This week, The Algorhythm cashes in a one-way-ticket aboard the EuropExpress voyaging back to late 50s Paris, and the French New Wave film movement.
Think tri-colour palettes, get-away cars, Antique Olive type-face against Karina's close-ups. Batting lashes over smoked cigarettes, soundtracked to the chimes of Jean Constantin and Michel Legrand. But remember ! it's not just about the stylish aesthetics...what lies beneath was a thematic shift that brought in bounds of existential awareness, ambiguity in realism, and new ideas on sexual liberation. Topics we will be discussing live this Wednesday at 8PM.
As an introduction to this weeks theme, I've taken an except from a recent essay I wrote on New Wave auteurism, specifically focusing on the movement's relationship with the idea of the muse. Of course, the concept of the muse is not at all exclusive to this period of film history, however, as an animated Anna Karina fan, her relationship with Godard is of particular interest to me.
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French New Wave
The French New Wave is a period of film history, characterised by stylistically aware films that valued mis-en-scene, breaking prior rules of continuity and conventionality, they were experimental pieces (Morrey, 2022), underpinned by a new breed of male protagonists who either ‘(did) not know what they (were) supposed to be doing or (were) impotent to achieve their goal’ (Nowell-Smith, 2008, p.104). Within this essay, it is important we also consider it as a period that would eventually be tied to ‘a new representation of the relations between men and women, and the exploration of sexual desire’(Sellier, 2008, p.61).
For Criterion, David Hudson suggests that although ‘no single work or declaration can be credited with launching the French New Wave, but if there were one, François Truffaut’s essay, ‘une certaine tendance du cinéma francais’, (…) would be a prime candidate’ (Hudson, 2022 p.1). It was this work that initiated the framework of auteur theory.
Auteur Theory
Truffaut’s essay was published in the January 1954 issue (no. 31) of Cahiers du Cinéma, here we see Truffaut call for a more individualistic approach to cinema, led by distinctive directors (Grant, 2008), directors we can categorise as auteurs. I would like to employ Andrew Sarris’ definition of an auteur, which suggests, ‘auteur theory may be visualised as three concentric circles: the outer circle as technique; the middle circle, personal style; and the inner circle; interior meaning.’ (Sarris, 1962, p.43). It is crucial we acknowledge how key auteur theory was to the era’s identity, Morrey argues that the French New Wave’s beginnings and ends can be thought of as loosely defined by ‘the films of key directors for the whole of the 1960s, if not beyond’ (2022, p.1). This highlights the importance of the movement’s directorial collective; Godard, Truffaut, Chabrol and so forth. Sellier referred to these films as existing in the ‘first person masculine singular’ (Sellier, 2008, p.11), she continues to argue that the agency of female characters would often deteriorate and their self-respect diminish, at the hands of the auteurs script.
Vivre Sa Vie
Jean-Luc Godard and his wife Anna Karina created several of the movements most influential films, with him as the auteur and her as the muse. The two married when Karina was 19, and Godard was ten years her senior in 1961 (Aimee Ferrier, 2022). The film I will be focusing on is Vivre Sa Vie (Godard, 1962), the third feature they made together. It features twelve episodic tales of a Parisian woman, who wants to become an actress, and her decent into prostitution. Karina plays the female lead, Nana, which of course is an anagram for Anna (Brody, 2008), and this is most definitely not the only element that references their intertwining. In one scene, as Nana’s initiation into prostitution plays out, she walks in a low-angle tracking shot with her first client under a shop sign, ‘Lucas Services’, “Hans Lucas was of course the pseudonym Godard used during his years as a critic and as a director of his first fiction film (…) Karina puts herself in the service of Lucas, or Jean-Luc”.
