Dear filmosophers -
I am aware that Noel Burch and Genevieve Sellier have written a lot over the
past decade, in French mainly, about representations of gender in Nouvelle
Vague cinema. Can anybody on the list offer us a little summary of their
work on the topic? I also know that one extension of their work is a
critique of the culture of cinephilia. Again, can anybody enlighten us as to
their arguments?
The comparison of Nouvelle Vague cinema with Cassavetes is a fertile topic.
There is much good material on Cassavetes - I don't just mean Raymond
Carney's books - but my sense is that no one has really tackled in a complex
way the gender relations in them? (Certainly not Carney, who tends to
dissolve gender issues into rather waffly 'human potential' existentialist
themes.) I see the seeds of much contemporary cinema's rather bleak
picturing of the gender abyss (Altman's SHORT CUTS, Leigh's NAKED, Clark's
KIDS, Oldman's NIL BY MOUTH, etc) in SHADOWS and also HUSBANDS. But a
certain kind of despair about men and women also seeps, for instance, into
Robert Rossen's films of the early 60s: THE HUSTLER and LILITH. With these
American filmmakers including Cassavetes and Rossen, there's an entire
literary and theatrical culture (including Kerouac, Ince, many others)
feeding into this 'intimate pessimism'. It's an interesting (to say the
least!) period artistically and culturally , and the Nouvelle Vague is a
different sort of reflection of it in France, by way of Gide and many
others. By the time we get to Penn and BONNIE AND CLYDE, something has
shifted there, at least in this auteur's work: sexual/intimate relationships
are no longer so Gothic and melancholic; betrayal is no longer the driving
theme it is in Godard. Relationships can be difficult and violent in Penn's
work, but less fundamentally sad !! The sadness/depressiveness on the gender
divide comes back to American cinema later, via Altman (his bleak,
misanthropic side) and Michael Mann. Among others!
One key film straddling Nouvelle Vague and New American Cinema of the 60s
that is really worth studying along these lines is Jim McBride's classic
DAVID HOLZMAN'S DIARY (so poorly pastiched in the recent film CQ). I love
the way McBride's film exaggerates Truffaut's famous reverie - 'with every
gesture she gives herself away - to me!' - transforming it into the perfect
scenario of male paranoia and voyeurism, the man with a movie camera as a
neurotic and possessive to rival Albert Brooks in MODERN ROMANCE ! (Albert
Brooks: now there is a terrific filmmaker ... )
Adrian
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