I Loved The Taste Of Blood Since I Tasted Yours.

I derive joy from simple pleasures. Like knowing that what is often thought of as the pioneering film of the French New Wave, Hiroshima, Mon Amour, was nominated for an Oscar. Strange it wasn't nominated for Foreign Language film (though that may well have to do with the submissions procedure), but for Best Original Screenplay for Marguerite Duras. Of course it lost (to Billy Wilder's The Apartment, which took home Best Picture also), but it did get a BAFTA (the UN Award - what the?)

Alain Resnais' 1959 masterpiece was widely acclaimed, coming around the same time as François Truffaut's The 400 Blows and just before Jean-Luc Godard's seminal A bout de souffle. Resnais brought in the jump cut between memory and present, as well as keeping his story of love in another country very simple. He (credited on imdb.com as Luis but given no name in the film, played by Eiji Okada) is an architect in Hiroshima, who was on active duty when the bomb hit, but whose family all lived in the city at the time. She (similarly, her name is Elle, played by Emmanuelle Riva) is an actress in Hiroshima for 36 hours only. The two begin a passionate affair despite the fact that they are each otherwise married. But the film doesn't focus on the words these two speak of and too each other so much as what is said about the city. It is almost as though Resnais and Duras are attempting to heal the damage done fourteen years earlier, using love as the bandaid. And it is beautiful. As the film progresses it seems entirely plausible that their feelings could possibly undo all of the damage bestowed upon the city.


Of course it can't, and in the final scene, which heavily references Casablanca, it becomes apparent that all good things must come to an end. But, like Casablanca, the memories will last a lifetime - they may not have started a beautiful friendship, but they will forever hold in their hearts the few hours they spent in carnal embrace, discussing the world and their names as cities.


The Japanese sections in particular were beautifully captured by Michio Takahashi (the French segments captured as flashback and memory by She were shot by Sacha Vierny), and the whole film wove its way into my consciousness like not many can. Resnais' crafting of the structure, and the way it was all cut together by a team, gave it a freshness that still holds firm fifty years later. The realness that somehow permeates through the artifice of the medium is striking - I do think it strange that the jumpcutting in this film and in A bout de souffle in fact seem to be the realest ways to portray humanity, despite the almost Brechtian selfawareness they by nature have.


It is a beautiful example of how simple cinema can be whilst saying absolute volumes. There is a good reason why this film is held up somewhere near the pinnacle of film. This is a film I look forward to revisiting time and time again, as I'm sure that every time something new shall shine through. 5 stars.

I Live For A Living.

Another day, another ex-Cahiers du Cinema writer, Nouvelle Vague founder member. While we've played around with Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut, today we're touching on someone often thought of as the ultimate father of the movement, Claude Chabrol (this is an extremely arguable claim, by the way, but we're not here to discuss history. In fact, we're not even going to look at one of his films from the period in question, instead drifting back merely three years to 2007.)

The Girl Cut In Two stars two young actors who have only recently appeared on this blog, Ludivine Sagnier (in Swimming Pool) and Benoît Magimel (from The Piano Teacher.) Sagnier plays Gabrielle, a television weather reporter and the object of the affections of both celebrated older author Charles Saint-Denis (François Berléand) and young playboy Paul (Magimel.) Charles is a bit of a whore, married to one woman, seeing Gabrielle on the side, going to a variety of sex clubs. Paul is a bit of a pig, not doing anything with his life except relying on the fortune he is set to inherit, arrogant and cocksure. Gabrielle is in the middle, flattered by both attentions, though the one she really wants is Charles. Charles, however, once he has her, uses her as a pawn in his game before discarding her, unwilling to bring her into his life when he is otherwise perfectly happily married. Paul, meanwhile, won't give up, begging for her hand, promising the world. But this love for Gabrielle, or desire, or whatever, doesn't end in happiness for either Paul, Charles or the beautiful Gabrielle.


It's a nice film, albeit somewhat bland. It doesn't feel anywhere near as exciting as I feel it could, coming from someone with the pedigree of Chabrol. It was feels quite run of the mill for the most part, bolstered by strong performances from the leads that are nonetheless playing somewhat distant and dislikable characters, quite alienating the viewer from the emotions of the characters - in fact, other than a period of Gabrielle's devastation, it is damned hard to see any real emotion from the characters. Even Paul, who seems to wear his heart on his sleeve, often seems insincere, as though he has ulterior motives - which wouldn't surprise me in the slightest.


This isn't to say it's a bad film. It is quite entertaining to watch, the film compels your attention and keeps moving forwards. It's just a bit average, a bit run of the mill. There isn't anything here that particularly grabs your attention and emotion. It spends a perfectly pleasant couple of hours in front of you and then disappears again. 2.5 stars.

