What a dull and pretensious comment (about Where The Chicken Got The Axe

or, we could all chime in with our six eggs.

for example, don't forget the shrine to balzac that antoine has in les 400 coups. and the dude in la peau douce who's a balzac lecturer. he was one of their favorite authors- i think chabrol slips him in somewhere too. probably to do with the scott-inspired romantic adventure, and the obsessive socail realism. and eric rohmer is a balzac prof in out 1, tho that's a bit later. and there's books in all of them. they loved books, those new wave frenchies. (as well, as moimoichan6 mentioned, as the us studio system).

rivette doesn't use jump cuts all that much. i struggle to think of one, in fact. nor does he use meaningless tracking shots. he had strong ideas about the tracking shot (see the argument over his discourse on a tracking shot in battle of algiers) and when he wanted "empty" shots, he tended to use a static camera. i use the past because although he was just as way out as godard, in his fashion, until his breakdown in 78 or so, his subsequent films really haven't been as exciting, but on the most superficial level, the simple length of his movies indicates his self-positioning outside an establishment cinema. rohmer is the most literary of the lot - he just filmed his own novellas initially - and his distinct style remains inimitably free from affect. if we want to look only at godard, truffaut, rohmer, chabrol and rivette, then there's only two sell-outs. throw in demy, varda, marker, resnais, robbe-grillet et al and i think we have rather a splendid alternative ouevre to that of the cinema du papa.

the stylistic quirks of the new wave were not only a way of showing off and doing things differently, but also a way of filming cheaply, and simply having fun with "cinema" (i like best the guy's mum keeling over in tirez sur le pianiste). however one feels about the aesthetic merits of la nouvelle vague and the commitment of its practitioners, it's probably best to understand it a bit better, mr reign. and if you really prefer the french cinema of the 1950's to '59+, then god help you.

plein d'essence, alphonse!

Hey big boy, is that a list of french directors in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?