Cinema Stories

           Although this is a French cinema class, I wanted to inquire about the history of documentary films in the United States.  The first documentary film recorded was called Nanook of the North , created by director Robert Flaherty.  It follows an Inuit hunter who struggles to take care of his family during a Canadian winter. It is a black and white and silent film, with descriptions that describe the harsh conditions. Most of the movie is shot from the same angle while the people onscreen move.  For example, when a group of people are sledding away, instead of following the people down the slope, the camera stays at eye level in the same place as they disappear in the distance. The movie also employs long shots and cuts mainly to show dialogue or description.      Before Flaherty showed the movie, he accidentally dropped a cigarette onto the original camera negative. He then re shot the scenes because he had already ...

For this week's blog, I have found "An Interview with Barbet Schroeder" from 1966; originally published in  The Tulane Drama Review . We spoke about Schroeder in class this week as he was a producer on Rouch's  Cocorico Monsieur Poulet and was also a documentary filmmaker himself; we watched excerpts from his documentary, General Idi Amin Dada , in class as well. I find this interview interesting because of the context in which it is conducted, in the year 1966, and because of Schroeder's multiple references to Godard and the New Wave cinema, which we have also studied in class. Schroeder says of the relationship between the New Wave and documentary: "The New Wave people want to get back to the beginning. Godard looks to Chaplin, he is not opposed to the classics. We want to get back to the original purity of the movies, and documentaries are the essence of purity. We move from documentaries to realism to un- conventional things in realism…" S...

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/richard-brody/talking-about-truffaut Truffaut and Godard were in fact friends, but then they had a very public conflict as Godard is commonly known for. However, Truffaut and Godard are similar in that Truffaut also dreams of being a revolutionary in the world of cinema. He rejected French cinema and in particular French screenwriters. This is in true because of Truffaut's auteur theory. He believed that directors should write their own screenplay and then be the ones to direct it in order to have full control of their vision. It's one entire dream of theirs coming into fruition, transforming into the world of reality. He advocated for the new wave in which films were more personal than anything that came before, more of autobiography but in a way that still entices the spectator. The reason why perhaps this style did not take off into more of the present moment is because there were some financial failures in the french new wave. Since film...

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/apr/23/jean-luc-godard-nostalgia-is-it-time-to-stop-pining-for-the-great-directors-past Godard is one of the most notable directors in all of cinema. His movies are heralded as some of the best of all time. His vision is revolutionary and unlike anyone else. There were others during his time that also worked as pioneers for the french new wave, but Godard is probably the most highly regarded of his peers for his creativity and fresh vision. However, what is becoming more and more apparent to me is that while Godard is still living and working his current work is not as highly regarded as it once was. There is a very specific time frame in which his movies are closely looked at and the others since then not so much. The more time that passes from this moment the more nostalgia is attached to these movies. If we appreciated Godard's current films as we do with his previous ones then the air of nostalgia wouldn't be gone because we would sti...

For my blog post this week, I found a truly remarkable article from The New Yorker ,   entitled "Auteur Wars"; this article goes into pain-staking depth on the realities and nuances faced by the two founders of the French New Wave cinema, Truffaut and Godard. Since we focused specifically on Truffaut in class this week, I will only be talking about the Truffaut sections of the article for this blog post; however, both auteurs were both readily expounded upon in the attached article and it is a worthwhile read to gain insight into the creative lives of both. It also interesting to read the article and note the avid differences between the creative styles of both Godard and Truffaut. A section of the article I found most interesting, and one which closely related to class this week, focused on Truffaut's Day for Night , which we viewed in class, and the letter Godard wrote to Truffaut in response--the climax of the their falling-out. Day for Night  opened in Paris on May 2...

The New York Times published an obituary article  for Francois Truffault on October 22nd 1984, a day after his death. He died at the age of 52 after being hospitalized for the treatment of cancer. The article states that he was one of the most important film directors of the twentieth century and the New Wave's most respected director. People often praised him for his depictions of passionate women, children, and obsessive men. Truffault wrote that unlike Americans, European filmmakers chased sentiments as opposed to grand stories and enterprises. The article also explains how his life changed after meeting famous film critic Andre Balzin and his wife.  He wrote several books throughout his career including Hitchcock and The Films in my Career . His work itself faced much criticism, including one of his later fims "Confidentially Yours."  American film critic Vincent Canby wrote that the movie was "a bright, knowing, somewhat too affectionate variation on th...

For this week's blog post I have chosen to contribute the last known interview of François Truffaut, conducted in May of 1984; I have chosen this interview as Truffaut speaks a great deal on his first film of the New Wave period, "The 400 Blows", and, moreover, the beginning of the French New Wave--which was the focus of our class this week. An excerpt from the interview that best relates to what we talked about in class this week, and which also coincidentally happens to be my favorite part of the interview, is when Truffaut is asked about the success of the French New Wave, to which he replies the following: At the start of the New Wave, people opposed to the young filmmakers’ new films said, “All in all, what they’re doing is not very different from what was done before.” I don’t know if there was actually a plan behind the New Wave, but as far as I was concerned, it never occurred to me to revolutionize the cinema or to express myself differently from previous fil...

     This week I watched a YouTube video that explains how The New Wave movement changed French cinema. The speaker of the video begins by explaining that the New Wave started after World War 2 had ended, as well as Nazi censorship in France. Previous films by filmmakers such as Jean Renoir were again accessible to the public. The video also touched on the importance of French magazines.  During the time of the New Wave, magazines began depicting directors as individual artists. In an article called The New Avant Garde by art critic Alexandre Astruc, he uses the word camera pen to describe the camera as if it were a paintbrush or typewriter.      The video points out that many New Wave films used cities and on set locations to depict the actors in reality, and also to reduce the cost of studios. Filmmakers used long takes and deep focus to ensure the audience felt active and present in the scenes.       During this movement, ...