That so many fancy themselves as a film director is not new but for the French in the 1950’s and especially the 1960’s it was a very seriously business with the magazine Cahiers du Cinema being something of a bible for cinephiles with many of the writers going on to become directors themselves…. and very good ones too. But somewhat left behind was Jean Luc Godard (Guillaume Marbeck) one of the magazine’s writers and one of the last to get behind the camera. He pestered producer Georges de Neauregard (Bruno Dreyfurst) to finance his film – no mean feat when he had no script only a treatment (and it was Francois Truffaut, already drawing plaudits for his own films, who arguably fashioned Godard’s film). Perhaps even more remarkable was that he persuaded Jean Seberg (Zoey Deutch) to take a lead role opposite a previous collaborator of his, Jean Paul Belmondo (Aubrey Dullin). For all of them the film would make them stars and that film was Breathless and its making is lovingly recounted in director Richard Linklater’s, Nouvelle Vague’.
Shot in black and white in a 4:3 ratio and even the film mark in the top right hand corner signalling when the film reels used to be changed over when projected this is a tribute to the times and what was then called the New Wave of films in France. It’s an intriguing look at the making of the film with Godard’s laissez faire attitude to film making that drove his producer nuts with a director shooting only for an hour and on some days not at all. And yet its impact on release was immense
Essentially it’s a film about making a film and it’s hard to underestimate just how influential the film was (and is) – Tarantino took Seberg and Belmondo’s dance as influence for Travolta & Thurman’s diner dance off in ‘Pulp Fiction’.
Marbeck is great as Godard with his black shades seemingly glued to his face and wearing them even when indoors giving him an air of a man who’d lost his labrador. Though it is perhaps a shade too long Nouvelle Vague is perhaps a film for filmmakers but it’s as much a tribute to the art of film as it is to Godard and the New Wave and well worth seeing for that reason alone.
related feature : Director Michael Radford talks about making 1984 with John Hurt & Richard Burton
related feature : ‘Breathless’ – BLU-RAY, DVD & UHD
Here’s the Nouvelle Vague trailer….
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