Group Members

Historical background of French New Wave

The rise of French New Wave (1959-1964) can be studied from the earlier 1940 to 1944 during World War II. In that time, Paris was a dark city, especially during night time, the blackout imposed by the occupying German forces meant that lights had to be turned off, shortage of petrol kept cars off the road while most people off the streets at night due to implementation of curfew. Nevertheless, numerous regulation, censorship and propaganda had made the occupation totally unbearable. However the French citizens still can go to the cinema but choice of movies was limited. American films were banned, and aside from German productions which consisted mainly of imitations of Hollywood musical comedies and melodramatic propaganda movies, they only had access to the 200 odd French films that were produced during these 4 years period. For the generation of cinephiles like Andre Bazin, Alain Resnais and Eric Rohmer who had grown up in rich cinematic culture of the 1920’s and 30’, they already could felt the consequence of the war. Not to talk about the banned American genre films, the experience of loss that represented above has become their central of later work. Therefore, this phenomenon has made the filmmakers who born around 1930 created a new movement or “New Wave”. There are few acknowledgeable films made during the occupation such as Lumiere d’ete (1943) by Jean Gremillon, Les Visiteurs du Soir (1943) by Carne and Prevert, Le Destin Fabuleux de Disiree Clary (1941) by Sacha Guitry, Goupi Mains Rouges (1943) by Jacques Becker, and above all, Le Corbeau (1943) by Henri-Georges Clouzot.

In 1944, the year of liberation, cinema becomes even more popular in France. Several French Films were produced while Italian and British imports were in demand. Meanwhile, Most popular of all were the stockpile of films now streaming in from Hollywood. American films that banned by Nazis were ready to discover and catch up after the 1946 Blum-Byrnes agreement.

Film clubs in other hand highlighted one of the important elements of French New Wave. The first film club opened its doors in 1948 named Henri Langlois’ Cinematheque Française. Langlois believed that Cinematheque was a place for learning but not just watching. They want the audience understand what they were seeing. Therefore, it became his practice to screen films with different style, genre and country of origin. This approach was to make sure audience kept more attention in the technique.

The important and famous film journal appeared in 1951, called La Revue du Cinema which is set up by Jacques Doniol-Valcroze and Andre Bazin. The yellow cover is the first issues of the review featured the best critic’s article toward film. And during mid of 1950s, there are a group of young people that really to make the waves, they are Rohmer, Godard, Rivette, Claude Chabrol and Francois Truffaut and wrote Cahiers du Cinema. Cahiers du Cinema like to critic on the artistic and respected filmmakers during that time, they have critic the tradition filming way which is filming them in the studio which is old fashioned and unimaginative way, this way is wasn’t visual enough and yet filmmakers are too rely on the screenwriter. Although giving so much comment for the filmmakers, those young men also praise on some directors like D.W Griffith, Victor Sjostrom, Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin and Erich von Stroheim, which is those directors in its early years. By inspiring from them, silent movies become an element for the New Wave directors.

The concept of “Auteur” is develop at that time, there are some argument between Andre Bazin and others about a film should reflect the director’s personal vision, but from Truffaut who first talking about this, he mentioned that the best directors have a distinctive style, and it is a individual creative vision that made the director the true author of the film.

Writing criticism can’t satisfied those young men, and finally they start to shoot short film by borrow money from friends and shoot on location. By 1959, Rivette filmed Paris nous appartient (Paris Belongs to Us); Godard made A Bout de soufflé (Breathless); Chabrol made his second feature, Les Cousins; and in April Truffaut’s Les Quatre cent coups (The 400 Blows) won the Grand Prize at the Cannes Festival.

Journalists have nicknamed all the young energetic and high spirit directors la nouvelle vague – the new wave. They have made 32 featured films between 1959-1966, so many films and for sure are all different, but there are also enough similarity to make us recognize the New Wave style and form.

