#Jean Aurenche

[theoscarsproject]

Coup de Torchon / Clean Slate (1981). A pathetic police chief, humiliated by everyone around him, suddenly wants a clean slate in life - and resorts to drastic means to do so.

A moody French crime film that takes the American western tropes and surplants them to France-occupied West Africa. It works better than you'd think, and is particularly grounded by a wonderful performance from a young Isabelle Huppert! 7/10.

[laurent-bigot]

LE STYLE AURENCHE ET BOST 

Duo vedette du scénario durant trois décennies, Jean Aurenche et Pierre Bost ont écrit à quatre mains une soixantaine de films, dont plusieurs chefs-d’œuvre. Torpillés par la Nouvelle vague, ils seront réhabilités par Bertrand Tavernier qui fera de Jean Aurenche l’une des principales figures de son film Laissez-passer en 1992. Pierre Bost et Jean Aurenche Si leurs noms sont aujourd’hui moins…

[timriva-blog]

Jacques Prévert et le cinéma

Écrit par Carole Aurouet Jacques Prévert (1900-1977) marqua incontestablement de son empreinte le cinéma français des années 1930 à 1960. « Un jour, le cinéma s’est mis à parler Prévert », écrit Jean Aurenche (La Suite à l’écran, 1993). À l’occasion du quarantenaire de sa disparition, revenons sur l’œuvre cinématographique féconde de ce grand scénariste.  Théâtre, littérature, chanson,…

[boxcarwild]

Is Paris Burning? (aka Paris brûle-t-il ?) is a 1966 film about the liberation of Paris in August 1944 by the French Resistance and the Free French Forces during World War II.

A French-American co-production, it was directed by French filmmaker René Clément, with a screenplay by Gore Vidal, Francis Ford Coppola, Jean Aurenche, Pierre Bost and Claude Brulé, adapted from the 1965 book of the same title by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre.

The film stars an international ensemble cast that includes French (Jean-Paul Belmondo, Alain Delon, Bruno Cremer, Pierre Vaneck, Jean-Pierre Cassel, Leslie Caron, Charles Boyer, Yves Montand), American (Orson Welles, Kirk Douglas, Glenn Ford, Robert Stack, Anthony Perkins, George Chakiris) and German (Gert Fröbe, Hannes Messemer, Ernst Fritz Fürbringer, Harry Meyen, Wolfgang Preiss) stars.

All sequences featuring French and German actors were filmed in their native languages and later dubbed in English, while all the sequences with the American actors (including Welles) were filmed in English. Separate French and English-language dubs were produced.

[byneddiedingo]

Bernard Blier and Arletty in Hõtel du Nord (Marcel Carné, 1938) Cast: Arletty, Louis Jouvet, Annabella, Jean-Pierre Aumont, Jane Marken, André Brunot. René Bergeron, Paulette Dubost, François Périer, Andrex, Henri Bosc, Marcel André, Bernard Blier, Jacques Louvigny, Armand Lurville, Génia Vaury. Screenplay: Henri Jeanson, Jean Aurenche, based on a novel by Eugène Dabit. Cinematography: Louis Née, Armand Thirard. Production design: Alexandre Trauner. Film editing: Marthe Gottié, René Le Hénaff. Music: Maurice Jaubert.  Arletty's performance as the raucous streetwalker Raymonde in Hôtel du Nord is quite unlike her most famous role, the fascinating, enigmatic Garance in Marcel Carné's  Children of Paradise (1945). Raymonde shares a room in the hotel with Edmond (Louis Jouvet), a photographer who is hiding out from his old cronies in the Parisian underworld. The film begins with a traveling shot along the canal that flanks the hotel, where we first see a young pair of lovers, Pierre (Jean-Pierre Aumont) and Renée (Annabella), walking arm in arm. Inside the hotel, the residents are celebrating the first communion of the daughter of Maltaverne (René Bergeron), a policeman who lives at the hotel. (It's a diverse household.) Pierre and Renée enter and request a room for the night, but instead of making love, they have decided on a suicide pact: He will shoot her, then kill himself. He holds up the first part of the bargain, but then chickens out. Edmond, who has been in his darkroom, hears the shot and breaks down the door, finding Renée apparently dead and Pierre cowering indecisively. Taking the gun from Pierre, Edmond urges him to flee. (The gun becomes a Chekhov's gun when Edmond first tosses it away and then recovers it and stashes it in a drawer.) Renée recovers from the gunshot, and Pierre, torn with guilt, turns himself in to the police as an attempted murderer and is sent to prison. After she recuperates, Renée returns to the hotel to collect her things, and is offered a job there by Madame Lecouvreur (Jane Marken), the wife of the proprietor (André Brunot). And so the story of the suicidal lovers begins to intertwine with that of Edmond and Raymonde. It's all neatly done, with a great deal of atmosphere (a word that Raymonde will give a particular spin to), much of it created by Alexandre Trauner's set, a re-creation in the studios at Billancourt of the actual hotel and the Canal St. Martin.  The film's melodrama is alleviated by the ensemble work and the performances of Jouvet, who can switch from menacing to vulnerable in an instant, and Arletty, who makes the tough, worldly wise Raymonde often very funny. The film concludes with Carné's skillful staging of an elaborate Bastille Day sequence that anticipates the crowd scenes in Children of Paradise.

