Riding with Bonnie and Clyde

2019 ◽  
pp. 101-116
Author(s):  
Thomas Goldsmith
Keyword(s):  
New Wave ◽  
Slow Start ◽  
Dark Humor ◽  
French New Wave ◽  
Movie Script ◽  
The Voice ◽  
Arthur Penn

The banjo tune “Foggy Mountain Breakdown” took a roundabout path to become the voice of the genre-changing film Bonnie and Clyde, first released in 1967. The movie’s eventual star, Warren Beatty, was behind the scoring and several stories are presented about his decision. The movie script, by Esquire staffers Robert Benton and David Newman, also passed through a succession of hands—including those of French New Wave auteurs François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard—before Beatty, its champion, succeeded in getting the services of American director Arthur Penn. The resulting movie, a fictionalization of criminals Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker’s murderous episodes, had a slow start but eventually galvanized audiences with its dark humor and raucous score. NYT critic Bosley Crowther saw his career at the paper end after fervently dissing the film.

Coming-of-Age Cinema in New Zealand

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alistair Fox
Keyword(s):  
Coming Of Age ◽  
Belief Systems ◽  
Time Frame ◽  
New Wave ◽  
Art Cinema ◽  
Literary Sources ◽  
French New Wave ◽  
Significant Phenomenon ◽  
The Impact ◽  
New Zealanders

This book investigates the coming-of-age genre as a significant phenomenon in New Zealand’s national cinema, tracing its development from the 1970s to the present day. A preliminary chapter identifies the characteristics of the coming-of-age film as a genre, tracing its evolution and the influence of the French New Wave and European Art Cinema, and speculating on the role of the genre in the output of national cinemas. Through case studies of fifteen significant films, including The God Boy, Sleeping Dogs, The Scarecrow, Vigil, Mauri, An Angel at My Table, Heavenly Creatures, Once Were Warriors, Rain, Whale Rider, In My Father’s Den, 50 Ways of Saying Fabulous, Boy, Mahana, and Hunt for the Wilderpeople, subsequent chapters examine thematic preoccupations of filmmakers such as the impact of repressive belief systems and social codes, the experience of cultural dislocation, the expression of a Māori perspective through an indigenous “Fourth Cinema,” bicultural relationships, and issues of sexual identity, arguing that these films provide a unique insight into the cultural formation of New Zealanders. Given that the majority of films are adaptations of literary sources, the book also explores the dialogue each film conducts with the nation’s literature, showing how the time frame of each film is updated in a way that allows these films to be considered as a register of important cultural shifts that have occurred as New Zealanders have sought to discover their emerging national identity.

THE RIGHT TIME AND PLACE

2014 ◽  
Vol 68 (1) ◽  
pp. 42-47
Author(s):  
B. Ruby Rich
Keyword(s):  
New Wave ◽  
French New Wave ◽  
The Moment ◽  
The Right

Paradigmatic American filmmaker Richard Linklater’s Boyhood has been much praised from the moment of its release (2014). The scope of this twelve-year project is more than a stunt, and the making of the film has become a birthright. This article weighs in on the film and its reception, considers Linklater’s French New Wave influences, and addresses how gender has been so muted, rendered illegible, if not irrelevant in the film’s reception.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Marion Schmid
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Film History ◽  
Discursive Construction ◽  
New Wave ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Medium Specificity ◽  
French New Wave ◽  
Ambivalent Relationship ◽  
Struggle For Recognition ◽  
Purity And Impurity

The introduction contextualises the French New Wave's ambivalent relationship to the older arts with regard to cinema's wider struggle for recognition in the course of the twentieth century. Surveying the debates around medium specificity, cinematic 'purity' and 'impurity' from the classical avant-garde to the Nouvelle Vague, it addresses the French New Wave's complex discursive construction in relation to the more established arts. Reframing traditional studies of the French New Wave, it argues for an intermedial approach to illuminate this seminal movement of film history. The corpus, rationale and approach of the book are also introduced and clarified.

Vigo, Jean (1905–1934)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Patrick Pringle
Keyword(s):  
Boarding School ◽  
Boarding Schools ◽  
Large Impact ◽  
Short Film ◽  
New Wave ◽  
Short Life ◽  
Dziga Vertov ◽  
French New Wave

Jean Vigo was an anarchist and social realist French filmmaker responsible for four short yet influential works. Famously honored as "the cinema incarnate" by Henri Langlois, Vigo had a large impact on French New Wave [Nouvelle vague] directors despite producing just 165 minutes of film during his short life. Born to militant anarchist parents in 1905, Vigo grew up in boarding schools after his father, radical agitator Miguel Almereyda, died in prison. Plagued by illness throughout his life, Vigo read the impressionist film theories of Jean Epstein and Louis Delluc while in hospital, and there he met his wife "Lydu" Lozinska. The couple moved to Nice and Lydu’s family bankrolled Vigo’s first film, À Propos de Nice (1930), an experimental documentary inspired by Dziga Vertov. Vigo then completed his masterpiece, Zero de Conduite [Zero for Conduct] (1933), a short film about an insurrection enacted by children at a boarding school. The film is autobiographical, referencing his parents’ politics, as well as characters and incidents from Vigo’s life, while aesthetically playing between Realism and a surrealist sensitivity prone to play and mischief. A few weeks after the release of his social realist film about love on a canal barge, l’Atalante (1934), Vigo passed away from tuberculosis.

Rohmer, Éric (1920–2010)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Ionita
Keyword(s):  
New Wave ◽  
Moral Choice ◽  
French Film ◽  
French New Wave ◽  
Eric Rohmer ◽  
Theology And Philosophy ◽  
Film Critic

Éric Rohmer (born Jean-Marie-Maurice Schéer) was a French film director, screenwriter, and film critic, best known for his association with the French New Wave, and his sophisticated films exploring the intersections of romantic desire and moral choice. A student of literature, theology, and philosophy with a degree in history, Rohmer started as a teacher, but soon gravitated, like many future New Wave directors, toward Henri Langlois’ Cinémathèque Française and he also began writing for Cahiers du cinéma in 1951. He was its editor from 1957 to 1963.

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