Welcome, class, to another edition of Free Film School for Crave Online, wherein I, your humble professor, will take you by the hand, and lead you down the glorious path of cinema education, enlighten your mind, dazzle your eyes, move your heart, and perhaps do a little something for a few other internal organs as well. Provided, of course, it can be said in a short essay, and can be accessed for free online. Sit back in your robe, sip your coffee, and learn. This week, I'll be telling you about a filmmaker whom you may not be familiar with, but who managed to change the face of cinema forever.
In 1960, the director Jean-Luc Godard released a movie called Breathless. It was about a criminal layabout – played by ultra-suave, ennui-infused lounge lizard Jean-Paul Belmondo – who spends his time stealing cars, playing around with his American mistress (Jean Seberg), and smoking cigarettes in the streets of Paris. There are some story elements and complications (yes, someone dies during the film), but in spirit, that's pretty much it. Godard had said that he wanted to create a new kind of cinema that dealt with life more than it did with story and characters; he essentially wanted to make films a combination of documentary and live theater, where the camera tried to capture the Truth as best as it could.
Godard, you see, was one of the most ambitious filmmakers in the form's history. He was not content to make mere movies as entertainments, but was one of those artiste-types who took it upon himself to personally change the face of cinema. He, along with some other now-famous French filmmakers (notably Jacques Rivette, Erich Rohmer, and François Truffaut, all important directors in their own rights), started up a few short-lived film magazines where they would tout a new kind of cinema, and would occasionally shoot some of their first features. It was about this time that Breathless came out, along with some other important French films (like Shoot the Piano Player, The 400 Blows, and Paris Belongs to Us) that started a movement what is now called the French New Wave.
The most important, and probably the most famous, of the French New Wave, though, were the ones made by Godard himself. He did A Band of Outsiders, about a trio of free-thinking, sexually liberated hedonists living in Paris. He did Vivre sa Vie (1962 and my favorite of his), which is a lot like Breathless, but with a pixie-haired Anna Karina in the central role, who casually breaks the law and hooks on street corners. Other titles worth a look are A Woman is a Woman (1961), Alphaville (a twisted sci-fi film from 1965), and Pierrot la Fou (also 1965).
Most all of these films in the French New Wave, and Godard's in particular, were obsessed with that notion of capturing The Truth. And this leads me to the thesis of this week's lesson, one of Godard's most famous quotations: “Cinema is truth a 24 frames per second” (which is the rate at which actual film strips travel through a projector). He felt that a camera had no choice but to film something real. Even if you had sets and makeup and actors and scripts, the camera had to – HAD to – relentlessly record real people and real sets. There was always an element of factual truth in any film, no matter how much fiction. On one level, you're watching Rick wrestling with his feelings for Ilsa. On another, you're watching an actor named Humphrey Bogart reading lines with an actress named Ingrid Bergman. Well, to cite Casablanca as an example.
Even if you're watching a cartoon film, you're still watching a drawing made by a human hand; there is a direct connection to the thing you're watching, and the real world. Godard wanted to strengthen that connection. He was interested in what some film critics call Ecstatic Truth, that is to say, seeing in a film something that cannot be faked or reproduced. That brief moment of real emotion, of real human habit, of real panic, of real romance, that comes naturally from the process of acting and filming. Not in some stilted documentary way, but in a real, emotional way that connects more to live theater.
Some critics will use a big multisyllabic word to describe this (and I myself am guilty of leaning on this word): verisimilitude. It's essentially just a fancy word for the truthfulness of a thing. But it means more than “realism,” which is usually used only to describe a general aesthetic than actual truth. Realism only refers to a naturalistic style. Verisimilitude refers to actual truth peeking it head out of the constructed artifice. All films are artificial to a degree, and they are, simultaneously, 100% honest. Think about that for a second.
And it's verisimilitude that keeps bringing a lot of us film obsessives back to the movies. Sure, we have our favorite characters in movies. We have our favorite actors and composers and directors. We love getting involved in a story as much as the next person. But once you've seen enough movies, you begin to see the patterns in stories. You can start to predict endings. The surprises are less and less surprising. A good filmmaker can make the surprises fresh again, and new talents are always arising to brush off the conventions, or give them new twists. But something that will always give us a surprise is the real. The facts. The ecstatic truth that cannot be faked. It's at those little moments that you're not just watching a story, and you've started to make a real connection with the people on the screen.
This next part is less about theory, and more an editorial, but it involves the relatively recent proliferation of CGI in movies, which deserves comment. If the purpose of cinema is to show ecstatic truth, according to Godard, then CGI is the first tool in the filmmaking toolbox that is untruthful. It's a tool that is used to create images on a screen where a camera is not involved at all, and human hands have never actually touched said thing. If cinema is truth, then CGI is a lie. In a previous lesson, I pointed out how special effects should serve the material. There's nothing wrong with spectacle, but, if we're operating by Godard's theory, pure spectacle created by CGI is actually impure.
Does that sound confrontational? It should. Godard was not a quiet filmmaker by any means. Looking up lists of his famous quotations reveals that. He compared tracking shots to questions of morality. He argued that edits were lies. He famously said (in the 1970s) that the time for cinema making any sort of significant political and social change in the world had long since passed. He referred to cinema as a “beautiful fraud.” These days, Godard, who is 81 years old, is still making films, but has started down this eerie path of abstract collages and preachy impenetrable essays like Notre Musique, and this year's critically panned Film Socialisme. And while his more recent output is a bit spotty (at best), you have to admire the man for sticking to his guns, and attempting to make important comments with his camera so late into his life.
And his famous saying of cinema being truth at 24 frames per second is still provocative and important to think about. Are we only interested in stories? Is film merely a vehicle for stories? Or is there something more? Is there a degree of ecstatic truth what we value? I'll finish up with one of Godard's famous quotations: “In my movies, there are never intentions. It's not me inventing this empty auditorium. I don't want to 'say' anything. I try to show, or to get a feeling across, or to allow something to be said after the fact.” Well, it sounds like he's invited us. Let's watch some movies, and get to talking about them.
HOMEWORK FOR THE WEEK: Of course, try to watch some Jean-Luc Godard films. I recommend that you start with A Band of Outsiders, as it's probably one of his most accessible. Then definitely move on to Breathless and Vivre sa Vie. Then choose anything else made in the 1960s. Only delve into his later stuff if you're feeling brave. When you're watching them, look for the “real” inside of the “artificial.” How does Godard convey his idea of ecstatic truth? Also consider this: there is not much story in a Godard film. Does this make it better for you? Worse? The next film you watch, pay close attention to the actors. How much of their mannerisms are affected for the role, and how much of them are just natural little habits of the actor themselves? I'm willing to bet you'll be able to tell the difference.