There are a timeline of how French New Wave movement was created and the important incidents happened during the period, please refer to:
http://soma.sbcc.edu/users/davega/FILMST_101/FILMST_101_FILM_MOVEMENTS/FrenchNewWave/TimeLine_FrenchNewWave.pdf

Unique Characteristic Narrative and Stylistic

The French New Wave was an innovative and intellectual film movement. It was instantly recognizable in the late 1950s due to its distinctive form, narrative and style of film making among the youthful directors. The major factors contributing to the characteristics of this film movement are the French New Wave director’s background in film theory, critics and their willingness in experimenting and breaking established film rules to keep with contemporary French culture of the USA invading the French market post-war. Nevertheless, the uniqueness of French New Wave film movement is also inspired by the Italian Neo-Realism film movement, and driven by the concept of “auteur” as well as budget restrictions. Hence, these factors highlight the characteristics of this film movement in aspects of narrative, mise-en-scène and mise-shot.

In terms of narrative, French New Wave’s movies were using non-linear narrative to present the story whereby the beginnings of films were not started as the classic narrative that tells the story with linear plot structure. The structure arrangement of the films will make the audience think about the story base on the cues and accumulated information as the films will begins in the middle of the films. The arrangement of the plot was not in order and sometimes flashback scene appeared. This can be seen in the beginning of Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959) that started with opening shot of two naked body with just close up to the arms and shoulders. Then the continuity shot of this scene finally disclose in the middle of the film that the lovers Elle (Emmanuele Riva) and Lui (Eiji Okuda) are having sex. Open narrative is also one of the characteristic of French New Wave film. The film usually ends ambiguously with no resolution at the end and story is left open for the plot to continue. The question marks were left over to depend on the audience themselves to resolve it. In the last shot of The 400 Blows, the character, Antoine reaches the sea and with the camera transition, the ending of the film did not tell where Antoine went to at the end.

The director (auteur) is the one who decide the sequence and the structure of the plot and the direct of character is applied as it is base on what the narrator tells the audience. Omniscient character in the story will be also the narrator who tells the story. Shoot the piano player directed by Francois Truffault begin the film by showing the insert of the piano hammers beating in rhythm continue with a linear story until the flashback at middle of the film when Charlie Kohler (Charles Aznavour) recalled his past as Edouard Saroyan. Then the story proceeds linearly until Charlie continues as the pianist the death of Lena (Marie Dubois) in the end. On the other hand, Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959) directed by Alain Resnais started with naked, interlocked shoulders of a couple, Elle and Lui and intercut with the people in the hospital, people in the town and people in the museum exhibition the heritage of the city of Hiroshima after the bombing of atomic bomb during World War II. Then the story continues with the montage scene among the victims and the refugee. After that, the film shows Elle and Lui are on the bed making love and proceeds to their love story around two days with a short flashback of Elle past life and the memory of her first love with a Germany soldier. The film ends with Elle and Lui having a conversation in Elle’s hotel room. Therefore, the film ends ambiguously without telling the ending of the couple.

Besides than narrative, the characteristics of French New Wave can be identified through setting, lighting, staging and sound in terms of mise-en-scène. The setting of this film movement usually shoot on real or natural locations, therefore the films usually had a casual and natural look due to the choice of location filming in and around Paris. Eventually, the mise-en-scène of Parisian streets and coffee bars became favorite shooting spots of the films. For example, the majority of “A Bout de Souffle” film is shot on location in the urban setting of Paris. Shots of famous historic monuments, such as the Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe, were placed in the film. Moreover, the action of this film centered on locations such as the cafe scene where Patricia meets journalist Van Doude, the scene of Michel and Patricia take off for St-Germain in a stolen car at the street of Place de la Concorde, Boulevard Montparnasse, Paris and so on. The use of on location shooting eventually became a trademark of French New Wave films that refused the constraints of the studio.

Meanwhile, natural lighting is used because lights were another big cost to produce film. Thus, new wave filmmakers shot outside in natural light to reduce the cost of renting lights by using lightweight hand-held cameras that required less light and portable lighting equipment. The film, “A Bout de Souffle” is shot in black and white but uses naturalistic lighting that created a sense of immediacy. The lighting occurs naturally suggesting a representation of reality indirectly. For example, the use of naturalistic lighting on Patricia, the lead actress in A Bout de Souffle (1959) was successful to portray her innocence in order to gain male attention rather than sexuality. 

