Dir. by Jean-Luc Godard
Images: Typical Godard, though toned down a bit in comparison to his later films: frequent jump cuts and moments of deliberate self-awareness, as in those scenes in which first Michel, then Patricia, address the camera directly. Film moderates between break-neck pacing (the shooting of the police officer, for instance) and slow introspection (Michel and Patricia talking in her apartment). Key point: Godard reminds us constantly that we are watching a movie, as in the carefully choreographed kisses and Michel's obsession with Bogart.
• • •
If asked to define postmodernism, I would probably cheat and just show an early Godard film. Breathless likely wouldn't be my first choice — I'd take Alphaville or A Woman is a Woman — but it certainly fits the bill. Godard caused a sensation forty years ago with this, his first film, by not only tearing down cinematic and narrative conventions, but by doing so with a sly, mocking wink to his audience. Like the best postmodern art, Breathless blurs the boundaries between high and low culture, elevating B-movie sensation onto the plane of high French art and, thankfully, humbling and demystifying the latter in the process. Its greatest asset, I think, is that it does so with a fun, irreverent self-awareness that prevents us from ever forgetting that the story we're watching unfold before us — like life itself, some postmodernists would argue — is nothing more than that: a fiction.
The story is simple: Michel Poiccard (Jean-Paul Belmondo) is a charismatic young thug wanted by police for shooting an officer. Penniless, alone, and, well, horny, he attaches himself to Patricia Franchini (Jean Seberg), a beautiful American student and aspiring journalist. The majority of the film chronicles Michel's frustrated efforts to: 1) track down money owed to him so that he can escape to Italy, and 2) get Patricia back into bed. Technically, he succeeds in both endeavors, but, as has been the case with all storied young lovers on the run, before and since, his successes are always fleeting. "I want us to be like Romeo and Juliet," Patricia naively tells Michel. Shakespeare this ain't, but Michel's fate is as inevitable as that poor sap's from Verona.
Along with inspiring countless imitators, from Bonnie and Clyde and Badlands to Natural Born Killers (not to mention that embarrassing Richard Gere remake), Breathless is most often remembered for — and remains fascinating today because of — Godard's deliberate disregard for convention, both as a filmmaker and as a story-teller. His technical innovations, particularly the frequent jump cuts and hand held cinematography, have, in the four decades since, become the stuff of prime-time network TV (NYPD Blue comes to mind). Likewise, Godard's rebellious irony and self-conscious play with film iconography (as seen most famously in Michel's long gaze at a Humphrey Bogart lobby card) have become key terms in the contemporary film vocabulary — think The Simpsons, Pulp Fiction, Scream, and the like.
What most fascinates me about Breathless, though, and what makes it still feel revolutionary today, is Godard's fascination with the parts of life that we (still) rarely see on the screen. Midway through the film, when most "young lovers on the run" movies would turn their attention to a violent heist or a gratuitous sex scene, we follow Michel to Patricia's apartment, where the two simply pass the time in idle conversation, waiting (like we do) for the excitement to begin again. The scene does help to further develop the characters — Patricia's love and understanding of art distinguishes her further from Michel, who is still interested only in getting Patricia undressed — but, as was the case for many of his New Wave contemporaries, Godard evidences little hope for genuine communication. Michel and Patricia are characters in a film who behave as if they were characters in a film, performing their superficial roles/lives for the benefit of others, oblivious to the consequences.
As with much postmodern art, my main critique of Breathless is ethical. The blurring of boundaries between high/low, fact/fiction, performance/life, though vital and beneficial to much that has happened socially and politically in the past four decades, can also collapse dangerously into total relativism. Godard has called Michel an “Anarchist Hero,” meaning, I assume, that his rebellion against authority is a martyrdom of sorts for the cause of greater freedom for all. Noble, I guess, and I probably would have bought it ten years ago. But it feels overly romantic and naïve to me now. Actually, it feels like the unbridled energy and maturing (but still immature) philosophy of a first-time filmmaker.
Labels: French, Godard, New Wave
Dir. by Bruno Dumont
Images: Dumont's style could perhaps be described as a more polished verite. He uses only diegetic sound and shoots non-professional actors in stunning compositions and with impressive grace. Most striking images are those that foreground the "fleshiness" of characters. For instance, we ocassionally enter Pharaon's POV as he stares at the back of the inspector's neck or at his mother's hand. Later, the camera lingers on a close-up of Pharaon, forcing us to listen attentively to his breathing. The explicit and unsentimental staging of sex between Domino and Joseph serves a similar purpose.
See Also: Life of Jesus
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What interests me is life, people, the small things. Cinema is for the body, for the emotions. It needs to be restored among the ordinary people, who don't speak a lot, but who experience an incredible intensity of joy, emotion, suffering, sympathy in death. They don't speak, speaking is not important. What's important is the emotions. It is for the spectator to make these things conscious, it is not for me to do it. The spectator must think. He has a lot of work to do. The power of cinema lies in the return of man to the body, to the heart, to truth. The man of the people has a truth that the man of the city, the intellectual, has lost. [He] has something that I've lost, that I must find again, I don't know what exactly. I find that our culture, our civilization, has failed politically, socially, morally.
