By The Butcher
You love ’em, he hates ’em! The Butcher carves up your favourite films, and this week, he applies his sharpened cleaver to 1960’s Breathless, Jean-Luc Godard’s classic of The French New Wave, and the inspiration for Richard Linklater’s new film, Nouvelle Vague.
What is it with the French? Is there any other nation on the planet that everyone sucks up to with such unabashed fervour? Sure, the Americans don’t like them because of the whole September 11/“freedom fries” debacle, amongst other things, but in terms of high culture, popular culture, culinary pursuits and fashion, France way too often resembles a very large set of buttocks on which way too many people are way too ready to place their lips.
Why? This is the country that gave us such rubbish as Marcel Marceau, the “delectation” of frogs’ legs and snails, champagne, ballet and Coco Chanel. The French are also responsible for much of the high falutin’ nonsense that passes for film criticism, thanks to the 1960s publication Cahiers Du Cinema, which “pioneered” the concept of “serious” writing about cinema. Puh-lease!
Many of the critics that scratched away for Cahiers Du Cinema – big time tossers like Eric Rohmer, Jacques Rivette, Claude Chabrol and Francois Truffaut – also later made films of their own, most of which are virtually unwatchable. The worst of these celluloid offenders (often collectively labelled The French New Wave) is Jean-Luc Godard, who practically set the blueprint for the modern cinematic poseur. “All you need to make a movie is a girl and a gun,” he once said, probably while sucking on a cigarette in some trumped-up Parisian cafe.
Godard tried this harebrained philosophy on for size with the derivative 1960 “groundbreaker” Breathless, which introduced “audacious” techniques like the jump cut (big deal!) while at the same time cheaply ripping off old Hollywood b-grade thrillers. As well as the girl (the annoyingly waifish Jean Seberg, upon whom a whole generation of bad actresses seem to have based their irritatingly twee mannerisms and “coquettish charm”) and the gun, Godard also gives us Frenchman Jean-Paul Belmondo, an actor so wooden that he makes Sam Worthington look like Al Pacino. Often credited with being one of the most important films of all time, Breathless is more like that famous French delicacy, the soufflé: it’s all supposed technique and no substance. Sacre bleu!
Nouvelle Vague is released in cinemas on January 8.
Want to read more from The Butcher? Check out his angry missives against Elizabeth, Miracle On 34th Street, The Full Monty, There Will Be Blood, Les Miserables, The King’s Speech, Picnic At Hanging Rock, The Magnificent Seven, Gone With The Wind, The Right Stuff, 81/2, Pulp Fiction, Easy Rider, The Shawshank Redemption, 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Wizard Of Oz, Jaws, Black Swan, Gladiator, Chopper, I’m Not There, Interstellar, Marvel Studios and Citizen Kane.
