The French New Wave (approximately 1958-1964) sought to break free from conventional cinema that forced the audiences to submit to a literal and dictated plotline. According to film critic Richard Neupart, “the New Wave taught an entire generation to experiment with the rules of storytelling, but also to rethink conventional…production norms” (xv) and filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard did just that. In all of Jean-Luc Godard’s films, the audience is made aware that we are watching a film. Most of Jean-Luc Godard’s films offer social commentary on issues that the films seek to explore. Film critic John Kreidl states that Godard’s films and most of the French New Wave in general, have an element of “self-reference” and that they have “a high awareness of the fact that cinema is a kind of living language which can be referred to and that every film is about other films” (115). Meaning, that Godard’s films are all aware that they are films. While all of Godard’s career can be a departure of cinematic norms, five films in particular, Breathless, Pierrot le fou, Contempt, Alphaville, and Weekend, utilize revolutionary editing techniques and unprecedented methods of expression.
While all of Jean-Luc Godard’s films are radical departures of cinema norms, Breathless incorporated a new editing pattern that would make the film feel more immediate and intimate. A Bout de Souffle or Breathless (1960) is one of the first films of the New Wave and is distinguished by its fast-paced narrative and innovative use of elliptical editing. It follows the life of Michel Gean-Paul Belmondo, a troublemaker who, having stolen a car and shot a policeman, turns to his girlfriend Patricia for help. Ultimately, Michel is shot and dies after trying to flee from the police.
The movie unfolds schematically, meaning that everything in the film forces something else to happen. Godard’s editing of Breathless makes the film unique. Many editors use a common jump cut known as “the forced logic cut” that carries the central character from morning to evening, indoors to outdoors, etc. on a simple cut as opposed to a dissolve. According to Kreidl, this kind of cut is used so that “the spectators logic prevents him from imagining that these events could have followed each other without a lapse in time” (136), which suspends the viewer’s disbelief. Jean-Luc Godard introduced another kind of jump cut, called the “dominant cut”. This is a jump cut within one space and time, which produces an “other-than-real” effect- an effect of time remembered in fragments or of things experienced under the pressure of passion, fear, etc. An example of this kind of shot can be found early in the film when Michel is running away from the police and then shoots an officer. This kind of jump cut is visually interesting and exciting, especially when the frame remains firm and unmoving and the character is popped about within it. This kind of jump cut creates organized chaos in Breathless.
The camera work in Breathless makes the audience aware that they are watching a film. For example, when Michael tells Patricia that she is not wearing a bra, the camera tilts down to her breasts. Thus, the film utilizes both first and third person points of view. Characters in Breathless also break the “fourth wall”. During a long take of a wide shot while Michel is driving through the country, the actor turns directly to the camera and speaks to the audience. To create visual interest, Godard incorporates symmetry into Breathless. For example, the character Patricia takes off her glasses after Parvelesco takes off his. Godard also broke away from lighting conventions in filmmaking. Much of the lighting in the film is from practical light like lamps. Patricia’s bedroom shown early in the film, for example, is illuminated by a table lamp and wall sconces.
Pierrot le fou (1965), translated as “Pete the madman” is Jean-Luc Godard’s tenth feature movie. In the film, on the eve of Bastille Day, the character of Ferdinand leaves his wife for his babysitter Marianne after a party. Mobsters are following Marianne and together the couple flees for the Mediterranean. This film is yet another example of Godard’s groundbreaking style of filmmaking. Godard made similar radical editing choices in Pierrot le fou as he did in Breathless. An example of a dominant cut comes early in the film at the Bastille Day party when Ferdinand throws a cake at a woman then it cuts to an exploding firework as it hits her.
Pierrot le fou is aesthetically interesting because of the use of vivid and primary colors. When viewing the film, one is immediately struck by the use of primary colors. The opening title sequence is composed of red and blue letters and the first shot immediately cuts to a woman wearing a yellow sweater. During a dinner scene at the beginning of the movie, the audience views the scene with a red tint and then blue hues, green/yellow hues. Godard uses vivid colors to draw attention to important elements in the film. In the first scene after Ferdinand and Marianne runaway together, Godard incorporates a medium close up of Marianne in a blue bath-robe against a white-wash background of the city. In Marianne’s apartment, the blood from the dead body stands out against the stark white walls, blue bedding, and green and yellow décor in the room. In the last three minutes of the film, Ferdinard paints his face blue and then blows himself up with yellow and red dynamite. The repetition of primary colors creates visual harmony.