[antigonegone]

La photo, affirmait Chris Marker en 1966, c’est I’instinct de chasse sans l’envie de tuer. C’est la chasse des anges… On traque, on vise, on tire et- clac ! au lieu d’un mort, on fait un éternel. Mes vœux d’Annette Messager – 263 épreuves photographiques représentant des détails corporels de femmes et d’hommes 1989 Mes voeux (zoom) Man Ray Chapeau par Elsa Schiaparelli – 1933 Photomatons de MB. Aurenche, J.Prévert, M.Ernst, Y.Tanguy vers 1929 W.Eugene Smith – Jean Pierson 1949 Sergio Larrain – Photos du Chili – 1952 Chris Marker, la chouette, le mystère Koumiko et Jacques Branchu, son (l’) ami de ma 1ère vie HC.Bresson Gotthard Schuh – mineur belge 1937 Nusch Eluard à gauche (photo de Dora Maar) et poème de Paul Eluard à droite – extrait de son opuscule “le temps déborde” dédié à son épouse partie dans l’autre monde et publié en 1947 HC. Bresson à 24 ans – Mexico 1934 – sublime… “Nous ne vieillirons pas ensemble Voici le jour En trop : le temps déborde” (Paul Eluard)

[sesiondemadrugada]

Forbidden Games (René Clément, 1952).

[straightfromamovie]

Better the blind man who pisses out the window than the joker who told him it was a urinal.

Lucien Cordier, Coup De Torchon

[genevieveetguy]

- Don’t be modest. - I do what I can.

The Trip Across Paris (La traversée de Paris), Claude Autant-Lara (1956)

[waste-it-on-something-useful]

Hôtel du Nord (Marcel Carné, 1938)

"Ce n’est pas un étranger, c'est un orphelin."

The first word a stone, the second one a nugget of humanity.

[laurent-bigot]

CLAUDE AUTANT-LARA : LE BOURGEOIS ANARCHISTE

Claude Autant-Lara a été un des grands cinéastes français de la période 1940-1960. Il en a donné maintes fois la preuve, c’est un artiste et il sait ensuite injecter une méchanceté toute personnelle à ce qu’il veut dénoncer et user du vitriol. Son œuvre est inégale et comporte une inévitable part de films sans intérêt. Mais on lui doit quelques chefs-d’œuvre et une bonne dizaine d’œuvres…

[davidosu87]

[byneddiedingo]

Jean Gabin and Bourvil in Four Bags Full aka The Crossing of Paris aka Pig Across Paris (Claude Autant-Lara, 1956)

Cast: Jean Gabin, Bourvil, Louis de Funès, Jeanette Batti, Georgette Anys, Robert Arnoux, Laurence Badie, Jacques Marin, Jean Dunot, MonetteDinay. Screenplay: Jean Aurenche, Pierre Bost, based on a story by Marcel Aymé. Cinematography: Jacques Natteau. Production design: Max Douy. Film editing: Madeleine Gug. Music: René Cloërec. 

