Before the French New Wave in the 1950’s and 60’s, Italian Neorealism was said to have been a small influence on many director’s who were associated the French New Wave. Bicycle Thieves directed by Vittorio De Sica in 1948, was a film I watched about a year ago about stolen identity, the father who was played by Lamberto Maggiorani had his bicycle stolen and in a pursuit to get it back he went through all types of emotions.
The bicycle represented his bread and butter and without it he had no job, In a sense he switched roles with his son as he no longer became the main provider for his family and his son took it in his own hands to look after his dad. To really appreciate and understand the relationship between the father and the son I recommend that this film should be watched as it is known all around the world.
In relation to weekend, you can see some similarities of techniques used in both films. Both storyline’s have two main central characters who are constantly on the move, although for different reasons you could suggest that Godard was inspired by the way De Sica approached this and Godard may have used this as a guideline for his own film.
Another similarity is the artistic approach to portraying the characters in different environments. In Bicycle Thieves it was very image based as it was filmed in Rome, De Sica took full advantage of the history on offer by filming from a distance making sure in the background there was a lot of culture to be identified, and its apparent that in Godards films he does the exact same thing to show the audience a new perspective of culture and reality.
Godard in the early years was criticised for his films being to isolated from the audience as he mostly shot films from a distance, Like De sica he used his location as a base for his characters to explore and give meaning to each scene, in weekend we can see the environment is full of colour and history as there is many cars which look to be expensive which could connote to the upper class society.
References
“I pity the French Cinema because it has no money. I pity the American Cinema because it has no ideas.”
reference
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/j/jeanluc_godard.html
“Bertolt Brecht, born Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht. 10th February 1898 – 14th August 1956. He was a German poet, playwright, and theatre director. An influential theatre practitioner of the 20th century, Brecht made equally significant contributions to dramaturgy and theatrical production, the latter particularly through the seismic impact of the tours undertaken by the Berliner Ensemble—the post-war theatre company operated by Brecht and his wife and long-time collaborator, the actress Helene Weigel—with its internationally acclaimed productions.”
From his late twenties Brecht remained a life-long committed Marxist who, in developing the combined theory and practice of his ‘epic theatre’, synthesized and extended the experiments of Erwin Piscator and Vsevolod Meyerhold to explore the theatre as a forum for political ideas and the creation of a critical aesthetics of dialectical materialism. Brecht’s modernist concern with drama-as-a-medium led to his refinement of the ‘epic form’ of the drama. This dramatic form is related to similar modernist innovations in other arts, including the strategy of divergent chapters in James Joyce’s novel Ulysses, Sergei Eisenstein’s evolution of a constructivist ‘montage’ in the cinema, and Picasso’s introduction of cubist ‘collage’ in the visual arts. In contrast to many other avant-garde approaches, however, Brecht had no desire to destroy art as an institution; rather, he hoped to ‘re-function’ the theatre to a new social use. In this regard he was a vital participant in the aesthetic debates of his era—particularly over the ‘high art/popular culture’ dichotomy—vying with the likes of Adorno, Lukács, Bloch, and developing a close friendship with Benjamin. Brechtian theatre articulated popular themes and forms with avant-garde formal experimentation to create a modernist realism that stood in sharp contrast both to its psychological and socialist varieties. “Brecht’s work is the most important and original in European drama since Ibsen and Strindberg,” Raymond Williams argues, while Peter Bürger dubs him “the most important materialist writer of our time.”
“The great tracking shot near the beginning, in which Corrinne and Roland drive along a typical narrow, tree-lined French country road clogged with vehicles is one of the most famous in film history. Technical achievement though it is, it’s likely that Godard was trying here, as in much of the rest of the film, to bore, disorient and frustrate the audience. The shot is incredibly long and, compared to anything in a mainstream film, not much happens.
This is partly a matter of Brechtian alienation technique, designed to prevent the audience from using a play or film for escapism through being entertained, tricked by illusionism and falsely empathising with the characters. In deploying this, Godard, like Brecht, might be seen as setting himself against the implicitly ideological numbing of audiences described by Adorno in his essay The Culture Industry. An even clearer instance of this occurs when the couple hitch a ride on a rubbish truck and are forced to sit listening to the Algerian and Congolese bin men explaining each others’ worldviews – in great and intellectually trying detail. Cuts from close-ups of the bin men to wide shots reveal the couple’s jaded expressions during these speeches – potentially confronting the audience with a mirror of their own callousness.”