Next, the staging in French New Wave film movement has its own style especially in actor’s performance including speech or dialogue patterns. The actors were encouraged to improvise their lines, or talk over each other’s lines as would happens in real-life. This leads to lengthy|nscenes of inconsequential dialogue in A Bout de Souffle film included the use of vernacular speech and colloquial expressions of main male character, Michel. His casual and informal language with a wealth of popular and slang terms and expressions result in using dialogue that is often mumbled which reflected on his original background from a poor immigrant family and hoping for a greater status and wealth. Additionally, monologues were also used in French New Wave movement, for example in Godard's Charlotte and her Bloke (1959) as there were voice-overs expressing a character's inner feelings, as in Rohmer's La Boulangère Du Monceau. Besides that, the actors in this movement were not big stars prior to the French New Wave. As an example, the characters of Michel and Patricia in A Bout de Souffle (1959) are played by unknown actors, Belmondo and Seberg which used to portray real life through its use of ordinary actors besides than emphasized the low budget nature of the new wave films. In addition, the characters in French New Wave films are often marginalized, young anti-heroes and loners, with no family ties, who behave spontaneously, often act immorally and are frequently seen as anti-authoritarian. . In Godard's A Bout de Souffle (1959) the male protagonist, Michel Poiccard is an anti-hero and a socially alienated character that kills and shows no remorse. Hence, he is seen masking his face with a newspaper, which is a typical crime behavior that suggesting he is a morally ambiguous character who is distancing himself from society at the beginning of the film. Central female characters were often given strong parts too, for example, Patricia in A Bout de Souffle (1959) was portrayed as desexualized woman that reshaping and resisting the stereotypical film femme fatale. She represented the modern women who are independent and active within the narrative, opposing the traditional representation of women as passive in tradition classic Hollywood cinema by being journalist in earning own money to gain independence.

As for the sound aspect, French New Wave movement often used natural sound in staying real and true to the very nature of film. Direct sound from the filming locations was usually captured by using light-weight sound equipments that speed up the duration of production works. Naturalistic soundtrack recorded during the shoot was emphasized to create the films a sense of freshness and energy that earlier movies lacked due the used of remixing sound in studio. 

The characteristic of cinematography changed in French New Wave film was using a lot of mise-en-shot like panning, tracking follow the character movement, handheld, and point of view of the character and so on. Panning shot allowed long period shot in one shot to follow the character movement and to control the things that the director want the audience to see. In Shoot the piano player, when Charlie is having a conversation with his two brothers in his brothers’ house, he walks around the house and at last sit on a lazy chair, the camera pan right to left follow his movement and tilt down when he sit on the lazy chair. In A bout de soufflé, one of the pan shot that use to control the visual is when Michel was chasing a car. The shot start by seeing Michel running and follow his movement pan to right and showed that he was chasing a car.

Next is track shot. The purpose of track shot is similar to pan shot but track shot can show on people around doing different things at the same place at the same time too. Track shot had applied in Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959) when shooting the establish shot in the museum. The happening and people around in the museum is slowly came into audience visual when the track shot also control what to seen and what should not.

Besides that, point of view of character is also often applied in French New Wave film. In A bout de soufflé, when Patricia looking at Michel through her rolled poster in the hotel room, point of view of Patricia was used to show Michel reaction that also looking at Patricia. The same technique as well used to show Michel’s point of view when he was driving on the road. In shoot the piano player, point of view of Charlie used to show the audience that the antagonists, Momo (Claude Mansard) and Ernest (Daniel Boulanger) was waiting outside his house when he looks throughout his brother’s room window.

Camera handheld technique is also preferred by the French New Wave filmmakers. In A bout de soufflé, the camera was held by a cinematographer while sitting on a wheelchair to follow the character’s movement in a travel agency’s office. In Shoot the piano player, handheld technique can be seen in the gunshot scene at the end of the film when Lena was afraid and ran to seek for Charlie.

Another characteristic of French New Wave movement is the Elliptical editing technique that practically used for producing film. The technique removes the continuity in time and space between shots. The most extreme form is jump cut. Jump cut is used almost throughout the film A bout de soufflé. Along the way Michel drove Patricia to a café to meet up the American journalist, there are about eleven jump cuts in 1 minutes and 14 seconds scene. In the meanwhile, the brightness of lighting for the jump shot scenes shows discontinuity of the brightness.