-- Bruno Dumont
Walt Whitman would be proud.
It's remarkable to hear echoes of Whitman in the voice of a contemporary filmmaker, but there he is, still singing the "body electric" and sounding his "barbaric yawp." Like the poet before him, Dumont has turned to the arts in a Democratic spirit, celebrating the "common man" (for lack of a better term) in all of his rich complexity. Although I've always found the county/city dichotomy a bit reductive, I applaud Dumont's devotion to it here, for it's as radical a statement in cinema today as it was when Whitman staked his claim on verse with Leaves of Grass.
Dumont is, of course, not totally without peer — Abbas Kiarostami is the closest kin to come to mind —but, in L'Humanite, he has made a landmark film that, ultimately, restores . . . well . . . humanity to the screen. In doing so, he has transcended the verite and dogme traditions. He has not simply turned a shaky camera on "real people" living "real lives," a manipulative fiction now broadcast nightly on network television. He respects his characters, his form, and his audience too much to cheapen them in that way. Instead, like Whitman, he gives us stunning and occasionally shocking images of the body — here, a conflation of the body of flesh with the body politic — and requires us to respond genuinely to them.
The cumulative effect of these images on the viewer is, at times, unnerving. L'Humanite slowly erodes the ironic detachment and cynicism that we've built as defenses, forcing us to actually feel something. It should come as little surprise that Dumont's film was met by a chorus of jeers at Cannes, while Sam Mendes' American Beauty — a film that, in many ways, adopts a similar humanist stance — won an Academy award. We seem to have surrendered our ability to recognize sincerity, opting instead for easy satire and emotional distance (not to mention "larger than life" performances over truthful ones). Ricky Fitts claims, in American Beauty, that "Sometimes there's so much beauty in the world I feel like I can't take it... and my heart is going to cave in," but the scene ultimately has less impact than a plastic bag. It's a disposable image, like so many of our manufactured emotions. L'Humanite doesn't let us off so easy.
Dumont establishes the tone of L'Humanite in its opening scene, a static long shot of the French countryside, which lasts nearly a minute. Across the horizon, we see a small figure running from one edge of the frame to the other. Pharaon De Winter (Emmanuel Schotté) is a police superintendent in a small French town, who is called to investigate the rape and murder of an 11 year old girl. We learn little about Pharaon's past, other than that he has "lost" his woman and his child. He seems to have only one friend, a woman named Domino (Séverine Caneele), who tolerates Pharaon's idiosyncrasies, but who prefers the company of her bus driver boyfriend, Joseph (Philippe Tullier).
As most critics have pointed out, L'Humanite is, on the surface, a police procedural that isn't terribly concerned with the resolution of its mystery. By traditional standards, Pharaon is an incompetent detective, but it is, in fact, those very standards that Dumont is interrogating. Movie detectives are typical of most Western heroes: stoic, logical, and doggedly determined. Pharaon, instead, is a man who, perhaps for the first time in his life, is overwhelmed by an empathy of which very few of us are still capable. He longs desperately to connect with humanity — to feel it, touch it, smell it, taste it, kiss it — but is frustrated at every turn. Even Domino, who wants, at least on some level, to comfort him, is able to offer only her body (a too frequent substitute these days).
The most powerful moment in L'Humanite comes when, while investigating the crime scene, Pharaon lets loose a long, wild scream. It is a moment of pure, inarticulate emotion unlike anything I have ever experienced from a film. That scream alone makes L'Humanite more real, more painful, and more affecting than any other film I've seen from the 90s. A barbaric yawp, indeed.
Dir. by Eric Rohmer
Images: Complete lack of shot/reverse-shot. Instead, much of the dialogue is framed in static medium shots, some lasting more than a minute. Speaker doesn't address camera directly, but the effect is the same, involving the viewer as an active participant. "Our" voice is heard from off screen.
• • •
Jean-Louis (Jean-Louis Trintignant), a young engineer, spies his ideal woman at Sunday Mass. Francoise (Marie-Christine Barrault) is young, attractive, blonde, and, most importantly, a practicing Catholic. Before they have even met, Jean-Louis determines that Francoise will be his wife. His pursuit is interrupted, though, when he happens upon Vidal (Antoine Vitez), a childhood friend who he has not seen in 14 years. The two spend an evening discussing religion and philosophy, then agree to meet again the following day at the home of Maud (Francoise Fabian), a beautiful divorcee who Vidal has been seeing. When the three meet, their conversation again turns to philosophy and religion, particularly the consequences of Pascal's wager.
