Between Mainstream and Avant-Garde Filmmaking: The French New Wave and the Illusion of Realism

• Thesis title in Czech: Mezi mainstreamem a avantgardou: Francouzská nová vlna a iluze realismu
• Thesis title in English: Between Mainstream and Avant-Garde Filmmaking: The French New Wave and the Illusion of Realism
• Key words: Francouzská nová vlna|realismus|André Bazin|Orson Welles|opoziční kinematografie|Jean-Luc Godard|montáž|identifikace|komerční kinematografie|ideologie
• English key words: the French New Wave|realism|André Bazin|Orson Welles|counter-cinema|Jean-Luc Godard|montage|identification|commercial filmmaking|ideology
• Academic year of topic announcement: 2021/2022
• Thesis type: diploma thesis
• Thesis language: angličtina
• Department: Department of Anglophone Literatures and Cultures (21-UALK)
• Supervisor: doc. Erik Sherman Roraback, D.Phil.
• Author: hidden - assigned and confirmed by the Study Dept.
• Date of registration: 22.12.2021
• Date of assignment: 22.12.2021
• Administrator's approval: not processed yet
• Confirmed by Study dept. on: 03.01.2022
• Date and time of defence: 07.09.2022 00:00
• Date of electronic submission: 02.08.2022
• Date of proceeded defence: 07.09.2022
• Submitted/finalized: committed by student and finalized
• Opponents: Mgr. David Vichnar, Ph.D.

Guidelines

Writing on the 1960s in his study called Avant-Garde Film (2003), Michael O’Pray says: “The inclusion of a chapter on the New Wave in a book dedicated to avant-garde film may raise eyebrows in some quarters” (O’Pray, 69). This is symptomatic of the usual treatment the French New Wave receives in theoretical discussions. Unlike some other authors, O’Pray bears in mind the important distinction made by Peter Wollen between the formally oriented and the politically experimental film, taking the second group into account too. If Jonas Mekas and Stan Brakhage belong to what Wollen calls the ‘first’ avant-garde, the other, which has its origin in the films of Sergey Eisenstein and other Soviet filmmakers, is exemplified by Jean-Luc Godard’s post-1968 films. As narrative feature films, the French New Wave films are clearly far removed from purist exploits of Mekas and Brakhage, but where do they actually stand with respect to Wollen’s ‘other’ avant-garde?
The French New Wave came into existence in the late 1950s, when a number of young critics gathered around the film journal Cahiers du cinéma began to criticize contemporary French film. They eventually started directing themselves, in opposition to the ‘tradition of quality’, as Francois Truffaut called it, and its “highly mannered style removed from everyday reality” (Kline, 159). As Ian Aitken says, although these films and their directors displayed “a spirit of rebellion against authority and convention, this was primarily directed against the institutions and practices of the cinéma de papa, and did not stem from any wider sense of political affiliation or commitment” (Aitken, 134). Nevertheless, what connects the French New Wave to the political avant-garde is mainstream cinema as its artistic opponent and target.
The first part of this MA thesis would focus on the analysis of the French New Wave films in comparison to the cinéma de papa which would revolve around the issue of the story and its formal representation (adapted novelistic narratives and so-called ‘symbolic associations’ used in films such as Claude Autant-Lara’s Devil in the Flesh were the crucial point of opposition for the young directors). The theoretical writings of the directors and other influential thinkers (Astruc, Bazin) would be taken into account and the influence which the filmmakers considered by the French New Wave directors as auteurs had on them explored. The most important in this respect is Orson Welles, whose long takes and deep focus were praised as ‘realistic’ cinematographic devices by André Bazin, whose enthusiasm for Welles was inherited by the young critics/filmmakers. The French New Wave in fact perceived itself as an exploration of the medium (something which is also in accordance with the ‘first’ avant-garde) and welcomed similar explorations of its predecessors or contemporaries from other countries, as opposed to contemporary French film’s fixation on novelistic adaptations.
The second part of the thesis would focus on the analysis of French New Wave films in comparison to those mentioned as the political avant-garde by Wollen. As Godard was a French New Wave director in his early phase, a comparison of his own films from different phases would be most to the point, with respect to the theoretical writings relevant to counter-cinema. The central issue would be the French New Wave’s ‘arthouse’ characteristics, as described by David Bordwell, as that which, on the one hand, posits the French New Wave as against mainstream, commercial, ‘production-house’ cinema, but also, on the other, as that which anchors it in a broader field of mainstream cinema of cinematic illusionism and spectacle which ‘does the thinking instead of the spectator’ (Walter Benjamin). Godard opposes this in his later films by the use of Brechtian distancing and Eisenstein’s montage with the attempt to engage the spectator and prevent his/her immersion in the story to the point of forgetting that what he/she is watching is a form manipulated by a certain ‘ideological’ perspective.
Proceeding from the treatment of the French New Wave as opposed to mainstream cinema, and to the challenge to which the ‘proper’ avant-garde puts it, the thesis would aim to show that the kind of ‘realism’ which in the early 1960s helped push cinematography away from worn-out ‘symbolic’, ‘literary’ films of cinéma de papa is what ultimately denies the French New Wave a secure place in the avant-garde.

