Minutes for 02/09/05 

We started class with French New Wave cinema and the most popular directors Jean-Luc Godard, Alain Resnais and Francois Truffaut.

1.            Jean-Luc Godard was the most political of the French directors of this time and his first film was Breathless 1959.  His main innovations were the Jump Cut, Chapter breaks and titles, Direct address, his emphasis on ambient background sound and voiceover.  We tried to watch a short clip of Breathless but the player wasn’t acting right.  From the PowerPoint Breathless was a movie about a “street punk” that shot a cop and his American girlfriend goes forwards and backwards on whether or not to turn him in.  The film was low budget and it took some time before it became a success.  It influenced film and narrative style eventually. 

2.          Alain Resnais was our next director and we watch a clip of his movie Hiroshima mon amour.  This movie showed a love affair of a Japanese man and a European woman.  The movie shows her reminiscing over the bomb being dropped in Hiroshima.  While lying in bed she tells of going to a museum and she shows great remorse for the bombing.  Resnais paved the way for New Wave (nouvelle vague) directors.

3.          Francois Truffaut was the most accessible of the New Wave directors.  His most famous film was 400 Blows and he was influenced by Jean Renoir and Orson Welles with their moving camera, long takes and fluid mise-en-scene and also by Alfred Hitchcock

After getting to know these directors we talked briefly on Post New Wave which was more diverse and less political than the French New Wave.  Post New Wave also became more commercial.