Nouvelle Vague-Cannes 09

There’s a saying that film critics are frustrated film makers. In France, fifty years ago, there was a generation of critics who totally contradict that statement. Godard, Truffaut, Chabrol, Rohmer and Jacques Rivette, five critics from “Cahiers du Cinéma”, began their adventure as directors at the end of the Fifties and did so in such an explosive, revitalizing way that they marked a before and after in French cinema. That rupture full of ideas and of films very different from each other was called the Nouvelle Vague.
This year, the Cannes Film Festival is celebrating the birth of the Nouvelle Vague, remembering that half a century ago, at the 1959 Festival, the Best Director award went to an almost novice François Truffaut for “Les quatre cents coups” (The Four Hundred Blows), a film which for many was the first step by this movement.

Without taking credit away from Truffaut’s masterpiece, I think that Louis Malle anticipated him in ‘57 and ‘58, with “Les Amants” (The Lovers) and “Ascenseur pour l’echafaud” (Elevator to the Gallows), two films which in my opinion are forerunners of the movement. In any case, Malle’s two films and the one by Truffaut can be seen today with equal or greater enjoyment and intensity than half a century ago.
The female lead in Malle’s two films was a young Jeanne Moreau, an actress who broke all the canons for a film star of that period. With time, Moreau would become the authentic muse of the most important directors in the new movement.

It also loosened up and dynamited the principles of technical and narrative aspects (editing would never be the same after “À bout de souffle” (Breathless), by Godard, for example), about which there is already a very extensive bibliography. It justly recognized the commercial American cinema which French critics had scorned (Hawks, Fritz Lang, Samuel Fuller, Jacques Tourneur, the English and the American Hitchcock), auteurs whom I idolize. As well as all that, and admiring the risks in formal experimentation (Godard and Resnais), their investigation of language, of what there is beyond, or of what there is within, at the time I started to watch their films I wasn’t aware of the movement, or that one of their basic ideas was that of elevating the “auteur” to the status of a star.

The first films that had an impact on me, as well as the three mentioned above, were “La peau douce” (The Soft Skin), by Truffaut, the quartet of masterpieces by Chabrol, “Juste avant la nuit” (Just Before Nightfall), “Le boucher” (The Butcher), “La femme infidèle” (The Unfaithful Wife) and “Les noces rouges” (Wedding in Blood), “À bout de souffle” (Breathless) and “Pierrot le fou”, by Godard, “La collectionneuse” (The Collector) by Rohmer, and very many more. As well as starting to distinguish their auteurs, I particularly remember my fascination for the new fauna of actors that appeared in them.

Actors and actresses

Along with their approach to reality, their flight from the studios and their irruption onto the streets and into real, public places, the new directors also invented a new physique of more realistic men and women. The male leads could be vulnerable and insecure, loudmouthed and pathetic, masculine and lyrical. Trintignant, Maurice Ronet, Jean Claude Brialy, Gérard Blain, Piccoli and Belmondo made up a new male physique which had nothing to do with previous leading men (as was already happening in Italy with Marcello Mastroianni). Between all of them they created a new canon for male sexiness, less heroic and ostentatious, more fragile but irresistibly attractive (Belmondo is another matter altogether, he could be ugly, handsome, bigmouthed and delicate. Irresistible, no matter what he did). And that canon is still in force.

The same thing happened with the girls. Brigitte Bardot broke all the preconceptions from the first half of the 20th century as regards fashion, hair and attitude. It was a revolution. But despite starring in “Le mépris” (Contempt) with Godard and “Vie privée” (A Very Private Affair) with Louis Malle, I wouldn’t say she’s a Nouvelle Vague actress. The great queens were, are, Jeanne Moreau, Stéphane Audran, Bernadette Lafont, Anna Karina, Anouk Aimée, Delphine Seyrig, Françoise Dorléac, Jean Seberg and a few girls from Rohmer’s school. And the second generation made up by Sandrine Bonnaire, Isabelle Huppert, Juliette Binoche, Emmanuel Devos, etc., worthy daughters of their predecessors.
In the same way that for Brigitte two films (plus the very kitsch “Viva Maria!”, again with Malle) were not enough for her to form part of the Nouvelle Vague, Jean Seberg had only to distribute newspapers on the Champs Elysées in “À bout de souffle” in order to become instantly an icon of the movement. Her image has been for the Nouvelle Vague what Che’s was for the Cuban revolution. I admire many French actresses, but the first generation that I have just mentioned have a special significance for me, they were the idols of my first youth.

