French New Wave

146 Pages·2013·1.507 MB·English

by  Chris Wiegand

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French New Wave
CHRIS WIEGAND
POCKET ESSENTIALS
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French New Wave
www.pocketessentials.com
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This edition published in 2012 by Pocket Essentials,
an imprint of Oldcastle Books Ltd,
P.O.Box 394, Harpenden,
Herts, AL5 1XJ
www.pocketessentials.com
© Chris Wiegand 2005, 2012
The right of Chris Wiegand to be identified as the author of this
work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored
in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form
or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or
otherwise) without the written permission of the publishers.
Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication
may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN
978-1-84243-946-3 (print)
978-1-84243-934-0 (epub)
978-1-84243-935-7 (kindle)
978-1-84243-936-4 (pdf)
2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1
Typeset in 9pt Univers Light with Myriad Pro display
by Avocet Typeset, Chilton, Aylesbury, Bucks
Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY
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Acknowledgements
Thanks to Paul Duncan for providing unlimited editorial guidance
and enthusiasm. Further assistance came from Shannon
Attaway, Mylene Bradfield, Louise Cooper, Julia Dance, Lisa
DeBell, Alexis Durrant, Lizzie Frith, Maria Kilcoyne, Steve Lewis,
Wade Major, Ion Mills, Luke Morris, Gary Naseby, Matt Price, Jill
Reading, Jessica Simon, James Spackman and Claire Watts.
Merci à tous!
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Contents
1. Making Waves: An Introduction 9
2. Birth of the Cool 27
3. Cannes ’59 47
4. Guns, Girls and Gauloises 55
5. Les Femmes 65
6. And Godard Created Karina, then Recreated Bardot 77
7. Songs, Thrills and a Town Called Alphaville 91
8. Further Viewing 103
9. Further Reading 131
Index 137
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1. Making Waves: An Introduction
Beautiful women. Suave leading men. Existential angst. Black
and white figures in Parisian cafés. Cigarette smoke. Lots of it.
The world of French cinema conjures up a hundred often-
parodied clichés for today’s viewer and the films of the New
Wave era supply their own set of distinctive images. Jean
Seberg walking down the Champs Elysées selling theNew York
Herald Tribune. The young Jean-Pierre Léaud running through
the streets of Paris with a stolen typewriter. Charles Aznavour
playing honky-tonk piano in a run-down café. Anna Karina and
Jean-Claude Brialy brushing off their feet before going to sleep.
Eddie Constantine, decked out in gumshoe hat and mac, arriving
at the sinister town of Alphaville. Jean-Paul Belmondo wrapping
dynamite around his painted face. Brigitte Bardot lying naked in
a bedroom asking Michel Piccoli what he thinks of her rear.
Jeanne Moreau, Oskar Werner and Henri Serre cycling through
the countryside. The list is endless.
These images are some of the things that the New Wave
means to me, yet decades after the term ‘Nouvelle Vague’ was
coined in L’Expressmagazine, critics continue to argue over its
precise meaning. Some confine the New Wave to a certain
period of time, others to particular directors. Many believe that
the filmmakers who wrote for the influential journal Cahiers du
Cinémaare the only ones we can truly describe as belonging to
the New Wave. Among the directors believed at one time or
another to be related to the movement are: Jean-Luc Godard,
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