Influences & Impact On Contemporary Films

In 1950’s, a group of young directors brought out a new cinema movement named French New Wave (Nouvelle Vague) which was influenced by the Italian Neorealist. Besides directing the films, the directors also play a role as the author. They used film as a medium to express their thinking, feeling, and critic things that happened around them. From that time on, French New Wave had become a mainstream film movement in 1960’s and it brings influences to the film makers until today. The influences of French New Wave to the film industry are wide driven by the famous directors such as François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Chabrol, Jacques Rivette and Eric Rohmer. Nowadays, there are many Film makers inspired by them and adopt the characteristics of the movement into their film.

The filmmakers from America New Wave (1967-1980), - also known as New Hollywood movement, was greatly influenced by French New Wave. During the period of 'Old Hollywood', there was lack of money in producing films. Thus, directors produce films within low budget that eventually lead to some similar characteristics with French New Wave movement. For example, shooting on location was taken in consideration as this method was cheaper than shooting in studio. This will help to strengthen the realism of the film and indirectly grab the attention of the audiences. Other than that, the advancement in film technology give them a chance to shoot with 35 mm camera, for example, Panavision Panaflew camera introduced in 1972 which can be used by handheld whereby this method also found in New Wave movement. This helped to gain good visuals and made their work became easier. The French Connection in 1971 which is a crime film that directed by William Friedkin. Friedkin has employ handheld camera work, rough and improvisational style of shooting which then make the film come alive. Also, New York City has been choosing as the real main location shooting. Others examples of New Hollywood’s films are The Conversation (Francis Ford Coppola, 1974) and American Gigolo (Paul Schrader, 1980).

 The influences of French New Wave are reached until 1980’s. During this period of time, there are some pioneer of filmmaking has produced film which has nicely echoes of French New Wave movement. Examples of film that had been produced are La Bande des quatre in 1988 by Jacques Rivette and Un étrange voyage in 1981by Alain Cavalier. They are well known in produced New Wave movement of film especially, Jasques Rivette. He starts his film journey since 1961. In the La Bande des quatre (1988), Jacques Rivette intentionally creates more mystery than it can account for, leaving a buzzing sensation of forces outside of our understanding, operating in modes beyond our comprehension. Another film produced by Jacques Rivette is Marry go round in1981. This film was captures an unexplainable level of cinematic truth in the realm of something that is completely untruthful. Perhaps it’s hard to understand just how fascinating it is to watch something so bizarre unfold in the utmost convincing way. The narrative seems to roam in every which direction with multiple events going on nearly all the time. This kind of narrative used in producing films showed that the film makers are still influenced by the New Wave movement in films making.

French new wave is then widespread until 1990s. Quentin Tarantino, a famous postmodern director that often been criticized for stealing or copying from other directors film. Tarantino claim that although he had a heavily inspired in plot and style but he had created a unique style that is all his own, combining styles from his favorite genres into brand new mash-ups, making his own authorship.

Obviously, he had influenced by French new wave movement and later he had implied the style in the movie, Reservoir Dogs in 1992, which is a popular independent crime film of the decade. We can found out some French new wave’s echoes in this movie.  As evidences, it is a low budget film as many of the actors have to use their own costume as their character’s wardrobe. The film is a non- linear storyline as we can see break of pieces of the past and present of the story, An example, the heist story unfold as they're intercut with Freddy’s back story as to how he managed to get involved with Cabbot’s gang and his overall plan to capture them. The style of the storyline has created tension and interest of the audience. People know what is happened yet just don’t know how. Other than that, the setting in the opening sequence in the movie is a restaurant where the characters are seated eating breakfast. This has show that the implication of the French new wave movement because Tarantino choose to use a real or natural location as shooting location so that it looks usual and nature. Also, the conversations of the character are informal, which sound not scripted yet are more rambunctious and jovial dialogue. The ways they talk are reflecting their background of the characters. Additionally, monologue is used in the film as well, for an example, the wise old veterans like Edward Bunker, gets the film firmly started with his virtuoso monologue about the real meaning of LIKE A VIRGIN.

