Word: films
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Sontag's brilliant book contains essays on Bergman and Godard, the pornographic imagination, the relation of theatre and film, the state of the nation, and E. M. Cioran, a modern aphoristic French philosopher. Two of the essays, the avant-garde "Aesthetics of Silence" and "Trip to Hanoi," rank among the most important intellectual documents of the sixties...
FRANCOIS Truffaut's Stolen Kisses begins with a shot of the Cinemathique in Paris and is dedicated to Henri Langlois, the popular man who runs it. And indeed the Nouvelle Vague movement in French films owes its existence to the Musee Cinema since most of the men in this movement-Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Chabrol, Erie Rohmer, Jacques Rivette-began their careers as critics for the highly-influential Cahiers du Cinema and have arrived where they are only after a long and detailed study of film history...
Truffaut's Shoot the Piano Player, for example, takes much of its style and action form the American gangster film. His Farenbeit 451 is adapted from a second-rate novel and takes after the sci-fi films of the fifties. The Bride Wore Black is a product of Truffaut's consuming interest in the films of Alfred Hitchcock, to whom the film is dedicated and the imitation detracts from the individuality of the film...
...unique artistry and save a great deal about what the Nouvelle Vague movement is. The opening shot of the Cinemathique is followed by a panning shot of Paris taken from the Cinematheque across the Seine to the Eeffel Tower. This shot introduces one of the important themes in the film and in the Nouvelle Vague movement-Paris and Parisians. Stolen Kisses is punctuated with unmistakable Parisian landmarks-the Eiffel Tower, the Musee du Cinema. Sacre Coeur a Parisian cafebar a street-cleaning car early in the morning -which serve constantly to remind the viewer of the setting...
Truffaut goes out of his way of avoid any kind of tight dramatic construction. Many incidents-such as Antoine's chance meetings on the street with old friends -have no apparent purpose and bear no particular relation to any other part of the film, but are incredibly life-like because of their irrelevance. This looseness of construction is another distinct feature of the Nouvelle Vague. The unimportance of a plot as such allows the director to explore people's relations and the development of their character without having to worry about logical dramatic sequence. It is the experimental reinterpretation...