As well as the precursors “Les amants” and “Ascenseur pour l’echafaud”, “Viaggio in Italia” (Voyage to Italy) by Rossellini is also a reference for the first cell of directors of the Nouvelle Vague. Rossellini’s refusal to work in a studio, preferring to invade the streets and film reality in the places where it was happening, and the sensation of the absence of fiction, the lack of affectation, were elements which the Nouvelle Vague took as its own, although as it evolved they disappeared depending on the films and the personality of those directing them.

Two timely tributes

I’m in Cannes, as you all know, competing with “Broken Embraces”. Curiously and by chance, in my film I pay tribute to two of the milestones I have just named. Jeanne Moreau (her voice!, because my character is blind) in “Ascenseur pour l’echafaud” and “Viaggio in Italia”, the film which Lena (Penélope Cruz) and Mateo (Lluis Homar) are watching on television as they embrace on a couch in the bungalow at Famara beach where they have taken refuge.
In the scene they are watching, a couple whose marriage is falling apart, played by Ingrid Bergman and George Sanders, go to visit some excavations in Pompeii. The guide points out to them a couple who had been surprised by the lava from Vesuvius while they were sleeping together. The scene affects Lena deeply and she hides her face in Mateo’s chest. She grabs on tightly to him and hopes that when death comes it will surprise her as she is at that moment, embracing the man she loves, like the couple immortalized by the lava from Vesuvius in Rossellini’s film.

Embraces and Madrid

My film opened in Spain nine week sago. Of the exhausting promotions prior to the opening, one of the things that still thrills me is when the posters announcing it form part of the city’s street furniture. Since “High Heels”, I always carry out the ritual of photographing the posters of my films with the city reflected in them. It isn’t a matter of egocentricity. I like to see how the poster acquires a life of its own and shares it with the city in which I live. For me they are like family photos. Also I’m a lover of reflections, and I include the cinema in this. Penelope’s frightened gaze has looked at us merged with many of the most emblematic places in Madrid.

The competition

A moment before leaving for Cannes I start to receive French publications, some of them with reviews of the film, as it is opening throughout the neighbouring county on the 20th, that is, the day after its screening at the festival in the Grand Palais. For the moment, everything that has appeared is very good. I’m anxious to see and read what happens after.
Although my film is in competition, I haven’t come in a competitive mood, and much less with a winning spirit.
If it were to win some award I’d be the first to celebrate it, but I’ve come with the mental attitude that this isn’t going to happen. The disappointment is always less and it wouldn’t be any humiliation. This year I’m sharing the section with many directors I admire, many of them capable of surprising us with a masterpiece: Ang Lee, Tarantino, Jacques Audiard, Jane Campion, Lars Von Trier, Park Chan-Wook, Isabel Coixet, Marco Bellocchio, Ken Loach… Is it worth my while taking part in a fight against such a fearless group? Yes, it is.

Apart from the sensation of attending a cinematic feast, I make excellent use of the trip. I’ll finish the French promotion, given that the film will open in cinemas coinciding with the festival. I’ll save myself a lot of promotional trips, because in five days I can deal with many of the countries which I won’t be able to visit personally. I hope to have the chance to see, hot off the presses, some of the films which are competing. That’s what attracts me most. The festival is also the chance to meet with friends from the medium, journalists, actors, distributors, directors, etc. whom I only see on these occasions. I’ll have my photo taken with the stars, which I also like. And although I never manage it, it’s a great stimulus when it comes to dieting.

I have just arrived at the Hotel Martinez, the sea is still there and so are the fans, like every year. There are things that no crisis is able to change.

© Pedro Almodóvar.

© Pedro Almodóvar.

Pedro Almodóvar.