Buckley’s Mix

La nouvelle vague

Posted March 25, 2009, 19:03 ET Comments Off

We celebrate this year the fiftieth anniversary of the French New Wave, with the release of Truffaut’s Les quatre cent coups in 1959. That’s how I count things in any event. 1959 was also the year of Resnais’ Hirsohima mon amour, Godard’s A bout de souffle and Chabrol’s Les cousins, but for me it was Truffaut’s story of a boy sent to reform school, through the force of circumstances which reflect little upon his character.

Would The Four Hundred Blows have been so remarkable without Jean-Pierre Leaud? I don’t think so. Consider the scene where he is interrogated by the psychiatrist, and reflect that he was only 14 at the time. Because Leaud the child so little resembled Leaud the adult, I have always been captivated by his characteristic expression of surprise–eyes wide open, a little smile. But for that we’d scarcely know it was the same person.

So what made the New Wave? And why was it indigenous to France? Why was there nothing like it in other countries? Truffaut et al. turned their back on cinematic conventions and produced stunningly beautiful and intelligent films with very little money. When John Cassavetes tried to do the same thing, he made boring, ugly films. Wells made intelligent films with little money, as good or better than anything the French did. But it wasn’t the same thing.

So what was it, then? Let me suggest one thing: an awareness, characteristic of French literature, and informed by French moralists, of the possibility of self-deception.

Where does one see that in American films? In one great masterpiece: The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.

Category: film
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