinema , which was co-founded by Andre Bazin. Bazin was not a film- maker but a film critic and theorist and his influence in shaping the approaches to cinema that his journalists employed cannot be underestimated. There is a love amongst historians and academics of identifying trends and posthumously assigning labels to actually rather disparate or very lose groups, making 'movements' where there were really only individuals. However, there is a strong case for seeing the Nouvelle Vague as a cohesive movement, at least in its initial stages. (Coates) The principal defining characteristic of the New Wave directors was a desire to do away with the so called 'Tradition of Quality' that dominated French film making at that time. This tendency was for heavy-handed adaptations of classic novels, with high production values, and a very technical yet uninventive style. These films were much lauded, and the system in place (of producers, directors and screen writers) was staid, seemingly immovable. Although Godard was vocal in his attacks on this system it was Truffaut who really laid down the gauntlet (alienating himself severely in the process) by writing an article entitled 'A Certain Tendency Of The French Cinema' which criticised most involved in cinema viciously. What the newer directors found so objectionable was the lack of true 'cinematic' vision in the films: they remain 'literary' adaptations, with more interest in verbal than visual forms. The ascendancy of the novel is clear in the wordiness, the visual stagnancy and unimaginative editing, the total formal poverty identified by Truffaut. The alternative to this stagnancy is visible in Truffaut's own work: Jules Et Jim (1962) is itself a literary adaptation, yet in its energy, and in Truffaut's eye for spectacle (cars plunging into lakes, women pretending to be steam trains, puffing cigarette smoke from their noses, a camera that fluidly spins to capture the vitality of the young) it translates the story into a cinematic event, true to the tone of the book, but never nostalgic in its evocation of the past. The same is true of the characterization: the dilemmas of the central mnage a trios, are informed by their epoch but eternally modern owing to their tangible 'human-ness', their humor, sadness, boredom and moments of exhilaration. (Coates) At present, the French Cinema has not embraced totally the New Wave's identity yet having been known for the proliferation of this form of cinematography, it has somehow empowered its film industry. SOURCES 1. New Wave. Accessed on December 7, 2007 from http://www.francebudgethotels.com/cinema.htm 2. Coates, J.Close-UP Film. New Wave. Accessed on December 7, 2007 from http://www.closeupfilm.com/features/Featuresarchive/frenchnewwave.htm 3. Turan, K. 2002. Sundance to Sarajevo: Film Festivals and the World They Made. University of California Press. Berkeley, CA. Read More