Spoilers herein.
Start with the notion that film has life. Film life has its own cosmology and energy that adapts and sustains.
Stripped of all the unnecessary bumph, this is the notion behind the New Wave, the Old New Wave that is. At first, they mistook this life for real life, or something like it. So they developed an elaborate, Italian-inspired theory of truth, meaning that the camera sees and conveys truth in real life, presented journalistically. Or, as they would hope, naturalistically.
Truffault struggled with this limit in his writing and then filmmaking, Godard as well -- each coming to a different solution. Truffault's new insight was to rediscover the notion of reflexive layers, first developed by Welles in "Kane." This is his essay on his discovery and so far as the placement of narrative was far more influential than anything of Welles.
The notion of journalistic truth was out, but the core belief of film AS life stayed. Not depicting or discovering life, but creating it. There is a relationship between ordinary life and film life, so why not make a film with precisely those two worlds? Why not add another layer: real, real life.
So we have the real real world which consists of director Truffault and a collection of actors. We have the film real world where they play a director and actors, and we have the film film world of the movie being made. Three levels. This follows what I call Ted's law: the level of abstraction between level 1 and 2 is precisely the same and in the same direction as between levels 2 and 3.
Welles used the notion of constructed realities for his layers, goofed with the camera and ran through the whole menu of narrative devices. Truffault discards the last two and transforms the first: instead of film as an artificial, constructed life, it has its own sort of life that captures people. Pinter would take this step from "Kane" to "Day" the next step with "French Lieutenant's Woman" where each life (of film and "reality") partially constructs the other, and blessing each with greater power. (Almodovar attempts the next step in the same direction with "Tie Me Up" and "Talk to Her.")
Much is made by others of the humanity of the story and the characters, but that is all incidental. Some people are magic, and so they are in film. It is a matter of the magic, not of the people. As a side observation, all the true magicians here are women and the level of their magic is denoted by the redness of their hair. The minor plot points deal with different foibles of that magic, as if it were an "8 1/2" focused on women.
Three scenes particularly stand out for me:
-- the much celebrated scene where Truffault sets Julie's hands (but watch the movement of Truffault's hands)
-- the non-magical kitty who can't cross boundaries into the next world and is replaced with the "set cat" by our ubermagical Joellne
-- the children playing a card game where everyone in the film (the real film) is a card operating under clear rules
The dream sequence borrowed from Bergman was also a nice, if esoteric touch.
Watch this. It changed everything that followed.
Ted's Evaluation -- 4 of 3: Every cineliterate person should experience this.
Start with the notion that film has life. Film life has its own cosmology and energy that adapts and sustains.
Stripped of all the unnecessary bumph, this is the notion behind the New Wave, the Old New Wave that is. At first, they mistook this life for real life, or something like it. So they developed an elaborate, Italian-inspired theory of truth, meaning that the camera sees and conveys truth in real life, presented journalistically. Or, as they would hope, naturalistically.
Truffault struggled with this limit in his writing and then filmmaking, Godard as well -- each coming to a different solution. Truffault's new insight was to rediscover the notion of reflexive layers, first developed by Welles in "Kane." This is his essay on his discovery and so far as the placement of narrative was far more influential than anything of Welles.
The notion of journalistic truth was out, but the core belief of film AS life stayed. Not depicting or discovering life, but creating it. There is a relationship between ordinary life and film life, so why not make a film with precisely those two worlds? Why not add another layer: real, real life.
So we have the real real world which consists of director Truffault and a collection of actors. We have the film real world where they play a director and actors, and we have the film film world of the movie being made. Three levels. This follows what I call Ted's law: the level of abstraction between level 1 and 2 is precisely the same and in the same direction as between levels 2 and 3.
Welles used the notion of constructed realities for his layers, goofed with the camera and ran through the whole menu of narrative devices. Truffault discards the last two and transforms the first: instead of film as an artificial, constructed life, it has its own sort of life that captures people. Pinter would take this step from "Kane" to "Day" the next step with "French Lieutenant's Woman" where each life (of film and "reality") partially constructs the other, and blessing each with greater power. (Almodovar attempts the next step in the same direction with "Tie Me Up" and "Talk to Her.")
Much is made by others of the humanity of the story and the characters, but that is all incidental. Some people are magic, and so they are in film. It is a matter of the magic, not of the people. As a side observation, all the true magicians here are women and the level of their magic is denoted by the redness of their hair. The minor plot points deal with different foibles of that magic, as if it were an "8 1/2" focused on women.
Three scenes particularly stand out for me:
-- the much celebrated scene where Truffault sets Julie's hands (but watch the movement of Truffault's hands)
-- the non-magical kitty who can't cross boundaries into the next world and is replaced with the "set cat" by our ubermagical Joellne
-- the children playing a card game where everyone in the film (the real film) is a card operating under clear rules
The dream sequence borrowed from Bergman was also a nice, if esoteric touch.
Watch this. It changed everything that followed.
Ted's Evaluation -- 4 of 3: Every cineliterate person should experience this.