The key players of the French New Wave are all in Richard Linklater’s remarkable docufiction, NOUVELLE VAGUE. However, the centre stage goes to Godard and the making of his first feature, BREATHLESS, when the Cahiers du Cinéma film critic turned filmmaker.
BREATHLESS was initially based on a story outlined by François Truffaut, which was Godard’s golden ticket to get his producer, Georges de Beauregard, on board and put the production together in 1959. At the time, Truffaut had already received critical acclaim and his second film, THE 400 BLOWS, had won him the Best Director Award at Cannes. “We’ll deliver the whole wave” are Godard’s words to reassure Beauregard that his film will also be a success. He did deliver the whole wave, not with a film noir as his producer had hoped, but with a guerrilla-style film free of formal script and traditional rules. To the crew’s surprise, BREATHLESS became a success and one of the most influential films in history.
Richard Linklater has done thorough research on his subject. NOUVELLE VAGUE is so attentive to the minutiae of the visuals, performances, and dialogues of the real figures in 1950s Paris that it’s easy to forget one is watching a film about a film. Godard’s legendary statements, such as “It’s not where you take things from, it’s where you take them to”, contribute to the rich and realistic elucidation of his cinematic style, technique, and philosophy. The twenty days in which he directed BREATHLESS is also the temporal frame of Linklater’s film. To add to the array of accurate historical details, David Chambille, the cinematographer, filmed with the same model of Éclair Cameflex used by Raoul Coutard on BREATHLESS. NOUVELLE VAGUE will inspire you to watch it and to revisit the avant-garde filmmakers who gave birth to the French New Wave. François Truffaut, Claude Chabrol, Jacques Rivette, Agnès Varda, Jacques Demy, Jean Rouch, Suzanne Schiffman, Eric Rohmer and more are portrayed and populate the scenes of Linklater’s homage to cinema. The humour, tension, and exhilaration of Godard making his iconic first feature are part of this 35mm black-and-white voyage.
“Richard Linklater has done thorough research on his subject. NOUVELLE VAGUE is so attentive to the minutiae of the visuals, performances, and dialogues of the real figures in 1950s Paris…”
Guillaume Marbeck, Zoey Deutch, and Aubry Dullin’s first time as lead actors deliver astonishing performances of Godard, and the protagonists of BREATHLESS: Jean Seberg and Jean-Paul Belmondo. Deutch showcases the perfect American accent and modalities of the Hollywood movie star landing in the French non-conformist territory of Godard’s cinema. Marbeck was born for the role: he speaks, moves, and directs like Godard himself. In one of BREATHLESS’s memorable scenes, Seberg and Belmondo face the mirror in the bathroom, morphing their faces to happiness, sadness, and despair. Deutch and Dullin’s acting is as arresting as the original, but with a magic collaboration of their own. The camera loves them.
“To add to the array of accurate historical details, David Chambille, the cinematographer, filmed with the same model of Éclair Cameflex used by Raoul Coutard on BREATHLESS.”
The spontaneity and carefree feel Linklater achieves in NOUVELLE VAGUE is clearly not the result of a guerrilla-style approach, as it was for Godard. Linklater, who by now has directed more than twenty-four features, had to work hard to recreate, build, and plan his shoot. The list of professionals credited in his film is enough to prove it.
NOUVELLE VAGUE was completed in thirty days, only ten more than Godard, and the fact that it’s a French-speaking film, not Linklater’s native language, with an all-French crew, wins the American director additional praise. The scene on the French Riviera that signs off Godard’s directorial debut has him telling his producer, “The best way to critique a film is to make a film.” The provocative declaration belongs to Godard, but it’s Linklater who reinvigorates it with his reverence for the French New Wave.