Video essay script

La Nouvelle Vague or the new wave was a relatively short part of film history in France that started in 1959 and lasted until 1963. Charles De Gaulle was the president of France from 1958 until 1969. Due to the end of the 2^nd World War Parisian cinemas had an influx of foreign films, particularly American ones. Influential films that were previously banned in France were released, two of the most important films were Jean Vigo’s 1933  Zero de conduite'  and Jean Renoir’s 1939 'La Regle du jeu' These two films inspired and showed French filmmakers that they could make films just as well as the Americans could. A group of young French men, who wanted to be filmmakers but lacked the budget and the equipment necessary to do so, wrote for Andre Bazin’s film magazine Cahiers Du Cinema where they reviewed the films that were being shown at the cinematique. These men were Jean-Luc Godard, Francois Truffaut, Jacques Rivette and Claude Chabrol. They also agreed with Andre Bazin’s belief that films should contain personal feelings and the beliefs of the director. This is known as the auteur theory.  They met to argue about film and critique some of the most prominent directors at the times work such as Alfred Hitchcock, Orson Welles and John Ford. They disagreed with the formulaic structure of Hollywood films at the time and felt that the film audiences did not need to see everything that a character did. To reduce irrelevant parts of the narrative, during editing they would create jump cuts. Jump cuts were also used to enable the audience to perceive and react to the film as they would with a real life situation. The French New Wave was about making the audience feel involved and connected to the film and its message. To do this the actor would break the fourth wall by talking directly to the audience. Here is an example of this in Jean-Luc Godard’s 1960 film “Breathless”. In this clip there is a close up of the actor, Jean- Paul Belmondo, he is placed in the centre of the frame. In one long continuous take he turns to look at the camera three times and addresses the audience each of these three times. The actor tells the audience that they don’t like and then questions whether or not the audience “ like towns,” He then tells them to “stick their heads in oil.” This fits in with the young filmmakers belief in the auteur theory and that the audience of their films should take in their own personal ideologies and beliefs as their own.