Like most movie-lovers whose knowledge of film extends beyond "Hollywood," I was familiar with Jean Gabin, but although I had encountered the name, I didn't know Bourvil, celebrated in France but not so much on this side of the Atlantic. Which made it difficult for me at first to capture the tone and humor of La Traversée de Paris, a film also known as Four Bags Full, The Crossing of Paris, The Trip Across Paris, and Pig Across Paris. Since the film begins with newsreel footage of German troops occupying Paris in 1942, it strikes a more serious tone than it eventually takes. Marcel Martin (Bourvil) is a black market smuggler tasked with carrying meat from a pig that's slaughtered at the beginning of the movie while he plays loud music on an accordion to cover its squeals. He's responsible for transporting two suitcases filled with pork across the city to Montmartre, but when the other smuggler fails to show up, he has to accept the aid of a stranger, Grandgil (Gabin), who agrees to carry the other two valises. Grandgil, however, wants the butcher, Jambier (Louis de Funès), to pay much more than the originally agreed-upon amount for his services, and blackmails him into accepting, to the consternation of Martin. The task is perilous, given the vigilance of the French police and the German occupying troops, so the film wavers between thriller and comedy -- the latter particularly when some stray dogs pick up the scent of what's in the suitcases. It ends up being a fascinating tale of the odd-couple relationship between Grandgil and Martin, as well as a picture of what Parisians went through during the occupation. It was controversial when it was released because it takes a warts-and-all look at black-marketeers and the Résistance, downplaying the heroism without denying the genuine risks they took. Eventually, Grandgil and Martin are caught by the Germans, but Grandgil is released because the officer in charge recognizes him as a famous artist. Martin is sent to prison, but the two are reunited after the war when Grandgil recognizes him at a train station as the porter carrying his luggage -- a rather obvious, and somewhat sour, bit of irony.

[iracarterart]

jean aurenche, marie-berthe aurenche, max ernst follow the light

[wrentumbles]

Francois Truffaut and the politics of art

Introduction

“A Certain Tendency of French Cinema" was a 1954 essay by Francois Truffaut. It was published in the right-wing film magazine Cahiers du Cinema and constituted an attack on the “tradition of quality” established in French cinema – the mainstream, commercial films released every year. In his essay, Truffaut argues that French cinema has become too stale, and that films have become too commercialized, too “trendy”. Instead of creating unique, personal works following their own creative vision, directors were being reduced to the metteur-en-scene - “the person who adds pretty pictures to it”[1]. 

In his essay Truffaut attacks Jean Aurenche and Pierre Bost, along with a number of other French directors and screenwriters for being too commercial, and for merely rendering literary classics. “film should no longer render pre-existing written texts, whether in the form of a script or a source novel; rather, the shooting process itself should be a form of action-writing performed through mise-en-scène.”[2] He lambasts them for creating film adaptations which please the masses by inserting anti-bourgeois, anti-militant, and anti-clerical themes into their films without a personal touch to them. “No social or political views, those dreaded “messages,” are to mar the purity of art. Art must be free of all outside influences.”[3] In this essay I will examine Truffaut’s ideas on art, what it means for art to have a message, and the impact of “A Certain Tendency of French Cinema”. 

Part 1: Truffaut and the politics of aesthetics

Following his essay, Truffaut decided to take on a directorial role, and usher in the French new wave he dreamed of. 

 With “The 400 blows”, Truffaut had the opportunity to put everything he believed in into practice – from writing, directing, and editing the film as its auteur, to filming on a relatively small budget, with few sets and a small number of actors. Within the film we can truly see Truffaut’s dreamlike vision of what film can be – a truly personal expression of one’s experience with the world - “truth, 24 frames per second”[4]. “On a larger scale, we can see the film as Truffaut’s poetic mark on the wall, or his attempt to even the score.”[5] Basing the story on Truffaut’s own experiences growing up, the film follows Antoine, a rebellious teenager who struggles to fit into his community, his family, and society as a whole. It examines what it means to be free and the question of responsibility in society.