Tarantino film style seem is simply a rehash of what went before, nevertheless  Reservoir Dogs was given the Critic's Award at the 4th Yubari International Fantastic Film Festival in 1993 and was voted "Best Independent Film Ever" by Empire Magazine and even was voted "Most Influential Movie of the past 15 years" by movie magazine.  Although it is not the best films of the decade but it deserve as an honorable, remarkable film which should not be diminished and most significant filmmaking of Tarantino in the early 90s. The staple elements which contain in the film is then become an authorship of Tarantino. Another good example will be shown in his masterpiece which is Pulp Fiction.

Pulp Fiction is an American crime film portrays after Reservoir Dogs in 1994 which is another film of Tarantino’s work owes much to the New wave. The echoes of the movement apparently can be found in the film. For examples, the film is out of sequence, which is Tarantino‘s trademark of non-linear storytelling. Each storyline seem focuses on different series of incident yet they are interrelated and connect in various way.  The opening scene of the film is shooting in the diner where the “pumpkin” and “honey bunny” are having their breakfast and planning to rob the diner. In the entire film, the characters are talk in a casual way and most of the time we can found out the vulgarity words in the movie. A long tracking shot technique is used in the film, for instance, camera moving by followed Vincent in the theme restaurant. Besides that, jump out occur when Mr. Wolf walking to his car direction.  These are the evidences showing that Tarantino is still implying some of the new wave movement and innovate it become a brand new film.

With his well done job, this film has received a lot of awards such as “Best film award in National Society of Film Critics”, “Best Screenplay in Golden Globe Awards” and etc. Again, this film has raised his reputation in the film industry and indubitably became the most imitated screenwriter of the last decade. After Reservoir dogs and especially after Pulp Fiction, there are more young directors’ attempts to duplicate his films.  Others movie of Tarantino that heavily influenced by French new wave movement are Jackie Brown (1997), Kill Bill (2003, 2004), Death Proof (2007), and Inglorious Basterds (2009).

            

            The effects of French New Wave are still clearly evident until today century. There is a multitude of new filmmakers influenced by the French New Wave. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind(2004) is a romance and sc- fi film that directed by Michel Gondry and written by Charlie Kauffman is nothing short of a Novella Vague film. Gondry has subtly controlled hand-held camerawork and invigorating jump cuts and inventive scene transitions in the movie. Besides that, a clear- cut example in the scene of the movie is when Kate winslet and Jim Carrey is kissing same goes to the Godard’s masterpiece- A bout de soufflé, when Jean- Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg is kissing. Gondry has also made a string of other films such as the extremely strange and interesting, such as Science of Sleep (2006). It is a whimsical, loosely structured romantic fantasy film. it is obvious to see the influence of the new wave movement in the film, Gondry, again use hand held camera technique in the first 15minutes  Gondry also stages multiple scenes in hallways, near doorways, and on stairways, all of which seem to pay homage to, Francois Truffaut and his first film, The 400 Blows.

Marc Forster is another director who also influenced by the French New Wave movement. Stay(2005) which is a psychological thriller film in American. This film is fits to the criteria for the new wave movement. The main character is an anti- hero. Forster directed this film in artistic style which including vertigo and revolves around the dream, depression, death and false realities.

Other than that, there are still few examples of directors who influenced by the French New Wave movement in this modern cinema, such as Madame Bovary (1991) and La Ceremonie (1996),directed by Claude Chabrol, The Prisons(1994), directed by Jacques Rivette, Rendezvoux in Paris(1995), Summer's Tale, A(1996), directed by Eric Rohmer, Day in the Life of Andrei Arsenevitch, A(2000), Case of the Grinning Cat, The(2004), directed by Chris Marker and Libera me(1993), Filmman(2005), which is directed by Alain Cavalier. It is truth to say that French New Wave movement is successful remains intact and become a technique for the mainstream to practice.

It is also a diversion of French New Wave echoes can be found in other movement. In Denmark 1995, a clearly evident that show influenced by French new wave was Dogme95, which is created by Lars von Trier, Thomas Vinterberg, then later joined by Soren Kragh-Jackobson and Kristian Levering. Dogme 95 is like a “rescue movement”, which wants to rescue from the predictable plot. It used radical and usual technique to do the filmmaking and excluding use of the special and flourish special effects technology. This movement have the similarity rules with the New Wave movement which are filming must be done on the location, extra props and sets need not to brought in, camera must be handheld, no special lighting is added in, no superficial action such as weapons or murders, and the film must take place in the present day and in the country for filming.

