Tuesday, April 15, 2014
What's New About the New Wave?
French New wave auteurs like Godard envisioned their films as a radical re-visoning of the static filmmaking of the French studio system. What experimental ideas or techniques did you notice in Breathless (could you explain in some detail)? How do these experiments change the way we enjoy a film? Are they engaging or annoying? Do they bring meaning to the film? Do they make fun of the whole idea of bringing meaning to film?
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ReplyDeleteThe ideas expressed in Breathless as well as the filming techniques used are largely representative of a combination of innovation and mockery. In terms of innovation, the style in which the film is produced as well as the content/plot contribute to a new wave film. The juxtaposition between very quick takes/jump cuts and long tracking shots puts much of the power into the hands of the director who is able to withhold or splurge information to the audience. Additionally, the filming location within a big city and the exceptional usage of natural lighting would point towards a film that is meant to have a very realistic feel to it. Much more worldly and less based in fantasy as films that may have been filmed in a studio. The experimentation of realism and withholding information forces the audience to be engaged in the film because of their genuine curiosity, resulting from a lack of foreknowledge of characters. In terms of context, the director’s with-holding of information from the audience makes it much more difficult to sympathize with these anti-hero main characters. Often their actions seem irregular or unexplained because the audience does not completely understand the justification for their doings. The film engages the audience by annoying it with a lack of knowledge, sparking a loathing curiosity to sprout into the mind of a movie goer. The film being geared towards a much younger audience however keeps them reeled in just long enough to begin to appreciate the lack of knowledge and make them curious for what is to come; almost like completing a puzzle. The film seems to be a mockery about giving meaning to a film because of the way it engages the audience. The director holds all the cards and in this cinematic game, the audience is forced to be engaged through a desperate hope for some amount of knowledge pertaining to the future and past of the characters to be given to them. The underlying theme and message of the film take a secondary role to the director’s usage of film innovation to almost toy with the audience.
Breathless introduces a lot of different techniques to the film industry that I believe were a bit distracting. This was much more pronounced given the fact that I have been studying different techniques in film, but definitely noticeable. The one thing that really bothered me was the shakiness of the camera during some of the traveling shots. I think that the camera being unsteady connects to the idea that the characters are making up the plot as they go along, which was a major idea in the Breathless portion of the textbook. The fact that Patricia and Michel were sort of “going with the flow” is designed to somewhat throw off their audience because up until this point the types of films that we have studied have had set plots and it was certainly very different from a Hollywood style film. The shakiness of the camera is like the shakiness of the decisions that the two leads make. I saw this when they first met up; Patricia decided not to go with Michel but then a second later changed her mind and decided to join him. This scene was captured by a panning shot that wasn’t extremely steady; starting the movie off this certain way. The small camera filming in real locations also makes me think of a lower budget style film. As our textbook states, this was a feature of new wave films; they did not have a lot of money. I think that doing this brings a sort of contrast in meaning to the film. The meaning is calling to attentions the differences from this film and the bigger Hollywood style films. The steady camera goes with the steady plot, with the two leads that ending up happily together and the shaky camera goes with the shaky plot that doesn’t end happily. To me the new wave films are just more real that there Hollywood counterpart.
ReplyDeleteJean-Luc Goddard's Breathless is an innovative and beautiful product of the French New Wave that strays apart from the then classical Hollywood films. One of the ways it differs is in the lack of motivation within the characters. While watching Michel chase after the "American" girl, the audience does not seem to sympathize with Michel. The audience is more confused with their relationship and just eagerly waits for more information (even though it is never given). By the end of the film, the audience never understands the real beginning of the relationship, whether the baby is truly Michels, and whether or not the characters do in fact love one another. Michel, the main lead, even dies at the end without any closure! This is a huge stray away from the classic Hollywood mold, where the stunning and intelligent male leads ends up winning over the bombshell female lead. As an American watching this film, I was on edge and engaged the entire time from this difference. I was intrigued by the plot and the "sexiness" of the film. It incorporates brash and direct language that was never used as explicitly before in cinema. The crude language of Michel is refreshing, even though somewhat confusing, to hear. The way he talks to Patricia seems to revolve solely around sex and money, which adds to the questioning of his "undying love" for her. The qualities that Michel possesses are those of a villain in the classic Hollywood era and that is what makes Breathless so interesting to watch.