 As a result of Truffaut’s aesthetic decisions, the film feels intensely personal and genuine – the camera cuts rarely and stays with the protagonist for almost uncomfortable stretches of time, grounding the audience in his world. The film is shot on location rather than the standard of shooting on constructed sets and sound stages, giving it a more “authentic” look. The locations, although real, always match the mood of the scene, which is no better illustrated by the ending scene on the beach, which is empty, but also full of possibility. Following a 2-minute uninterrupted tracking shot of Antoine running through crowded spaces, we are finally ushered onto an open, empty beach. Antoine runs into the water, and his footprints are erased by the waves, signifying his adolescence being over. As the protagonist stares into the camera with an empty expression, the movie comes to a close. 

 The ending is left intentionally ambiguous, and so are the movie’s themes. Ideas of personal and societal responsibility are thrown into the air, but left with no answer, as would become standard for New Wave Cinema, for to be on the right-bank means to make films “should be able to exist for its own sake, or in fact only to express the truth”[6].

  That leaves us with several questions, namely “which is more important? A socially progressive film? Or an aesthetically progressive one?”[6] In the end, Truffaut has no answer. “Most obviously, Truffaut rejects any “audacity” which has to do with the world outside the film or with the specific content of the film. The presentation of a homosexual relationship or a character’s rejection of the church Truffaut finds phony, uninteresting, and not the proper subject of the cinema”[3]. With “The 400 Blows”, Truffaut, if inadvertently makes a statement about personal responsibility - society’s mechanisms for dealing with people who don’t fit in might be broken, but that is just how things are meant to be. And for him that is enough. Because Antoine doesn’t believe in anything but freedom, and neither does Truffaut.

Part 2: Is freedom enough, and leaving Truffaut behind

 Jean-Luc Godard was a film director for the latter half of the 20th century, and one of the pioneers of the French New Wave. He, along with his friends from “Cahiers du Cinema” revolutionised film. His contributions to the development of the jump-cut, along with his naturalistic approach to dialogue, have been massively influential to film as a whole. Only when examining his filmography, however, do we see his biggest influence on the medium. Godart wanted to give film a purpose, to make films with a desire bigger than freedom - change. 

  We can most clearly see this when comparing two of his films - “Breathless” and “La Chinoise”. In “Breathless”, released in 1960, Godart tells the story of the young gangster Michel falling in love with Patricia, an American student. The film is an examination of identity, happiness, and purpose, with Patricia being pulled into Michel’s turbulent life by accident, but deciding to leave it by betraying him.

 Godart chose to shoot the entirety of the film in handheld, with mostly natural light in order to make the film feel noninvasive, while bringing the audience ever closer to the characters, and establishing the now-popular documentary style of filmmaking. Although originally written by Truffaut, the script was rewritten and made up on the spot as Godart fed the actors lines, which is why all of the film’s audio is dubbed [7]. The cinematography of the film perfectly mirrors Patricia’s indecisiveness, with many shots tracking her left, only to reverse and track her in the opposite direction. Godart’s use of shot-reverse-shot is a standout in the film, and its use, along with purposeful, jarring jump cuts is essential to the film’s narrative.

 As Patricia betrays Michel, he tries to escape and is shot by police and dies shortly after. The film leaves the viewer with a similar feeling as “The 400 Blows” - one of uncertainty, emptiness. Our protagonist has found an identity, but their future, much like the film itself, is uncertain, non-committal.

   “La Chinoise” is Godart’s 1967 adaptation of Dostoyevski’s Demons. It follows 5 university students as they discuss revolution, and decide to assassinate the Soviet Minister of Culture when he visits Paris. They end up killing the wrong man, and one of them – the emotionally unstable Kirilov, commits suicide. Aesthetically, the film is bright, saturated, and chaotic, and its fast pace reflects the revolutionary spark the characters have. Godart’s direction is also beautifully acted: “We’re invited to wonder about the authenticity of these characters we see onscreen: Is their lack of artifice, and the performers’ lack of actor-ly affect, a sign that they are merely mouthpieces, or does it actually speak to their sincerity?”[8]. By questioning the authenticity of the bourgeois revolutionaries, the film asks the viewer to consider revolution within the context of their own time, to step out of the artificial front of enacting revolution on a global scale and focus on real-world problems around them. 

 As an adaptation, it redefines the original novel’s political message, themes, and characters, and re-contextualises its setting in order to create a new original: “the auratic prestige of the original does not run counter to the copy; rather the copy creates the prestige of the original. A film adaptation as “copy,” by analogy, is not necessarily inferior to the novel as “original”; indeed, it can itself become the “original” which generates subsequent ‘copies.’”[9] With “La Chinoise” Godart commits to an idea. He finally has something to say. 