Shoot.

Aah, François Truffaut. Like his Cahiers du Cinema stablemate Jean-Luc Godard he did so much to bring the French New Wave to the world, though he abandoned so many of its most distinctive qualities after only his second attempt at the helm, following the Cannes acclaim and Oscar nomination of his breakout success Les Quatre Cent Coups. 

Truffaut struggled to find financing for his followup feature Tirez Sur Le Pianiste, instead opting to pretty much shoot it on the fly, employing the characteristics of the Nouvelle Vague as much by necessity as by choice, one must imagine. Charlie (Charles Aznavour) is a pianist, playing tunes in a piano bar, when his brother, Chico (Albert Rémy) enters, chased by two gangsters. It turns out Charlie is not, in fact, Charlie, but Eduard Saroyan, a previously acclaimed concert pianist whose life turned upside down after the suicide of his wife. It also turns out that his family consists almost entirely of criminals, a world he is being drawn back into.


At the same time, a waitress at the bar, Léna (Marie Dubois) is falling in love with him, something Charlie is reciprocating. Whilst on the run, the two escape together, winding up at a farmhouse in the country where Chico and the rest of Charlie's brothers are hiding out, before a fatal final scene.


It's an interesting film, a nice little addition to the movement, holding out in the minds of cineastes despite the cool critical and commercial reception upon the film's release. It is this reception, in fact, that apparently inspired Truffaut to give up on the improvised and loose style so employed by him and his contemporaries, instead moving into the realm of scripted, budgeted and more mainstream cinema that saw such films as La Nuite Américaine spring forth. Not that he gave them up entirely, but rather that he moderated them into something more palatable for audiences of the time.


In Tirez, however, the jump cuts are still there, the leaps in time and narrative, the occasional lack of coherence and the use of real spaces within which to set the narrative - he's still shooting from the hip here. And it does work to a degree. Making it up as you go along is always a dangerous game to play, as it doesn't allow for a great deal of reflection and finessing. Instead, you're lumped with what you've already got and you have to work everything around what was thought yesterday, despite the constraints of today. To that extent, I think Truffaut may well have got lucky with being able to create a narrative as cohesive as he did here. Either that, or he is perhaps the most gifted storyteller and director to yet front this earth. While I think he is truly talented, I believe some of the further most definitely comes into play.


But, one cannot judge for luck. The performances are solid, centred as they are around Aznavour, Rémy and Dubois, who all hold it together nicely. Raoul Coutard, who acquitted himself so well with À Bout De Souffle, does a stellar job here, with many dark, noir-ish scenes where I'm sure he had very little to work with. Truffaut may well have pulled this out of his arse, but what was up there was a pretty fine film. 4 stars.

Memory Is The Greatest Curse That's Ever Been Inflicted On The Human Race.

It's a slight misquote, but close enough.


Citizen Kane has long been regarded as one of the greatest films ever made, especially within America. Made in the middle of the second World War, newcomer Orson Welles directs himself in a story apparently fairly closely based on the life of William Randolph Hearst, a newspaper magnate with huge influence and wealth due to his ability to control opinion through fear of bad press. Hearst is proxied in the movie by Charles Foster Kane (Orson Welles), who builds his empire after inheriting an apparently worthless piece of land that in fact contains the world's third largest gold mine.

An initially tumultuous childhood sees Kane being sent from his abusive father and depressed mother (Agnes Moorehead) to live with a wealthy city banker Walter Parks Thatcher (George Coulouris), who takes care of Kane the best he can. When Kane turns 25 he comes into the fortune bequeathed to him and embarks upon building his empire, buying up flailing newspaper The Inquirer and turning it around with yellow journalism. Kane quickly expands his empire, becoming an enormously powerful media player, able to bring people up, start wars, whatever he wants with a flick of his wrist and a stab at a typewriter, despite his earlier pledge to be true to what he believes in. The problem with Kane is his Freudian psychosis - reacting and manifesting from his sad and unfortunate upbringing.


Kane meets and marries Emily Monroe Norton (Ruth Warrick), the niece of the President, and begins a campaign to become governor of New York. Late in his campaigning days he stumbles across Susan Alexander (Dorothy Comingmore), an aspiring singer, and begins an affair with her. Discovered, the affair proves a scandal, published widely in competing newspapers, and causes the decimation of Kane's political ambitions and the collapse of his first marriage. Kane quickly marries Susan, pushing her to become an opera singer of grand scale, building an Opera house for her to sing in. Upon her debut she is scathingly attacked from all sides, though Kane tries to stop his newspapers from saying bad things about her until a confrontation with his dramatic reporter and best friend Jebediah Leland (Joseph Cotten) reminds him of his previous attempts to maintain some dignity and sees him write a damning review under Leland's name.

