Totally Dublin

This week the IFI pays tribute to one of the most pivotal periods in the history of cinema, the French New Wave. The movement, this year celebrating its 50th anniversary, began as a reaction against the generic, creatively stagnant content that had become pervasive in Hollywood cinema. The interests of famed New Wave directors such as Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Goddard lay in the condemnation of the practices that had come to dominate cinema as a whole through radical stylistic innovation. Truffaut’s semi-autobiographical ‘The 400 Blows’ is the perfect manifestation of this aim, and is allegedly the film that initiated the entire movement. As a young boy in working-class Paris Antoine struggles with parental neglect and victimization at school, eventually resorting to delinquency to fill the void. ‘The 400 Blows’ is an interesting portrait of how anti-social behaviour is shaped that still manages to be quite jovial despite its bleak content. Antoine’s is more than just characteristic attention-seeking behaviour, but a rebellion against what he perceives to be a grave injustice in society.       

 The film contains many of the hallmark features of French New Wave cinema that have endured to contemporary times, including a preoccupation with the expressive potential of the face. The inability of words to communicate efficiently is an idea that also frequents and long, lingering shots of the characters aspire to demonstrate that unspoken sentiments are far less restrictive. While the experimental techniques employed are not as instantly recognizable as in the later New Wave work, what does link these films is a very prominent rejection of classical cinematic form. The extensive festival programme offers an opportunity to watch this notion evolve through ten key films, which created an immeasurable influence that still reverberates in the film world. 

And the rest? The programme still has some of New Wave’s most iconic films to come.

Paris Belongs To Us (Paris nous appartient)                            July 11^th 2.20 p.m.
Vivre sa vie                                                                                      July 11^th 5.00 p.m.
Last Year in Marienbad  (L’Année dernière à Marienbad)       July 12^th 2.30p.m.
The Girls (Les Bonnes femmes)                                                   July 12^th 5.10pm
Jules and Jim (Jules et Jim)                                                         July 18^th 2.40 p.m
Contempt (Le Mépris)                                                        July 19^th 1.00 & 7.00 p.m.
Band of Outsiders (Bande à part)                                               July 25^th 3.00 p.m.

From the Bic pen of Aoife O’Regan

Tags: 400 blows, dublin cinema, film festivals, french new wave, ifi

Posted on Wednesday, July 8th, 2009 at 1:11 pm under Film. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.