My admittedly superficial understanding of Pascal's wager: Given even overwhelming odds against the existence of God (say, 100 to 1), we must bet on that one chance. For if God does not exist, and we lose the bet, then our loss is inconsequential. But if God does exist, then our lives gain meaning and our reward is eternal.
The three main characters are an interesting study in contrast. Vidal sees the wager as a logical tool for explaining everything, from religion to politics. For Jean-Louis, Pascal is too strict, a logician who has sacrificed sensual pleasure ("Pascal never said, 'This is good,'" Jean-Louis tells his companions). His stance on Pascal is one of the many contradictions in Jean-Louis' ideas, as he himself adheres strictly to (or at least claims to) the mores of Catholicism. Maud is a sensual being and an atheist, who tires of Jean-Louis' pretenses and deftly dissects them. When left alone with Maud, Jean-Louis is forced to test his principles, to overcome his temptation in order to remain faithful to Francoise, a woman he has not yet met.
I have seen several of Rohmer's films over the last few months, and they never fail to elicit from me the same response. Thirty minutes into them, I'm typically annoyed, either by the characters or by Rohmer's style. His film worlds are populated by self-absorbed "navel-gazers" (a common criticism) and his use of voice over narration often seems redundant. But, without exception, I have eventually fallen into Rohmer's rhythms and become fascinated by those same characters. Most impressive is his ability to build a logical dramatic tension into his finales. The end of My Night at Maud's — a coda that takes place years later, in which we learn that Jean-Louis and Francoise are married and that she may have had an affair with Maud's husband —felt more forced than most, but the result is the same: despite the film's slow pacing (or, more likely, because of it) I became anxious for the film's conclusion, unaware of which way the story would turn until it did.
Labels: French, New Wave, Rohmer
Dir. by Agnès Varda
Images: Constant movement, both of the camera and of objects and people within the frame (for instance, the rocking chair and swing in Cleo's otherwise minimalist apartment). Jump cuts, though not used so frequently as in Godard. Long, overhead shots of Cleo as she wanders through the park (think Antoine and his classmates in 400 Blows). And, perhaps most importantly, the stares of passer-bys on Paris streets. As the camera assumes Cleo's subjective perception, we, the audience, feel the eyes of men on us.
• • •
Cleo (Corrinne Marchand) is a beautiful, spoiled, self-obsessed pop singer. As the film opens, she is having her fortune told by a tarot reader, who is startled to discover death and cancer in the singer's immediate future. Cleo is quite upset, as she is waiting to meet with a doctor to discuss the results of a medical examination. The remainder of the 90 minute film chronicles Cleo's afternoon, from the time that she leaves the tarot reader until her appointment at the hospital two hours later. We see her return home to her fashionably minimalist apartment, where she tends her kittens, does her exercises, and meets with her songwriters. Exasperated by the jokes of her friends and by her own worries, she sets off alone through the streets, cafes, and parks of Paris, running errands with a friend and meeting a young soldier, Antoine, who is to ship off for the battlefields of Algeria on the following morning.
Cléo de 5 à 7 is very much a film about perception — about looking and being looked at, and the warped sensibilities formed when worth is based solely on appearances. In that sense, it also seems to be very much a woman's film (and one ripe for the Laura Mulvey treatment). This is most obvious in several scenes when Cleo is walking through crowded streets. Vardas cuts constantly to Cleo's POV, using documentary-like footage of faces turning their eyes toward the camera. As a male viewer raised on the voyeuristic thrills of male filmmakers, it's a disconcerting experience — feeling all of those eyes on me. The implication is that such an existence has disfigured Cleo's self-image and stunted her emotional development. Vardas contrasts Cleo's superficiality with the level-headed confidence of her friend Dorothee, a nude model who finds joy and satisfaction in her body, but not pride.
The end of Cléo de 5 à 7 has some very effective moments, but suffers from a too tidy conclusion. While walking through a park, Cleo meets Antoine, a soldier who puts a human face on the war in Algiers, a conflict that is acknowledged throughout the film through radio reportsand overheard conversations. My favorite moment occurs when he accompanies Cleo to her scheduled appointment. As they ride a trolley across town, Antoine pulls a flower from a passing truck and places it in Cleo's hair. Vardas lingers on the image, allowing 20 or 30 seconds of silence between the actors, their two faces framed tightly in close-up. There's an awkward (but very charming) embarrassment between them. It's a great example of what the New Wave directors have done best: capturing honest and instantly identifiable images. I think I would find the film more satisfying had it ended there. But in the final scenes, when Cleo learns that she is ill but will recover with a few months' treatment, Vardas too neatly resolves a plot that is secondary to the film's larger concern. My frustration is that Cleo, a woman whose worth has been formed by the opinions of the men around her, seems to have only found redemption through Antoine, another man. Perhaps a minor quibble, but one that leaves me less than satisfied.
Labels: French, New Wave, Varda