Reference
http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/artists/95fb3a0c-fc74-4f51-acba-bbe5b3a78e32
http://www.worldlingo.com/ma/enwiki/en/Week_End
Does this scene need to be so long with only one camera technique? Why not have any close-ups?
When I first came across this interview between Dick Cavett and Jean-Luc Godard, I realised that it had no direct references to the film ‘Weekend’. But at the end of this interview I came across a very significant phrase which had answered my question very well.
Godard talked about his camera techniques and how he likes to film from a distance rather than a close up, This then answers my question to why we don’t see any close-ups in the traffic scene. He explains how close-ups only hide information from the audience and that with distance you can see whats really going on, he also explains this like a relationship and how distance in fact brings people closer.
“While most road movies show wide open highway, a long strip of empty road in the midst of nature, Godard eliminates the freedom and isolation by showing packed overcrowded roads that are more likely to get you in trouble than allow you to escape it. The road is just something man created to speed up the flow of money, allowing people to rush to make it on weekdays and rush to spend it on weekends. In Week End, there is no escape.”
Later on in the interview, Godard talks about how images are just like stations and that to move on to the next image/station you will need a train. Relating this idea to the traffic scene I can image the tracking shot being that train that moves the film on the next scene, the camera movement feels like a train passing by showing many of Godard’s stylistic views on what a traffic scene in france should be like.
The quote above explains the true art of traffic and how in Godard’s eyes it’s not all plain sailing, with images of people playing games and random cars overturned which could be regarded as a painting within a movie, the art of this scene is that Godard is bringing the hectic city life into the peaceful environment of a countryside road. Going back to the train idea I think that Godard is taking us on a journey to the future and that although you could suggest I am going off topic here, I think Godard’s avant-garde approach to filmmaking wasnt appreciated until much later than anticipated as many could not relate to his style as it was ahead of its time.
References
http://www.metalasylum.com/ragingbull/movies/weekend.html
youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93HCeGy6vzk
Images: Google images.
I have started to add some of Godard’s quotes to my blog as i find some of these really interesting, i hope by doing this it will also make my blog more engaging to whoever reads it. Most of the quotes i will write are quite relevant and express’s the opinions of Godard.
The tasks for the following weeks are to find out more about the Brechtian techniques and Italian Neorealism, i believe these things have a great influence on the ‘French New Wave’ which i will go into depth later on.
“Cinema is the most beautiful fraud in the world.”
Reference
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/j/jeanluc_godard.html
Is this scene controlled by colour? Is there a message within ?
Straight away in the traffic scene with the very long tracking shot, we see a blue, white and red car all in the same order of the french flag. Whether this was intentional or not, I get the feeling that Godard had a message to portray about the location.
In this particular scene, we see the characters driving through a countryside road with no real close-ups to distinguish their whereabouts, We see no french road signs or even vineyards to identify the location. So with the use of colour’s, Godard with a subtle yet effective way is constantly reminding the audience that this is a French film made in France.
This then moves me on to the next point. The image on the left was once used for the cover of the film displaying the same colours as the french flag yet again. I believe there must have been another reason for this other than Godard being proud to be French.
His own personal issues with politics may have played a vital part within his filmmaking, Godard gives out a message to the government that this is a french film to be proud of . In 1968, Directors and scriptwriter’s where not respected enough and with the French law being tight on what can be created, Godard found it hard to express his feelings verbally and so expressed it through film.
‘Weekend’, his picaresque satire of a greed-fuelled society speeding out of control, came at a moment of transition both for the director and for France itself – for after its release in 1967, Godard declared himself a committed Marxist-Leninist and abandoned conventional avenues of capital investment for his films – and ‘Weekend’ itself captures precisely the spirit of revolution in the air that would lead, one year later, to the student uprisings in Paris.
References
Images: Google images
http://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/onlinessays/JC28folder/GodardGorinPolitics.html
My initial thoughts when watching this film was:
All these questions came into my mind whilst watching this film, Some may not be relevant so i will try to pick out the most important ones and try to answer them.
I feel much more clearer now on Jean-Luc Godard as I understand his background more, I think understanding someones upbringing is really important when it comes to analysing their creation.
This helps me to keep interested within this blog because now I wish to carry on to found out more about it and whether he made any other films that could be relevant. My task for the next couple of days is to think of some questions about this sequence and to answer them as best as I can.
Sunil chandla CMP 