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ESSAYS, ARTICLES, AND THEORIES ABOUT CINEMA
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| Thursday, July 8, 2010
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REVOLUTIONARY FILM BUFFS: MAY '68 |
Before one can discuss the impact the French New Wave had on social, political and industrial means, one must first elaborate on the impact society, politics and industry had on the French New Wave. It was 1968 and due to a combination of Charles De Gaulle’s failure to support the hard-working youth, in raising minimum wage, and a society on the edge of breaking apart, that led to a massive halt in production (Le fantôme d’Henri Langlois). Industry and factory workers went on strike, students refused to attend classes, and not to mention in the Vietnam War, the Vietnamese and Viet-Cong exercised the Tet Offensive, (which led to the notion of an impossible positive outcome for the war) also leading to massive protests on campuses (Le fantôme d'Henri Langlois). Therefore, France was not looking good in the beginning of 1968. But it was one event in particular that not only created an uproar for the French New Wave, but film buffs altogether. The French New Wave demonstrated power socially: by taking to the streets when the Cinémathèque française was closed, politically: by arming activists with what they needed to lead future protests, and industrially: by closing down the 1968 Cannes Film Festival.
The French New Wave (most famously the members of the Right Bank and Cahiers Du Cinéma writers) was born in the Cinémathèque française. François Traffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Jacques Rivette, Claude Chabrol, Eric Rohmer, all learned their craft from watching classic films in this movie palace. The museum not only served as a theater but also housed as a cine-club arena. As filmmaker Nicholas Ray says in his autobiography I Was Interrupted:
“The Cinémathèques are the places where young film buffs, as serious students, as participants in the art of making films, can go to attain yourselves to films, to reject or revolt against other films, or to contradict that process” (152).
Ray’s statement suggests that film buffs finally had a place where they not only could watch films but also to critique them, analyze them, debate for or against them, and to digest internally and use as inspiration for making their own films. The co-founder of the Cinémathèque française, Henri Langlois was a true cinéphile who lived to help show films to other eager cinéphiles. He started collecting silent films in the 30’s and even went so far as to hiding films from the Nazi during the occupation (Thomas 12). Godard remembers him and the Cinémathèque in his early writings:
“Henri Langlois has given each twenty-fourth of a second of his life to rescue all these voices from their silent obscurity and to project them on the white sky of the only museum where the real and the imaginary meet at last” ( Godard 236).
In 1964, the French government increased financial support, allowing more money to acquire, restore, show, and store even more collectible films, but also promoted Langlois from Secretary-General to Artistic and Technical director (Mannoni 276). A year later the government obtained reports insisting “incompetent administration” on behalf of Langlois, and in 1966, cut all funding (Le fantôme d'Henri Langlois). On February 9, 1968, Henri Langlois was removed from his position and replaced by Pierre Barbin, and the Cinémathèque française was closed and chained shut (Mannoni 277). Traffaut and his fellow Cahiers Du Cinéma colleagues opposed the removal of Langlois and the closing of their cinema monastery, and so on February 14th, they hit the streets of the Palais de Chaillot in protest. Traffaut, Godard, Chabrol, Jean-Pierre Leud as well as 3,000 other Cinémathèque cinéphiles were met in the streets by 30 busloads of armed guards (Fisher).
Godard filming the protests.
Violence occurred when the guards began charging on the film buffs, chasing and pushing around the crowd, including prestigious figures as Chabrol, Godard, whose glasses were punched off his face, and even so far as to beating Traffaut over the head with a club, leaving him with a bloodied face (Le fantôme d’Henri Langlois). This was a war with Cinema VS. the French Government. Cinéphiles were fighting in the name of “Cinema,” all it stood for and the freedom to watch films. In the end, Cinema won with Langlois reinstated and the Cinémathèque française reopened, but the damage was already done, and the protest escaladed to further violent protests on a grander scale, leading to the violent acts of May ’68 (Thomas 13). Chaos hit Paris in the form of a raged youth resistance. Cars and houses were burned and Molotov cocktails were thrown all over the city.
Left to right: Milos Forman, Jean-luc Godard, François Truffaut, Claude Lelouch, Roman Polanski at Cannes 1968.
Even though the government ended the strikes with the students going back to classes and workers going back to the factories, the message given by the French New Wave was heard loud and clear (Mannoni 277). The Langlois protest showed how not only film buffs can take a stand, but it gives future film buffs the inspiration to do what is necessary in the name of “Cinema.” The French New Wave was so powerful that the committee established, brought down one of the most popular film festivals in the world as a reaction to unlawful militant action. The message and inspiration set forth by Truffaut, Godard and the rest of the New Wave directors, critics, and activists paved a new generation for filmmakers in the more recent Banlieue Film Movement of the 1990’s (Hardwick). Perhaps filmmakers today are more easily persuaded by revenue than revolutions. Maybe the ideas of Langlois, Traffaut and other New Wave figures needs to make a comeback and rile up the system again.
Fisher, David. Chronomedia. Terra Media, 2000. Web. 9 October 2009.
Godard, Jean-Luc. Godard On Godard. New York: Da Capo Press, 1972. Print.
Grey, Tobias. “Flashback: Cannes 1968.” Variety. 8 May 2008.
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117985372.html?categoryid=13&cs=1_
Hardwick, Joe. “The New New Wave in French Cinema.” University of Queensland.
Austrailian Cinematheque, 2007. 10 October 2009.
Le fantôme d'Henri Langlois. Dir. Jacques Richard. Kino Video, 2004. DVD.
Mannoni, Laurent. “Henri Langlois and the Musée du Cinéma.” Film History. Vol. 18
(2006): 274-287.
Ray, Nicholas. I Was Interrupted. California: University of California Press, 1995. Print.
Thomas, Vivian. “The Cinematheque Francais.” France Today. June 2008: 12-13. |
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posted by Will Lewis 11:05 PM
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