The Story of Film Episode 7 – European New Wave

1957-1964: The Shock of the New – Modern Filmmaking in Western Europe.

• Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory (1895) (introduced in Episode 1) dir. Louis Lumière -It’s been 60 years since this was made.
• Summer with Monika (1953) dir. Ingmar Bergman – Bergman’s films were more like theatre, than cinema. Films in these new times were more personal. One of the moist sensuous films of its time.
• The Seventh Seal (1957) dir. Ingmar Bergman – Bergman’s best known 50s film, and shows the evolution of his thinking. Set in the middle ages.
• Winter Light (1963) dir. Ingmar Bergman – Utilized religion within film.
• Persona (1966) dir. Ingmar Bergman – Not only used film as a confessional, but used it as a self aware medium. Just as artists made paintings.
• Pickpocket (1959) dir. Robert Bresson – Film about imprisonment. Utilizes a 50mm lens. Clothes are what ordinary people wear, the man has no expression, etc. Tries to show the invisible.
• Au hasard Balthazar (1966) dir. Robert Bresson – About a donkey. Shows cruelty, and utilizes simple framing. Similar to “Pickpocket”, showing no emotion, giving no style.
• Taxi Driver (1976) (introduced in Episode 1) dir. Martin Scorsese – Uses interior monologue.
• Ratcatcher (1999) dir. Lynne Ramsay – Hauntingly attached to objects.
• Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday (1953) (introduced in Episode 2) dir. Jacques Tati – A response to Charlie Chaplin. Hulot always bent forwards, while Chaplin bent backwards.
• Mon Oncle (1956) dir. Jacques Tati – Shows thoughts of modern life. Films the old world in warm sunlight, films the modern house in flat light. Never used closeups, always wanted to show the full picture.
• Fellini’s Casanova (1976) dir. Federico Fellini – Film was like a circus.
• Nights of Cabiria (1957) dir. Federico Fellini – Shows how modern Fellini was. Style changed throughout the movie.
• 8½ (1963) dir. Federico Fellini – Made an actress felt like she was flying.
• Stardust Memories (1980) dir. Woody Allen – Main characters seems to step out of his own life. Shows POV of actor in a scene.
• Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962) dir. Agnès Varda – Captures the flow of thought, and it’s unpredictability.
• Last Year at Marienbad (1961) dir. Alain Resnais – Questions what is real within the film, shows how people misremember. Makes us question the building blocks of storytelling.
• The 400 Blows (1959) dir. François Truffaut – Shows the feeling of being alive.
• À bout de souffle (1959) dir. Jean-Luc Godard – Full of closeups. Uses short rolls of film. Heavily utilizes cuts, uses them not to show something else, but the same scene.
• Life of an American Fireman (1903) (introduced in Episode 1) dir. Edwin S. Porter – A cut almost always took place to show something else.
• Arsenal (1929) (introduced in Episode 3) dir. Alexander Dovzhenko – Shows a man’s mental agitation through cuts.
• Une femme mariée (1964) dir. Jean-Luc Godard – Sex scene uses same framing, body parts, blank camera, blank background. Breaks up the scene by body parts.
• American Gigolo (1980) dir. Paul Schrader – Sex scene similar to that of “Une femme mariée”
• Accattone (1961) dir. Pier Paolo Pasolini -“A lighting rod in Italian cinema”. Captures Pasolini’s life experiences. Utilizes religious music to make everyday struggles spiritual.
• The Gospel According to St. Matthew (1964) dir. Pier Paolo Pasolini – Boldly challenged how the Virgin Mary is pictured in art.
• The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) (introduced in Episode 2) dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer – Inspired Pasolini in how he portrayed the Virgin Mary.
• A Fistful of Dollars (1964) dir. Sergio Leone – Opted for the Western, when Italians were doing comedies at the time. Utilized an American genre. What was innovative was the visual style. Utilized deep staging to show both the foreground and background. Was the first director to utilize “Techno scope”.
• Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) (introduced in Episode 1) dir. Sergio Leone – Channels the Italian neo-realism idea. Utilizes a crane shot to show a Western town. Also shows a first person POV, to show an actor walking through the streets. Utilizes music to make a scene more grand than it is, alongside with tracking shots.
• Johnny Guitar (1954) (introduced in Episode 6) dir. Nicholas Ray – A classic western. Inspired Leone with this idea of “waiting for the future”.
• Senso (1954) dir. Luchino Visconti – Shows the scale and emotion of Opera. Color, lighting show aristocracy, yet the common folk look down upon the aristocrats.
• Rocco and His Brothers (1960) dir. Luchino Visconti – Shows Visconti’s sympathy for the common folk. Shows the hard social details of such lives. Filmed some scenes in a working tram.
• L’eclisse (1962) dir. Michelangelo Antonioni – Framed more abstractly. Usually frames people abstractly, as in barely in frame, just out of edge, or blocked by something.
• The Passenger (1975) dir. Michelangelo Antonioni – Camera seems to “go for a walk”, and the film turns into this “walk”. Antonioni’s films spiral outwards, first time in film where films spiral out to space.
• The Travelling Players (1975) dir. Theodoros Angelopoulos – Camera slowly withdraws, shows both the street and people. In conventional cinema, it would zoom in, yet Angelpolous decides to not do this.
• The Wheelchair (1960) dir. Marco Ferreri – A comedy. Man gets a wheelchair, even though his legs work fine because he think’s it’ll be cool. It has a non-conformist tone. Mocked the living conditions of old men. Combines realism and irony.
• What Have I Done to Deserve This? (1984) dir. Pedro Almodóvar – Features the same kind of dysfunctional family as that of “The Wheelchair”.
• Viridiana (1961) dir. Luis Buñuel – Was Bunuel’s most banned film.
• I Am Curious (Yellow) (1967) dir. Vilgot Sjöman – Shows confrontation in life head on. Scene is shut as if actor was talking to Martin Luther King Jr.
• La Maman et la Putain (1973) dir. Jean Eustache – Shot in a cafe. Shows despair straight into the camera. Even the actor tries to cover his eyes, as if to cover emotions (?).