French Impressionism

The London Film and Media Reader , 2013

The following paper is a comparative study of the French Nouvelle Vague and its subsequent influences on the cinema of New Hollywood during the 1970's based around the artistic and cultural ideologies of Postmodernism as expressed in the works of Frederic Jameson's Postermodernism in Consumer Society and Postmodernism, Or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. I will be exploring the cultural and socio-political parallels between the evolution of the two movements and their reflections of new cinematic conventions and ideologies such as auteur theory and visual experimentation looking in particular at the films and culture of French Cinema from 1954 to 1968 and American cinema from 1967 to 1983. In this respect I will be drawing on comparative textual examples from Arthur Penn's Bonnie and Clyde (1967) Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets (1973) and Jean Luc Godard's A Bout de Souffle (1960) and exploring the common reciprocations in each piece of work comparing them in a broader ideological framework as productions and representations of an artistic culture and post modernist trend. I will also place an emphasis on the philosophies and ideologies expressed by key French film writers Alexandre Astruc in 1948 with his essay on the birth of the new Avante Garde: La Camera Stylo , and later in Cahiers du Cinema by the philosophies of Francois Truffaut and Andre Bazin and how these ideas were reflected in the films of the French New Wave and subsequently later in the films of New Hollywood. The main argument of the dissertation as such will examine this cultural exchange and enduring cinematic legacy of both film cultures by exploring the recurring narrative and character motifs in both to deem whether they can be defined as deriving from Post modernist ideologies.

2016

It is commonly accepted that the French New Wave (Nouvelle Vague) forms part of the global history of cinema and constitutes a reference point for modern artists and directors. According to many film critics, the particular movement was a milestone and despite its political comments, it was directly related to the American Cinema of that era. Many american film genres, as for example, the film noirs, the historical drama and many others made their entrance in the French society and had an immense success. On the contrary, the American society was also influenced by this new French movement which was closely related to fine art. So, one might wonder: Is the American Cinema the one who influenced the Nouvelle Vague or vice versa? This paper shows, through a detailed analysis, the close relation of Nouvelle Vague with Hollywood, taking into account aspects of aesthetics and political history.

A Companion to Italian Cinema, ed. by Frank Burke, Wiley-Blackwell, , 2017

This dissertation develops a comprehensive study of the influence exerted by Hollywood “genre” cinema, in particular the B-series film noir, on the French New Wave. Initially, I ask if this relationship is not the principle identifying criterion of New Wave cinema. It is, after all, a matter of record that Hollywood’s cheaply-made B-movies were championed by the critics of Cahiers du cinéma as permitting authorial self-expression and as encouraging cinematic innovation and evolution. Genre cinema subsequently remained a preoccupation for the New Wave auteurs, who made no fewer than fifty gangster and crime films between 1958 and 1965, including many of the New Wave’s most iconic films. I therefore embark on a comparative study that considers in great detail the New Wave’s reprisal and adaptation of the film noir format, with my analyses focused not only on character and plot conventions, but also on the tropes, aesthetics and filmmaking production techniques common to both cinemas. I show how the two cinemas cross-pollinate, especially given that the French polar itself exerted influence on Hollywood film noir and that French critics were among the first to identify the new tendency towards making film noir in postwar Hollywood. I also draw a number of important conclusions. Primarily, I show that while the New Wave borrows extensively from Hollywood aesthetics, its manipulation and subversion of American film noir conventions are also at the very heart of the politique des auteurs. This politique is characterized by a profound dissatisfaction with their era, the Americanization of French society, France’s involvement in Algeria, and a reticence about the impending sexual liberation movement. I contextualize my project within the current debate in film and French studies regarding the legacy of the New Wave, particularly in light of a tendency to cast doubt on the movement’s involvement with “the political,” as well as to dispute the New Wave’s status as a defining moment in French cinema.

The French New Wave

2002

Poetics, 1993