ReplyDeleteThe French New Wave introduced a slightly different style of filming which had never really been seen before. While Hollywood and foreign films for ages have been using jump cuts, such as during The Birth of a Nation, and long tracking shots, such as in The General, no film prior to the French New Wave ever really used these two film techniques like Godard did in Breathless. In Breathless, Godard primarily uses short, disorienting jump cuts. However, very long tracking shots are dispersed throughout the film, primarily in the very end. The best example of the disorienting nature of the jump cuts is in the opening scene when the cops are chasing Michel. Every few seconds, the camera jumps to a new location, therefore forcing the viewer to think and figure out what is happening and get resituated before the next jump cut. The very end has the best examples of long tracking shots, particularly right after Patricia tells Michel she turned him into the police and there is a two-minute long take without a single cut. Directly after, Michel runs out of the building, and after he gets shot by the police, a long tracking shot follows him as he runs down the street. These long tracking shots serve the direct opposite purpose of the jump cuts, as these long traveling shots are meant to reorient the viewer and make it very clear what is happening. It adds realism and a sense of suspense. When these disorienting jump cuts are mixed with the long tracking shots, it almost messes with the viewers mind, because one minute the viewer has no idea where the characters are or what is happening, but the next moment it is very obvious. The purpose of these different cuts is that the long takes stand out much more, as they are vastly different from most of the cuts in the film. They add meaning, since they both make the viewer think much more about the film since the viewer is forced to pay more attention, and draws the viewers attention to certain parts Godard wanted to highlight.
ReplyDeleteSomething from the textbook that I found particularly enlightening was the assertion that “for Godard, the film screen was never an objective window onto the world” (568), because I think “Breathless”, along with other films of the movement it spawned, laughs in the face of anyone expecting authenticity from their cinematic experiences. This attitude is conveyed here by Godard’s unique blend of innovative techniques that at first invites such an expectation, only to deride it a moment later by consciously breaking the illusion of reality. Case in point is the mixture of natural lighting and location shooting with abrupt and sporadic editing. The former gives the film a distinct look of realism, a documentary-like feel that makes it seem like you’re actually looking in on these people’s lives. The rooms are cramped and used, the streets are bustling with activity and ultimately everything looks as it should in the natural world without any added enhancements for the sake of dramatization. Prior films (“Rome: Open City”, for instance) had certainly contained nuggets of this aesthetic, but with “Breathless” it dominates the entire look. Yet because Godard does not want the audience to become fooled into thinking that his film actually depicts reality, he throws in some seemingly nonsensical cuts which serve to indicate that the unfolding events take place in a completely fabricated world. So for instance, when we watch that early scene wherein Michel talks with his girlfriend, although we are taken in by how closely the scenery matches that of our own world, we are not permitted to fully buy into the realism because the film keeps jump cutting for no apparent reason. It reminds us that because the action is indeed set in a separate realm of existence than our own, Godard is essentially the god, and thus he can do with the film as he pleases.
ReplyDeleteThe most obvious and personally the most important technique used in Breathless is the exceptional number of jump cuts throughout the film. The quick cuts really add to the living from second to second feel of the character Michel by taking out some of the natural flow and making the scenes abrupt and about the moment not about the transitions. The cuts also add to the mystique and charm of Michel, by not letting any truly meaningful exposition transpire. The cuts also add to the flighty nature of the characters in Breathless. It’s metaphor for Michel moving from place to place very quickly, it is a parallel to Patricia’s fickleness throughout the film and highlights the ideology of living fast and dying hard that is set up throughout the entire film. The quick changes through scenes is a running parallel to how quickly life changes, even from living to dead. This idea sets up Michel’s eventually end, when Patricia betrays him out of the blue. No matter how safe you think you are, or how you think events will unfold, you’re just one tiny jump away from falling off the world. In fact, the title Breathless in itself is foreshadowing for the number of jump cuts throughout the piece. While some might think that the jump cuts are in such a multitude as to be distracting and thus a flaw, I would have to disagree. While the jumps are very distracting, they are such in a way that is beneficial to the film. They push the viewer along not letting them get caught on too much analysis while watching the film and force people to just sit back and enjoy. Overall, the use of jump cuts throughout breathless is not just helpful for the film’s delivery, but instrumental.
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