The first Dogme film is Festen which also known as “The Celebration". It is a simple and naturalistic performance of film.  In this film, Vinterberg use natural lighting and handheld camera which had blown up to 35mm to shoot the content of the story. It then created disorientating images as disturbing the content of the story. The aesthetic of the film is similar to the French New Wave which used hand help camera extensively without extra technical considerations.  Festen won a lot of awards and it has become a significant film of Vinterberg.

The second film of the Dogme group is “The Idiots” by Lars von Trier, however he had directed and famous for Breaking the Waves in 1996, with a inspired way where the actors are free to move anywhere in the shooting location as the camera will follow them moving around.  There are still lists of number of dogme 95 film, it has shows that the filmmakers often used the limitation placed as their inspiration for filmmaking.

Incidentally, that there were other national 'New Waves' - including that in Hong Kong bear the obvious influenced by the French New Wave, like Wong- Kar Wai’s film – Chungking Express in 1994. He created the cinematography style which is influence by the New Wave movement. He included the handheld camera in most of the time in film because most of the shots are action or chasing scene. It shows blurred and distract to the audience, creating the effect like someone with no experience on camera work. Indirectly, he wan to increase the reality of the everyday life appears in the film.

It is clear that the French New Wave influence is still alive and spread well today. French New Wave brings out the messages that it is not necessary to have big lights, experienced actors, enormous budgets, flourished of technique and movie sets. The postmodern filmmakings have resurgence the New Wave ideas and create new blood for the modern cinema. This is little shaking up is exactly the need of the film industry for the profit given.

Film Analysis

The movie that we are going to analyze based on the influences of French new wave is Pulp Fiction, directed by Quentin Tarantino. The movie contains 3 sub-stories in which the characters’ roles are intertwined dealing with the ways of life, living in the cruel world of drugs, gangsterism and sex. There are 2 hitmen, Vincent Vega and Jules Winnfield, their boss Marsellus Wallace and his wife, Mia, a boxer named Butch and two robbers, Pumpkin and Honey Bunny.

Synopsis
Vincent Vega and Marsellus Wallace’s Wife
Before Vincent was ordered to stay close to Marsellus Wallace’s wife, Mia,and to accompany her for the whole day, he went out to buy some high quality heroin from the drug dealer, Lance. Vincent entertained Mia by taking her to a restaurant for dinner and went for a dance competition where they won a trophy. When Mia accidentally sniffed heroin from Vincent’s jacket which she thought was cocaine, she passed out and things went out of control for Vincent.

The Gold Watch
There is Butch, a boxer who killed his opponent violently and decided to run away with the prize money which Marsellus had betted on him to win the title. He and his girlfriend, Fabienne decided to leave the motel and fled the country the next morning, when Fabienne told Butch that she had left his father’s gold watch which he had kept as a family heirloom in his old apartment. Butch returned to collect the watch. Whilst there, he encountered Vincent and Marsellus and then tragedy strikes.

The Bonnie Solution
The story started three days earlier when Vincent and Jules survived an attempted murder, killed the thief, Brett and retrieved the briefcase containing the stolen prized possession back to their boss, Marcellus. Jules is convinced it is a miracle they are still alive. They then left with Marvin, one of Brett’s gang member and questioned him about miracles when Vincent accidentally shot and killed him in the car. The only person they could turn to was Jimmie their friend. Real trouble begins when Vincent and Jules had to find a way to dispose of the body and the car before Jimmie’s wife, Bonnie returns. After disposing the body and the evidence, both hitmen went to a diner before sending the briefcase to Marsellus when they encounter two robbers and try to get out of the situation.

Film Analysis of Pulp Fiction
Regarding to the synopsis above, French new wave has influences the narrative form of Pulp Fiction where it applied non-chronological approach. Director of Pulp Fiction, Quentin Tarantino purposely made distinction in narrative and experiencing different style in storytelling. Instead of present the film in linear structure such as three act structure and hero journey where audience can straight away understand the movie and follow the flow of the film form shown by the filmmakers, Tarantino choose to use teasing and twisting plot to urge audience think about the film.