  At the heart of “A Certain Tendency of French Cinema” lies a contradiction – Truffaut wants cinema to be art, to be more than shot for shot adaptations of literary classics, but at the same time refuses to let it have something to say. He wants an aesthetic revolution, but not a political one. With the maturity of the French New Wave, the movement could no longer afford to ignore political conflict happening around it. The French New Wave saw a “shift away from auteurist, genre, and formalist theories to theories borrowed from social, political, economic, and psychological fields. […] there was a need to look beyond surface realism to the political-economic.” [10]. Godard became a part of that shift as “it became increasingly hard for him to ignore that in contemporary France, to be right-wing meant more than just prioritising aesthetics over content”[6]. 

Both “Breathless”, and “La Chinoise” would likely not have been made had it not been for Truffaut’s 1954 essay. Within both films we see Truffaut meant when he imagined the role of the auteur – bold, inspired art that “exposes the truth” and pushes the medium further. In “La Chinoise”, however, we see something more – we see a film that has left Truffaut behind.

Part 3: Hayao Miyazaki - revolution, commodified

 Hayao Miyazaki’s 2004 film “Howl’s moving castle” is arguably the culmination of his career, with overwhelming critical and commercial success. What is interesting about it, however, is that it wasn’t meant to be. It was meant to be a rebellion.

  “Howl’s moving castle”, adapted from the book by the same name is a stunning, thematically heavy meditation on the perils of war, nihilism, and the power of love. The themes, which Miyazaki builds on for his entire career, are only amplified within the context of his other works. As an adaptation the film works to redefine the original - decisions which are merely aesthetic in the book become visual metaphors for the film’s themes. Miyazaki transforms the story of the book into a condemnation of the Iraq war and of war in general. Characters come to symbolise their world-views, and are adapted into clearer, more distinct versions of themselves. From the Castle’s disjointed, mechanical nature, to the overwhelming shots of the army marching through the streets, to the softly shaded scenes of nature, only to be contrasted with the chiaroscuro-like scenes of war with bombs, explosions, and fires, the film uses its aesthetics in a distinctly personal way. The depiction of war is harrowing, and is only possible because of the film’s animated nature. Here, the anti-war themes are the point – the aesthetics of the film serve a purpose. 

 When making the film, Miyazaki expected it to fail in the US. Just a year prior, he had refused to accept his Oscar, stating that “The reason I wasn’t here for the Academy Award was because I didn’t want to visit a country that was bombing Iraq.”[11] Miyazaki’s rebellion became nothing more than a commodity. The film’s clear anti-war message didn’t impact its reception, nor commercial success - something we would see happen time and time again over the next decade. Directors like Wes Anderson, Taika Waititi, and Bong Joon-ho, along with their signature styles of film-making have become brands in themselves. Films with a unique, authorial style, rebellious political themes, as well as the auteurs themselves have become the new status-quo. They have been commodified.

Conclusion – the impact of “a certain tendency in french cinema” and the new normal

Truffaut’s 1954 essay, while, at its core reactionary, has shaped film as a medium into what we know it today. Film no longer simply “renders pre-existing texts”, and is now an art form that stands equal to literature. Not only that, but films with wide, far reaching political ideas have become standard. His essay paved the way for independent cinema, and allowed the genre to move past the then-standard constructed sets and artificial lighting. Directors now commonly write their own movies, and the “camera-pen” is now standard practice. Truffaut’s work shaped an entire generation of film-makers, and its ideas are still present today, with indie cinema being more popular than ever [12]. Looking at the French New Wave in hindsight, it looks almost small. Film has come a long way since then, and has left Truffaut far behind. We have moved past Truffaut’s rebellion - it has become the new normal.

bibliography and footnotes

  The 400 Blows. 1959. [film] Directed by F. Truffaut. France: Les Films du Carrosse.

Breathless. 1961. [film] Directed by J. Godard. France: Imperia, Les Films Georges de Beauregard.

La Chinoise. 1967. [film] Directed by J. Godard. France: Les Productions de la Guéville.