References

Aitken, Ian. European Film Theory and Cinema: A Critical Introduction. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2001.
Bazin, André. Orson Welles: A Critical View. Acrobat Books, 1991.
Bazin, André. What is Cinema? Vol. I. Translated by Hugh Gray. Berkley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 2005.
Bazin, André. What is Cinema? Vol. II. Translated by Hugh Gray. Berkley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 2005.
Benjamin, Walter. Illuminations. Edited by Hannah Arendt. New York: Schocken Books, 1969.
Bordwell, David. Poetics of Cinema. New York, London: Routledge, 2008.
Cook, David A. A History of Narrative Film. Norton, 2004.
Debord, Guy. The Society of the Spectacle. Translated by Ken Knabb. Berkeley: Bureau of Public Secrets, 2014.
Eisenstein, Sergei. Film Form: Essays in Film Theory. Harvest, 1977.
Ezra, Elizabeth, ed. European Cinema. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.
Godard, Jean-Luc. Introduction to a True History of Cinema and Television. Translated by Timothy Barnard. Montreal: Caboose, 2019.
Hillier, Jim, ed. Cahiers du Cinéma – The 1950s: Neo-Realism, Hollywood, New Wave. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985.
Kuhn, Annette and Westwell, Guy. A Dictionary of Film Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.
Macbean, James Roy. “Politics and Poetry in Two Recent Films by Godard”. Film Quarterly, Vol. 21, No. 4 (Summer, 1968), p. 14-20.
MacKenzie, Scott, ed. Film Manifestos and Global Cinema Cultures: A Critical Anthology. Berkley: University of California Press, 2014.
Marie, Michel. The French New Wave: An Artistic School. Translated by Richard Neupert. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2003.
Neupert, Richard. A History of the French New Wave Cinema. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2002.
O’Pray, Michael. Avant-Garde Film: Forms, Themes and Passions. New York: Columbia University Press, 2003.
Wollen, Peter. Readings and Writings: Semiotic Counter-Strategies. London: Verso, 1982.

Films
À bout de souffle. Dir. Jean-Luc Godard. Writ. Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut. Prod. Georges de Beauregard. Impéria Films, Société de Voucelle de Cinéma. 1960.
Deux ou trois choses que je sais d'elle. Dir. Jean-Luc Godard. Writ. Jean-Luc Godard and Catherine Vimenet. Prod. Anatole Dauman and Raoul Lévy. Argos Films, Les Films du Carrosse. 1966.
Le Diable au corps. Dir. Claude-Autant Lara. Writ. Pierre Bost. Transcontinental Films. 1947.
Le Gai Savoir. Dir. Writ. Jean-Luc Godard. O.R.T.F. 1969.
Les quatre cents coups. Dir. François Truffaut. Writ. François Truffaut and Marcel Moussy. Prod. François Truffaut and Georges Charlot. Les Films du Carosse. 1959.