Gradually, everything for Kane begins to fall apart. He is living in a magical, fantastical, enormous estate called Xanadu that seems to never be finished, collecting statues, with another marriage failing and friendships all left at the wayside in pursuit not of profit, but of notoriety. In dropping scruples along the way in order to help him here, he ends up having to further compromise himself in order that he get through over there. Friends, workers, loved ones, they all are forced away from him by his increasingly domineering personality, resulting in him dying alone at Xanadu, where he now only interacts with his staff, muttering the word 'Rosebud' and setting off newsreel reporter Jerry Thompson (William Alland) on a quest to discover the meaning.


The narrative structure of the film may appear somewhat normal today, but at the time was quite strikingly revolutionary, even if Welles can't take credit for the invention of it. The film introduces Kane initially through a newsreel about his death, which then turns into the investigation for the discovery of the meaning of his dying word. In interviewing a number of friends and associates of Kane, the film is then told in flashback as they describe him and his life, giving us an insight into his story in the past through the viewpoint of the present. What was probably most influential, however, was the inventive cinematography and set ups Welles and cinematographer Gregg Toland used, including deep focus allowing for the entire scene to be in focus (some actually shot with clever lenses, others using in camera techniques and some post visual effects.) The music, also, by Hitchock fave Bernard Herrmann, was noted quite widely. In and of themselves, these elements weren't used for the first time in Citizen Kane, but they were combined in Welles' debut feature to extraordinary effect.

There is little that I can say about Citizen Kane that has not been said ad nauseam many times since. As mentioned, the film has regularly been touted as the greatest film of all time, something which to an extent needs to be viewed with the cinematic landscape of the time and how the film has influenced so many films and filmmakers hence (it was a particular favourite of the Cahiers du Cinema crew in France, including Jean-Luc Godard and Francois Truffaut) that have gone on to create the cinematic canon held up today. However, the film does also stand on its own two feet as a riveting dramatic work, something enjoyable without an understanding of the background and future of cinema.


A truly influential film, a great piece of cinema mastery, and an enduring feat that will continue to please years hence. 5 stars.

Informers Inform, Burglars Burgle, Murderers Murder and Lovers Love.

Aah, Breathless (À bout de souffle.) You iconic piece of cinema, you. There is so much about Breathless that keeps me coming back for more, fifty years after the film released, close to a decade after I first saw it. As one of the defining films of the French New Wave, that period of cinematic awesomeness (yes, I just said 'awesomeness') that began in the late-50s and early 60s with films like Truffaut's The 400 Blows and Alain Resnais' Hiroshima, Mon Amour, both from 1959, Breathless helped to bring recognition and acclaim to the movement from around the world. What is it about the film? There are so many things. I once wrote a paper on it, in fact. I could go on for hours. But I won't. I'm going to break it down in simple terms.

Petty criminal Michel (Jean-Paul Belmondo) is on the run from the cops after doing something a little more than petty - shooting a police officer. His American girlfriend Patricia (Jean Seberg) hides him, not knowing the extent of his crimes. The two romp around Paris for a while before Patricia gives him away. Resigned to his fate, Michel then decides to flee, bringing about the beautiful and tragic final protracted death scene.


That's the basic plot out of the way. Director Jean-Luc Godard helped to revolutionise film with the success of this film. Sure, he wasn't the first to use the idea of jump cuts (it's been years since I saw it, but didn't The 400 Blows also use them in the scene where Jean-Pierre Léaud is being interviewed by the principal or whatever it was also feature them? I might be wrong), but here they were so informative to the narrative, so strong in their purpose, so noticeable in how they were used.


Yes, Godard wasn't the first director to 'take it to the streets', as it were. In fact, this whole concept of taking it to the streets was one of the defining motivations behind the French New Wave. As a rebuttal to the stagnant studio system, the freedom of smaller cameras and running around shooting without lights with a handheld camera on the streets of Paris was pretty much the whole idea - freeing you up to work with very little money, anyone you wanted to work with, anywhere you wanted to do it, with the flexibility to adapt and change as you went along. A truly dynamic notion that works initially before ego and power gets in the way (a problem with virtually all New Wave movements, especially ones based on simplicity), within France this gave us the work of some truly incredible directors - lets add Éric Rohmer, Claude Chabrol and Jacques Rivette to the few already mentioned.


As a film goes, the film is excellent regardless, entertaining, gripping, stylish but lo-fi relatable. Belmondo and Seberg pull off their roles with aplomb, and the few supports give their own little individual flair. It looks terrific, with cinematographer Raoul Coutard taking Godard's brief for a reportage style film seriously and giving the fictional tale a similar reality to that which held Close-Up thirty years later. 5 stars.