In Pulp Fiction, the story is actually breaks into three different pieces of stories, at the same time, tightly connected to each other. Scene by scene are like puzzles and audience need to join them together and rearrange the visuals to get the whole story. The teasing opening, unexpected plot twist and ambiguous ending make this film outstanding and enable audience to think about the meaning of this movie rather than giving them literally meaning. For example, this movie begins with two robberies, Ringo and Yolanda's conversation in a restaurant. Once they decide to rob, they are pointing the gun to the restaurant customers, it then fade into black and opening credit shown. After opening credit, the scene that we watch next is not a continuous scene from the previous one. The new scene begins in a car, showing conversation between Jules and Vincent. This unconventional sequences attracted audience attention as the story is out of audience’s expectation. Audience will not get bored and tend to find out or guessing what this story is about, what will happen next and these unexpected sequences is actually arousing audience interest in watching the film.

Moreover, the ending part of Pulp Fiction is interesting where the scene get back to the same location and it is actually a continuous scene of the opening teasing. From the unusual editing style and plot construction of Tarantino, audience has opportunity to choose what they want to watch and trying to understand this movie from different perspective. Audience may have their own interpretation toward this film; some audience may view it from Butch’s perspective and some maybe from Vincent’s. At the mean time, audience can put the scene together and arrange it based on their creativity.

Furthermore, French new wave style of filming used to have shooting on real location rather than shooting in a theater or studio in order to let audience experience the reality and the life of the characters. The shooting locations from the Pulp Fiction are presented in casual way whereby we could see coffee shop, pawn shop, apartment, corridors and club. All of the location chosen let audience experience and we are expose to the foreign country’s lifestyle. For Asian audience like us, we never been in western country; but we could actually experience the western life style throughout this movie and expose ourselves to western style of restaurant and club.

In addition, the available light and simple supplemental sources are used rather than using three point lighting. So, we could obviously notice the lighting are from natural sunlight and create imbalance light reflection and shadows throughout the whole movie. One of the examples would be the corridor scene showing Jules and Vincent conversation. The brightness of Jules and Vincent is imbalanced as the light sources only come from windows and door. While they are walking in the corridor, you will notice the lighting is brighter with exist of windows and become dim when the light ray from window could not reach the two characters. We believe that this kind of lighting is used to make the visuals looks reality as what our eye seen in our daily life and give audience some aspect of experiencing the real things.

Apart from that, the cinematography of Pulp Fiction which influence by French new wave could be seen in the camera movements as well. The camera tends to pan and track to follow the character’s movement. For example, the camera tends to follow Butch movement in the Marsellus Wallace’s bar. After conversation with Marsellus, Butch order food and meet Vincent, when Marsellus called Vincent, Butch turn around and look at them. The camera panned and follows his moving, at the same time emphasize on his emotion with a close up.

Besides Butch, we could also see the camera following Vincent’s movement in the Jackrabbit Slim’s, a bizarre retro 50's club where he is curious about the place because he had never been there before and with the request of Mia, he enters that place. We as an audience are very curious about this place because the very first image that we get from that place is a car toys racing platform. The panning and tracking on Vincent’s movement brings audience to the atmosphere of the place and give audience a clearer image of Jackrabbit Slim’s.

In the beginning, we thought Vincent Vega is the protagonist of Pulp Fiction. He will be the important person or so call protagonist who will connect all the scenes together at the end and achieve his goal or success. However, when Vincent die in Butch apartment, audience get shock, and we had lost our direction that who are we going to follow and focus on. Then, camera change the target to Butch and audience had new person to follow in order to understand what the story of this film is. Sudden change in the middle part of movie is quite confusing and both Vincent and Butch seem aimless. Vincent killed occupants and accompany Mia because of Marsellus’s order; and his story end when being killed by Butch. Similarity to Butch, his intention in this story is not clarified as well. Therefore, lack-goal oriented protagonist is also inspired by French new wave.