Like Godard’s other films, the actors break the “fourth wall” by turning and speaking directly to the camera. In one scene approximately 40 minutes into the film, actors Jean-Paul Belmondo and Anna Karina, playing runaway criminals Ferdinand Griffon and Marianne Renoir, are driving up the coast of the Mediterranean Sea and Ferdinand turns directly to the camera to deliver an aside. When Marianne asks him to whom he is talking, he replies “the audience”. Godard violates a Hollywood taboo of not having characters read aloud. (152). Ferdinand often reads aloud from his journal and the voiceovers don’t typically align with the action of the movie.
Godard features extended wide shots without cut. After Marianne and Ferdinand set fire to their car, they walk across an open field. The camera slowly pans left and follows the couple for a whole minute uninterrupted. Godard also utilizes the rule of thirds when Marianne is walking along side the water, and the mountains take up two thirds of the frame. There is a diversity of shots in the film that enhance the themes. Pierrot le fou ends in a pan. The camera moves pans right across the ocean, symbolic with the last lines of the film that speak of eternity.
Le Mépris or Contempt (1963) is about a scriptwriter named Paul Javal who is assigned to adapt The Odyssey into a movie filmed by a famous director named Lang. Immediately, the audience is made aware that they are watching a film during the opening sequence when we see the camera and crew. The film incorporates negative space. For example, Lang, the director films statues’ heads, or the actors posed in Grecian tableaux. The film incorporates many back and forth pans. According to Kreidl, the use the pans are to show how the camera is selective so that the audience is made aware that they are spectators. Godard also uses repetition in Contempt. In one sequence, Godard shows the same lamp off or on and the camera re-pans over the same lamp over and over again. The repetitive shot of the lamp draws the audience’s attention to the lamp and we become interested in a trivial element, whether the lamp is on or off. To add emphasis in the final scene, the film ends with a static shot.
Alphaville (1965) is the story of Lemmy Caution, an American secret agent, who arrives in the futuristic city of Alphville. Lemmy becomes at odds with the city’s ruler Alpha 60, a computer controlled by evil scientist Von Braun, because love, emotion, and free thought are outlawed. Lighting is a key element that provides visual interest in this film. In Alphaville, Godard doesn’t rely heavily on staged lighting. Instead, the shots are illuminated by the streets of Paris, natural lights of lamps, and city buildings. The film was shot mostly at night in the streets of Paris, as Godard “had insisted on a commitment to filming in natural light and to the experience of location shooting as opposed to the articifical light of the studio environment” (Darke 40). Light and dark are motifs that are explored in the content of the film but visually they are incorporated with the image of the cigarette lighter used by both Lemmy and Natasha. In one scene, the computer Alpha 60 studies the character Natasha. For this scene, Godard shoots the actress in the center of the frame and zooms in on her face to enhance the theme of emotion that cannot be seen at face value.
Finally, in the film Weekend (1967), Godard expresses social commentary about the bourgeois class by showing the deconstruction of Western civilization from democracy to barbaric practices. The film focuses around a wealthy Parisian couple that plan to kill a relative for money and then drive to the country. The couple encounters terrorists who kill and eat tourists and in a twist of fate, the husband is killed and the wife then eats him. Godard uses shadows to place emphasis when the wife is telling her husband about a strange orgy she participated in. According to Kreidl, Godard uses lateral tracking shots, which keeps the image in medium long shot, “keeping the distance from what we see, creating a proscenium to reduce our involvement and sharpen our detachment and accentuate that we should critically observe (170). The most famous sequence in the film ten-minute tracking sequence shot past the stalled cars is the key sequence. What is notable about this shot is that the long tracking shot of the traffic jam is set up to justify the camera movement, rather than the other way around. The repetition of hundreds of cars in this famous shot reinforces Godard’s intention of taking a closer look at Western ideals of consumption and greed. Godard uses visual elements and a unique style of filmmaking and editing to explore these social issues.
Bibliography
Bandy, Mary Lea and Raymond Bellour, eds. Jean-Luc Godard: Son and Image 1974- 1991. New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1992.
Darke, Chris. Alphaville. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2005.
Kreidl, John. Jean-Luc Godard. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1980.
MacCabe, Colin. Godard: Images, Sounds, Politics. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980.
Neupert, Richard. A History of the French New Wave Cinema: Second Edition. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2007.
Ostrowska, Dorota. Reading the French New Wave: Critics, Writers and Art Cinema in France. London: Wallflower Press, 2008.