ness to be positioned as an object of inspiration, serving the subject, the male creative genius. Kaja Silverman and Harun Farocki extend this analysis when discussing the final twelfth tableau, where a male voice, identified as Godard addresses Karina directly as a husband and director, stating The Oval Portrait [2] “is our story (…) a painter portraying his love.” Godard not only speaks to us, suggesting he also desires to mould Karina into a ‘mortifying representation’, but that within both dynamics, there is a “rigid role division. In The Oval Portrait, the man paints, and the woman is painted. Similarly, Godard films, and Karina is filmed.” (Silverman & Farocki, 1998, p.34). This to me, is reminiscent of the dynamics Mulvey draws in Visual Pleasures, between object and subject, active and passive, exhibitionist and voyeur, male and female (Mulvey, 1989). Farocki relates the dynamic between Karina and Godard to a Svengali complex, ‘The woman has ‘talent’ but she herself does not understand it. Only the male artist can conjure the timeless masterpiece out of the woman’s quotidian flesh.’ (Silverman & Farocki, 1998, p.34). O’Hara writes in the cinematic industry it is usually the director “who tries to create an entirely new persona out of someone. There’s something about the beauty and charisma required of stars that makes certain men want to claim them not just sexually or romantically but professionally, shaping (women) to their own model of perfection.” (2021, p.155). I feel this concept is appropriate to apply here, as one of the motivations for the production of Vivre Sa Vie was ‘in the hope of establishing Karina as a serious actress’ (Brody, 2008, p.132). This is really the crux to the argument of my essay; the nature of New Wave auteurship in all its grandiose, permits large amounts of power to be placed upon the shoulders of a director, who the vast majority of the time is a man. And although an auteur can acknowledge this, and create self-referential notes within his work, said power is still being yielded freely to mould and scope the female muse into the most suitable model of perfection, unless she is given an equal voice. It’s important to remember this projection of control is also tied to a larger chain of oppression, one that any women of this period would encounter, one of patriarchy. ‘Humanity is male, and man defines woman, not in herself, but in relation to himself.’ (Beauvoir, 2011, p.5), this quote from Beauvoir is particularly relevant when we consider the relationship between a directorial auteur, and a female actress or character. Film theorist Laura Mulvey spoke of ‘a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female’(1989, p.19). By extension man exists as the subject of film, while woman exists as the object, ‘Women then stands in patriarchal culture as a signifier for the male other’ (1999, p.15). This analysis is particularly telling when we look at objectification. For it is not just ‘objectification’ to the extent of viewing women with a ‘male gaze’ as a sexualised object (Mulvey, 1989), but rather the emptying and refilling of female identity to suit patriarchal fantasies, the moulding of female as a concept or character.
I acknowledge this dynamic is not unique to the New Wave, nor the world of film, but is rather an extension of societal ideas around the creative male genius and a female muse, and is ‘one of the oldest archetypes in our civilisation’ (Kołecka & Penier, 2015, p.1). However, I feel the New Wave permits this dynamic, disguised at a heightened level, due to the pertinence auteurism places upon the director. Though, I am also hesitant to argue that the woman within this framework is completely stripped of her worth and agency, the term muse “has come to carry patronising, sexist and pejorative connotations,’ but however have muses ‘been involved and instrumental within their creative partnerships? Is every muse a model, or have they inspired artists in other ways?’ (Millington, 2022, p.6), from the same book, Millington argues that to frame female muses as exploited victims is a huge disservice. I do agree this is important to acknowledge, as Karina did not regard their relationship as exploitative, and I feel it would be reductive to argue entirely against this. (...)
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I want to highlight once more, the passage above is an excerpt from a wider piece of research titled 'To what extent did the male auteurship of the New Wave enhance the othering and objectification of female muses?'. However, tune in WEDNESDAY 20/02 8PM GMT for a more conversational exploration.
Best, The Algorhythm x
1. Although Sarris is not a figure of the French New Wave, I feel this definition is particularly important. Firstly because Sarris’ definition had ‘an enormous impact on both the academic study and industrial practice of film’ (Abrams & Frame, 2021). It also it demonstrates the importance and control placed upon the director within a creative collaboration (which film is).
2. The Oval Portrait is written by Edgar Allen Poe, and tells the story of a painter who paints a portrait of his wife, and in the process kills her.
