New Wave Cinema
While of course, I know of New Wave Cinema I have to confess that it is a new genre to me – if 50 plus years late.
From my research I feel that New Wave Cinema is a child of time; it was born out of cinema clubs in post-war France; in culture vacuum that the war left movies from Hollywood were important in filling this void. New Wave Cinema was a style that young French cinephiles created to add their personal voice to a cinema.
Andre Bazin, who had been writing about cinema since during the war and can be considered the grandfather of film studies, quickly became a guru to the movie students, such as Jean-Luc Goddard, who would go on to help start the New Wave, after be founded the magazine Cahiers Du Cinema. This magazine became their bible and because Bazin was such an advocate of realism in film this is the direction the New Wave took.
While New Wave Cinema rebels from the traditional Hollywood film it was not rebellion as such because the players in the New Wave movement were as I have said cinephiles – geeks if you will. They just wanted to take advantage of the changing times and attitudes and the new technology available to them to tell stories in a new, fresh and modern style.
Handheld cameras are a trait of the New Wave; these new technologies help the directs shoot the film in public places. This avoided big set ups and added to the realism of the movies. I watched Jean-Luc Goddard’s “A Bout de Souffle” (Breathless) recently I was surprised by the contemporary feel in the cinematography despite its 56 year age. Camera’s such as the Éclair NPR with it ability to synchronise sound started the open up the possibilities to the New Wave Directors. Although, earlier films used Éclair Camflex which was incapable of synchronized sound and like “A Bout de Souffle” re entirely redubbed in post-production as the camera was so noisy.
This handheld style of camera work and lack of too formalised scripting in the New Wave spilt over into the work of documentary and the work of the Maysles brothers. The Maysles brothers collaborated in the style of direct cinema and tended to allow the story to unfold as they filmed as opposed to following a particular laid out plan.
Direct Cinema which specifically tries to get as realism into subjects – this was done in the US where Robert Drew, Donn Pennebaker, and Richard Leacock started making documentaries pulling on Robert Drews Photojournalist experience. Creating candid fly on the wall style modern documentaries beginning with “Primary” in 1960 detail the Wisconson Presidential primary and going through “Dont look back” and “Woodstock” later in the 1960’s
Pennebaker did try to collaborate with Jean Luc-Goddard, but the project was faltering from the start; it had an ambitious idea to film staged and unstaged scenes and the recombine the into a dramatised sequences. However, Goddard pulled out of the project leaving Pennebaker in financial stress and only finally putting the documentary together as One PM several years later.