Introduction to the world of Jean Luc-Godard

Jean Luc Godard is rightfully reflected back upon as an auteur film director; one of the primary focuses for auteur directors of the French new wave movement was to make a point against the Hollywood directors at the time whose films were being met with more commercial success, but lacked the artistry and substance that their French equivalent were producing. In this 1968 interview Jean Luc Godard talks about his feeling on the subject, “We have to fight the audience” (Sterrit, 1998: 7). By this I feel that Godard was saying that he doesn’t want to release films with little meaning for the sake of releasing a film, But instead you should show films to stimulate the audience and make them think on subjects they might not usually. And treated with more respect then to have a dumbed down product sold to them. He later goes on to say, I am trying to change the world, yes.” (Sterrit, 1998: 7). This is a common point of view from among Auteurs. Like many other Auteurs Godard equates himself with being a film critic as much as he does film being a filmmaker. He actually helped to create the Auteur film genre that he would later become a figurehead for, while writing for French film magazines such as Cahiers du Cinema. I believe that to become an auteur you do need to have strong opinions on what makes and of course what doesn’t a good film, also being an intellect knowing the philosophy and theory behind films, puts you in a better position to make a significant film.

I have been studying a certain scene from Jean Luc Godard’s 1960 film Breathless (A bout de soufflé) starring Jean Seberg & Jean-Paul Belmondo. It was Jean Luc Godard’s first feature film, and at the time it was and still is heralded for its innovativeness. It has been a major influence for films since and set a precedent for film noir films still come.

As said by Film critic Roger Ebert (Rogerebert.suntimes.com) “ The movie was a crucial influence during Hollywood's 1967-1974 golden age. You cannot even begin to count the characters played by Pacino, Beatty, Nicholson, Penn, who are directly descended from Jean-Paul Belmondo's insouciant killer Michel.” The film also was one of the first cases of the jump cut edit being used. George Melies had already used it, although when he did it he tried to make the cuts seamless to perform camera tricks. Godard used the technique for stylistic reasons. I believe making evolutionary steps like Godard did with introducing the jump cut, is definitely the mark of a natural auteur.
This clip is a prime example of Godard’s use of jump cuts, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHQ2Q-_bl8k.

Filmography

À bout de soufflé, (1960) directed by Jean-Luc Godard, France, Les Productions Georges de Beauregard [video:DVD]

Printed References

Sterritt, D. (1998) “Jean Luc Godard: Interviews” University Press of Mississippi


Online References

Film Critic Roger Ebert on a bout de souffle http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20030720/REVIEWS08/307200301/1023

Introduction

In Critical Studies we have been set a new project, which is set around the concept of genre. So far we have been learning about such genres as the American Western and how far this term can actually used for films that don’t look like westerns on first glance. We have also looked at the British Film genre of social realism, we as a class watched one of the first British films to concentrate on exploring social realism outside of the middle and upper classes in 20^th century Britain. It was ‘Saturday night, Sunday morning’.

When talking about this it also led on to talking about Marxist film theory, as Saturday night, Sunday morning seems to hold lots of Marxist connotations. After looking into marxism in films on the internet, i discovered i director who is well known for the marxist context in his films.
For my research I will be looking at the work of French New Wave director Jean-Luc Godard. Born in 1930 he was a prominent member of the French New Wave movement that went on in France between the nineteen fifties to the nineteen sixties. Others directors who were involved in this movement include Claude Chabrol, Jacques Rivette, Eric Rohmer and Francios Truffant.

Jean Luc Godard was a theorist and included a lot of philosophy in his work, he used a lot of Marxism theories in his work, looking at Marxism theory in the British New Wave interested me somewhat but i have decided not to research into this as it doesn't relate that well to the genre topic that we undertaking. Instead I be researching in the Auteur film theory and that do auteur film directors such as Godard and Hitchcock become genres in themselves.