Besides that, the dialogues of this movie are presented in very casual way and it is scripted as reality as possible. The unusual dialogue style is weird to a film because film most likely used beautiful words, short and precise dialogues, very dramatic and emotional sentences. In comparison to Pulp Fiction, the characters usually talk a lot, minimize the emotion in convey the dialogues and keep repeating their words. For example, the discussion of Vincent and Mia regarding the death of Antwan(Tony Rocker Horror). In the movie, Vincent keep repeating his dialogue such as well, well, I do, I do and all right, all right. That is the way we interact with people in reality as well. Then, a very long, nagging and twisted dialogue delivered by Vincent,

Vincent: “well, that is one way to say it. Another way to say it would be that he was thrown out. Another way would be he was thrown out by Marsellus and yet even another way is to say he was thrown out of a window by Marsellus because of you.”

Mia then summarizes Vincent words into short and straight forward way; Mia: “you heard Marsellus threw Tony Rocker Horror out of a fourth-story window for giving me a foot massage?”

The redundancy of dialogues appeared to give audience a very clear picture on the discussion issue address by characters. Therefore, uncommon dialogue usage such as live conversation enhance on the narrative because the director want to be that way and reflect our reality life.

In conclusion, the influences of French new wave do enhance the film form, narratives, plot structure, mis-en-scene, mis-en-shot and dialogues of the film today, especially in Tarantino’s film and Pulp Fiction is one of the examples of Tarantino’s film inspired by this film movement.

References

Historical background for movement / Film List/ Directors

Philips, C. (2005). French New Wave. Retrieved February 25, 2012 from http://www.greencine.com/static/primers/fnwave1.jsp

Timeline of the French New Wave. (2010). Retrieved February 25, 2012, from http://soma.sbcc.edu/users/davega/FILMST_101/FILMST_101_FILM_MOVEMENTS/FrenchNewWave/TimeLine_FrenchNewWave.pdf

Hitchamn, S. (2008). A History of French New Wave Cinema. Retrieved February 25^, 2012, from http://soma.sbcc.edu/users/davega/FILMST_101/FILMST_101_FILM_MOVEMENTS/FrenchNewWave/TimeLine_FrenchNewWave.pdf

http://filmdirectors.co/french-new-wave-film-techniques/

The Nouvelle Vague: Where to Start. (2008). Retrieved March 6, 2012 from http://www.newwavefilm.com/new-wave-cinema-guide/nouvelle-vague-where-to-start.shtml

Austerlitz, S. (2011). Jazques Rivette. Retrieved March 5, 2012 from http://www.sensesofcinema.com/2003/great-directors/rivette/

Jacques Rivette: A Differential Cinema. (2011). Retrieved March 5, 2012 from http://hcl.harvard.edu/hfa/films/2006winter/rivette.html

Influence and impact on contemporary films or other media

Truffault, F. (2010). Shoot the Piano Player. Retrieved March 6, 2012 from http://www.thecityreview.com/shoot.htm

Cannon, D. (1997). Hiroshima mon amour (1959). Retrieved March 6, 2012 from http://www.film.u-net.com/Movies/Reviews/Hiroshima_Amour.html

Unique characteristic/ Narrative/ Stylistic

A Bout de Souffle film locations. (2001). Retrieved February 25, 2012, from http://www.movie-locations.com/movies/a/aboutdesouffle2.html

Francis, D. (2011). Characteristics of French New Wave. Retrieved February 25, 2012, from http://www.ehow.com/info_8185347_characteristics-french-new-wave.html#ixzz1nknl5vsP

Ager, R. (2009). The Gold Watch Story in Pulp Fiction. Retrieved February 26, 2012, from http://www.collativelearning.com/pulp%20fiction%20-%20gold%20watch%20story%20analysis.html

Pulp Fiction Chronological. (2011). Retrieved February 26, 2012, from http://www.tarantino.info/wiki/index.php/Pulp_Fiction_chronological

Pulp Fiction FAQ. (2011). Retrieved February February 26, 2012 from http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110912/faq#.2.1.22

Analysis on selected film from item 3

Merry-Go- Round in 1981. (2008). Retrieved March 6, 2012, from http://cinematalk.wordpress.com/2008/06/16/merry-go-round-1981/

Huggo. (2010). Breathless  - 1960. Retrieved March 8, 2012 from http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053472/plotsummary