Jean-Luc Godard, Cinema Historian by Michael Witt

Author:Michael Witt
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Indiana University Press

THE NEW WAVE

Godard’s humorous self-depiction in 3B as the keeper of the New Wave museum functions in part to signal that this episode will make a number of critical points in relation to the movement that – in his view – have hitherto been inadequately noted. At the same time, of course, he is fully aware that it is, like Histoire(s) du cinéma generally, a highly personal account of the movement filtered through half-memories: “My memory’s going, I no longer remember very well …,” as Jeanne Moreau sings on the soundtrack.73 Although he samples many of his own films in the series, in his accompanying spoken discourse, he has consistently expressed strong views in relation to specific works from the 1960s: ambivalence towards À bout de souffle; dislike for Une femme est une femme, Bande à part, and Made in USA (1966); a certain incomprehension regarding the widespread reverence for Le mépris; and comparatively high regard for Deux ou trois choses que je sais d’elle and Weekend. His interest in 3B, however, is less in these films, or in those of the other New Wave filmmakers, than in the movement’s origins and genealogy. He situates the movement in relation to the French critic-filmmaker tradition associated with the First Wave, and has linked it in interviews to the German Romantic literature he discovered during his adolescence through his father: “The New Wave came from there. It’s Novalis, or, if you prefer, Werther, who led me to Sartre.”74 Like most commentators, he has also related the movement to influences such as silent cinema, Neo-realism, documentary, postwar Hollywood, and selected key auteurs from Europe and elsewhere. The start date for the New Wave that he proposes in 3B, as is indicated via the combination of clips from La belle et la bête and Paisan that opens the episode, is the year in which these two films were released: 1946. (This, incidentally, is also the periodization he subsequently suggests in the title of Voyage[s] en utopie: JLG, 1946–2006, À la recherche d’un théorème perdu.) Besides its Orphic connotations, the clip from La belle et la bête also evokes the idea of the discovery of the world, of cinema, and of the world through cinema by the generation of children who grew up during the war, a period represented by brief extracts from Calef’s Jéricho. 3B also contains a key sequence constructed around material from, among other things, newsreel footage of Marilyn Monroe, Gigi (Vincente Minnelli, 1958), and The Beautiful Blond from Bashful Bend (Preston Sturges, 1949). This sequence simultaneously offers a loving tribute to the energy, exuberance, and vitality of postwar Hollywood; a fond recollection by Godard of the New Wave’s delight and excitement at its encounter with these films; and an acknowledgment of the extent of its impact on his early work, which is represented here by Angéla (Anna Karina) in Une femme est une femme. Complementing this sequence is an equally important one composed around extracts from Lang’s You Only Live Once

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