Film Theory Lectures 2&3:

FRENCH NEW WAVE FILM:

• Jump cuts

• Elasticity of time

• Montage, beyond Eisenstein

• Relative independence of sound & image

• Focus on both Narration and Narrated

• Self-reflexive cinema

Cleo is a flâneus, for most of the second part of the film;

Breathless
Jean-Luc Godard (1930- )

Reinventing film from the ground up

• Basis in American gangster films, but everything is

deglamorized

• Location shooting, natural light, handheld camera

• Use of jump cuts, mismatches, and other violations

of continuity editing rules

• Self-reflexivity: Jean-Paul Belmondo and Bogart

• Jean Seberg: America/France

• Use of digressions and suspensions of action

• Reality of story/reality of film

• Ambiguities of character, of identification, of endin

Italian Vernacular Cinema 

•These films may be stylish and expressionistic, but at their worst they challenge our senses and the standards of ‘good taste’

•Exploitation movies

•Gross out movies

•Similar to American Grindhouse/Drive-in movies

•Wonderful titles used to sell the concept