I have pondered before whether the French New Wave was perhaps when Modernism hit film, after it hit literature in the 1920s…there still might be some things to support that, but having now seen a few more Jean-Luc Godard films, it’s clear he’s very much postmodern in his reappropriation of earlier film, hugely self-conscious techniques, etc. I’m working on a paper comparing Modernism to Postmodernism in the literary sphere, and the more I read about, the more I think that in a way, Modern vs. Postmodern is a mindset, almost…there were writers doing Postmodern things in the 1920s, and there were Modernist writers in the 1960s–certainly I’m having trouble believing that Postmodernism is as much a rejection of Modernism as Postmodernists would like us to think; it seems to me much more an extension and enlarging than a rejection. Anyway, here’s my new pondering: Is it possible that François Truffaut, with his detached yet subjective philosophical realism which owes more to the high art Italian Neorealism than it does to American B cinema, is the Modernist side of the New Wave and Godard, with his self-reflexivity and dependence on intertextual tropes from low-art crime film, is the Postmodern side? I’m not sure that wholly holds up, either…I’m about to rewatch Truffaut’s Shoot the Piano Player<\/i>, which is more heavily influenced by American genre film. This pondering is stemming from the differences between The 400 Blows<\/i> (Truffaut’s first and arguably most important film) and Breathless<\/i> (Godard’s equivalent masterpiece).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I have pondered before whether the French New Wave was perhaps when Modernism hit film, after it hit literature in the 1920s…there still might be some things to support that, but having now seen a few more Jean-Luc Godard films, it’s clear he’s very much postmodern in his reappropriation of earlier film, hugely self-conscious techniques, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[496,111,66,160,57],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":149,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2006\/11\/modernism-and-the-nouvelle-vague\/","url_meta":{"origin":476,"position":0},"title":"Modernism and the Nouvelle Vague…","author":"Jandy","date":"November 25, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"To ponder... The French New Wave is to cinema what the Modernist Novel is to fiction. \"In the novel, writers like Virginia Woolf and James Joyce tried to evoke 'inner speech' or 'stream of consciousness,' through associative and fragmented forms, omitting verbs, pronouns, connectives, and articles, and leaving sentences uncompleted.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Books and Reading"","block_context":{"text":"Books and Reading","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/books\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":119,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2006\/10\/word-and-words-and-modernism\/","url_meta":{"origin":476,"position":1},"title":"Word (and words) (and modernism)","author":"Jandy","date":"October 6, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Word's spell-checker doesn't like \"inclusivity.\" When I ask it for suggestions (thinking, well, maybe \"inclusiveness\" or something is more acceptable), it gives me \"exclusivity.\" I ask you, why would \"exclusivity\" be a word, but \"inclusivity\" not be? Webster Online likes it just fine, so I'm using it. But seriously. Word\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Books and Reading"","block_context":{"text":"Books and Reading","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/books\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2006\/02\/off-the-cuff-postmodernism\/","url_meta":{"origin":476,"position":2},"title":"Off-the-cuff Postmodernism","author":"Jandy","date":"February 27, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Call me crazy, but I didn't even notice that Pastor Meyers had gone overtime the past two Sunday evenings. That's because he was talking about postmodernism as part of the Cultural Discernment series. First off, I love all the Cultural Discernment evenings. Secondly, things that smack of philosophy and media\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Film"","block_context":{"text":"Film","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/film\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1137,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2008\/05\/bordwell-on-godard\/","url_meta":{"origin":476,"position":3},"title":"Bordwell on Godard","author":"Jandy","date":"May 6, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"David Bordwell has a whole chapter on Jean-Luc Godard in Narration in the Fiction Film; I almost returned the book to the library without reading it, but I'm so glad I didn't. It's great. And this quote is so right: Those who dislike Godard's films may well find the works'\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Film"","block_context":{"text":"Film","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/film\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1210,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2008\/07\/great-directors-catch-up-post\/","url_meta":{"origin":476,"position":4},"title":"Great Directors: Catch-Up Post","author":"Jandy","date":"July 22, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"I admit to choosing who gets to be a \"great director\" with some level of arbitrariness. Generally, it'll be directors whose oevre I'm trying to work through, thus reviews\/reactions in this category will end up being something of a series as I watch more and more films by a given\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Film"","block_context":{"text":"Film","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/film\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":513,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2007\/07\/jean-luc-godard-a-course-in-cinema\/","url_meta":{"origin":476,"position":5},"title":"Jean-Luc Godard – a course in cinema","author":"Jandy","date":"July 11, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"I've still only seen a small percentage of Jean-Luc Godard's total number of films, which I regard as a good thing, because it means I will have many future wonderful Godard film experiences. If you'd asked me two months ago whether Fran\u00e7ois Truffaut or Jean-Luc Godard were the better filmmaker\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Film"","block_context":{"text":"Film","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/film\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=476"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}