The pretty preview of Richard Linklater by Godard

Richard Linklater’s official synopsis New wave Describes him as “the history of the manufacture of God Breathlesstold in the style and the spirit in which Godard made Breathless.“”

It is catchy terrain but also a little misleading. Godard’s film in 1960 broke all kinds of narrative and stylistic conventions, writing its own rules on what a film could do and open the way to modern cinema as we know it. The charming and well documented of Linklater is much more traditional: told in a linear way, turned with a large -scale crew, featuring actors who look like and act like the famous people they play, based on tons of VFX plans to recreate Paris at the time, it’s far from Godard style. And yet, he does an impressive work capturing the mind of man at work, stressing what it took – and often did not take – to assemble his revolutionary film.

No stranger to experience, Linklater has tried all kinds of genres throughout his career, his breakthrough 1990 Indie Lazy to animated features as A dark scanner Or Waking; Hollywood comedies like Rock school to a project like ChildhoodPulled over a decade with the same actors as they have gradually aged. The director born in Houston has always played with a form of film – although in a way adhering to more classic narrative modes – it is therefore not entirely surprising that it was sufficiently fascinated by the Godard process to make an entire film on this subject.

Fistoids concerning Breathless Pre-production and chaotic filming of 20 days, with cameos by one who is who are members of New Wave, New wave Seems intended for viewers who immediately know what its title means. In other words, it is a film buff from start to finish – a creation of who does not make much sense for anyone who has not seen the original film. But it is also windy and relatively entertaining, never taking too seriously while highlighting an extremely serious moment in the history of cinema.

Linklater does not imitate Godard here, although he gives us a good idea of ​​what the director – played by the newcomer Guillaume Marbeck, who has a strange resemblance to the man himself – could have been with. In a word, Godard was impossible, refusing to write a real script, one day calling him on the set when he lacked ideas, eating respect for the laws of film continuity and putting himself in combat at some point with his exasperated producer, George de Beauregard (Bruno Dreyfürst).

However, he was also full of spirit, wise, completely the charmer and obsessed with the manufacture of something that had never been done before. The opening of New wave Godard watch, who was just shy 30 years old, dragging behind fellow Cinema notebooks The Truffaut Critics (Adrien Rouyard), Claude Chabrol (Antoine Besson), Jacques Rivette (Jonas Marmy) and Eric Rohmer (Côme Thieulin), who had all already directed their first characteristic. “The best way to criticize a film is to make one”, a frustrated Godard quips someone during a party, using one of the many JLG aphorisms that are enigning a well -documented scenario (written by Holly Gent, Vince Palmo, Michèle Halberstadt and Laetitia Masson).

Avoid the crest of the new wave after the double successes of Truffaut The 400 strokes And Chabrol The beautiful SergeGodard manages to convince of Beauregard to support an independent low -budget functionality (made for today’s equivalent of $ 77,000) on the basis of a new on a gangster and his girlfriend. The director throws the amateur boxer Jean-Paul Belmondo (Aubry Dullin, another strange resemblance) to play male lead and the Hollywood starlet Jean Seberg (Zoey Deutch, convincing like a fish out of the water) to play his American girlfriend. A skeletal crew is assembled for filming, including the former war camera Raoul Coutard (Matthieu Penchinat) and the cunning deputy director Pierre Rissient (Benjamin Clery).

The rest of New wave offer a daily report of what happened on the Breathless To fix yourself, and it may surprise those who have never read anything about the history of the film. Since there was only one treatment (co-written with Truffaut), Godard made scenes by advancing, pulling without sound so that the actors can overcome themselves. He rarely made more than one or two taken and preferred to rush through the sequences, improvise and stop suddenly when he was not inspired. Sometimes the actors and the team spent all day hanging around in a cafe in Montparnasse while Godard scribbled ideas on towels.

Manufacturing Breathless It looks like an amateur hour, which is the impassive coutard and some of the other crew members seem to think. A very skeptical seberg does its best to happen in the middle of all chaos, while Belmondo takes place with the punches and has a good time. And yet, from the first day, Godard seems so certain of what he thinks and wants – “Reality is not continuity!”, He went to the Girl Script (Pauline Belle) when she complains about a poorly placed accessory – that he earns most of her casting and his crew.

It also helps that he is a disarming guy capable of making jokes and taking them. Linklater is intelligently concentrated on the lighter side of a director known for his heavy works which are at the top of the Pyramid of Arthouse, while in reality, Godard was often half actor and half-philosopher. This does not mean that he blows the importance of making his first feature film, and even when he experiences backhands, he keeps his eyes on the price (“the disappointments are temporary, the film is forever,” he said with total insurance). If the budding directors remove something New waveIt is that Godard had an idea of ​​where he wanted to go but did not know how he would get there. Its opening even to the possibility is what made its films so original.

Linklater’s film is less innovative than everything I have made, but it offers a rare and informed inner look at a pivotal moment not only from the director’s career, but from the history of the film in general. With all the heavy goods vehicles of the new wave, New wave Make room for less known characters like Rissient or Suzanne Schiffman (Jodie Ruth Forest), who continued to co-write scripts with Truffaut and Rivette. And that underlines how the movement was not out of nowhere, but was generated by a handful of experienced authors – Jean -Pierre Melville (Tom November), Roberto Rosselini (Laurent Mothe) and Robert Bresson (Aurélien Lorgnier) – who influenced Godard and his cohorts.

The research takes place in the authentic black and white photography of David Chambille, which gives the impression that the action was filmed on the stock of film in 1959. Katia Wyszkop sets recreate interiors of Paris of the time, including the original Notebooks offices and various cafes throughout the city. As for the exteriors, 300 shots required an extended VFX to bring us back to the period, especially for the famous scenes of Breathless which were Lensés on a Bourré Champs-Elysées.

It is an impressive package that certainly required more money and labor than Godard’s first feature, while, ironically, the moral of this film is that a big budget and the crew are not necessary to do something great. Linklater celebrates JLG’s audacity even if he has directed something more conventional (although his credit, he directed it almost entirely in French).

If New wave is not exactly BreathlessIt’s a loving tribute in the crazy way Breathless was made – at the time when you could shoot films quickly, cheap and out of control, and change cinema in the process.