Howl’s Moving Castle. 2004. [film] Directed by H. Miyazaki. Japan: Studio Ghibli.

    Truffaut, F. (1954). A Certain Tendency of French Cinema. Cahiers du Cinema

Hess, J. (1974). La politique des auteurs, 2: Truffaut’s manifesto. Jump Cut, no. 2, pp. 20-22. 

Bazin, A. (1957). La politique des auteurs. Cahiers du Cinema no. 70

Neupert, R. (2002). A History of the French New Wave Cinema . Madison: University of Wisconsin Press

Astruc, A. (1948). The Birth of a New Avant-Garde: La Camera-Stylo. L'Ecran Françoise

Levy, E., 1999. Cinema of outsiders. New York: New York University Press.

Hernández-Pérez, M. (2016) ‘Animation, Branding and Authorship in the Construction of the ‘Anti-Disney’ Ethos: Hayao Miyazaki’s Works and Persona through Disney Film Criticism’, Animation, 11(3), pp. 297–313

Boas, G. (1947). “The Social Responsibility of the Artist.” College Art Journal, vol. 6, no. 4, 1947, pp. 270–276.

Yonemura, M. (2020). Hayao Miyazaki and Adaptation: Themes of War and Aging in “Howl’s Moving Castle. University of British Columbia, Centre for Japanese Research

Swale, A. (2015). Miyazaki Hayao and the Aesthetics of Imagination: Nostalgia and Memory in Spirited Away. Asian Studies Review. 39.

Smith, L. (2013). War, Wizards, and Words: Transformative Adaptation and Transformed Meanings in Howl’s Moving Castle. Jibon. Available at: https://littledevil1919.wordpress.com/2013/06/27/j-anime-ghibli-war-wizards-and-words-transformative-adaptation-and-transformed-meanings-in-howls-moving-castle/

Hansen, K. (2010). Physical Metamorphosis in Howl’s Moving Castle. Film110, Westminster College Press

[1] Truffaut, F. (1954). A Certain Tendency of French Cinema. Cahiers du Cinema. Available at: http://www.newwavefilm.com/about/a-certain-tendency-of-french-cinema-truffaut.shtml

[2] Stam, R. (2006). Adaptation and the French New Wave: A Study in Ambivalence. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. Available at: https://www.holycross.edu/sites/default/files/files/english/geracht/interfaces/adaptation.pdf

[3] Hess, J. (1974). La politique des auteurs, 2: Truffaut’s manifesto. Jump Cut, no. 2, pp. 20-22. Available at: https://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/onlinessays/JC02folder/auteur2.html

[4] Le Petit Soldat. 1963. [film] Directed by J. Godart. France: Les Productions Georges de Beauregard.

[5] Insdorf, A., 2021. The 400 Blows: Close to Home. The Criterion Collection. Available at: https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/528-the-400-blows-close-to-home

[6] McNett, A. (2009). The Politics of The French New Wave. New Wave Film. Available at: http://www.newwavefilm.com/about/french-new-wave-politics.shtml

[7] Solomons, J., 2010. Breathless: ‘Jean-Luc Godard would just turn up scribble some dialogue and we would rehearse maybe a couple of times’. the Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2010/jun/06/raoul-coutard-jean-luc-godard-breathless

[8]Ebiri, B., 2017. “La Chinoise” and the Re-education of Jean-Luc Godard . The Village Voice. Available at: https://www.villagevoice.com/2017/07/20/la-chinoise-and-the-re-education-of-jean-luc-godard

[9] Stam, R. (2006). Adaptation and the French New Wave: A Study in Ambivalence. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. Available at: https://www.holycross.edu/sites/default/files/files/english/geracht/interfaces/adaptation.pdf

[10] Totaro, D. (1998). May 1968 and After: Cinema in France and Beyond, part 1. Off Screen vol. 2, Issue 2. Available at: https://offscreen.com/view/may_1968

[11] MacInnes, D. (2009). Miyazaki’s Opposition to the Iraq War. Ghibli Blog. Available at: http://ghiblicon.blogspot.com/2009/07/miyazakis-opposition-to-iraq-war.html

[12] Levy, E., 1999. Cinema of outsiders. New York: New York University Press.

[sesiondemadrugada]

Douce (Claude Autant-Lara, 1943).