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    Vivi Montes
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    © All Rights Reserved
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    12 views4 pages

    Roud - Sight and Sound

    Uploaded by

    Vivi Montes

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF or read online from Scribd
    Flag for inappropriate content
    of 4
    in Britany, Varda in Séte, near Montpellier, Marker, God- knows-where. They al live in Paris on the lft bank of the Seine Montparnasse, Alksia, Val de Grice. With one or two exceptions their films are all set outside of Paris. They all began to make films long before the new wave explosion of 1988: Marker in 1983, Varda in 1984, Resnais in 1948. All have made documentaries —and Marker has made only docu: mentaries. These, then, are some of the faets. What conclu sions can be drawn from them? The Left Bank, asthe saying goes, isnot so much an area as a state of mind. It implies a high degree of involvement in literature and the plastic arts. It implies a fondness for a kind of bohemian life, and an impatience with the conformity of the Right Bank. A centre of the avant-garde and a cosmopolitan refuge since the turn of the century, it has also traditionally been frequented by the politically left. The Dome was not only a rendezvous for Picasso, Joyce and Hemingway ; Trotsky and Lenin were also habitus. This political, artistic and social climate is what presumably attracted all three artists to this neighbourhood; itis also reflected in their work. Ina recent interview, Roger Leenhardt characterises the Cahiers fa eople who discovered Shakespeare through Orson Welles. This may be an exaggera- tion, but there is no mistaking the wider cultural background and broader artistic interests of the Left Bank group. One has only to compare the writers Resnais has chosen as his colla- borators (Robbe-Grillet, Duras, Cayrol) with the favourites of, err: The “Cis unit: Agnds Varda in fron of camera next to Corinne Marchand. Lighting cameraman Reber onthe extreme Ng. ‘ABOVE: Portrait ofthe director ot 0 young cat. Marker replies ‘0 a ‘aquest fr phtoprophe of himself by tending pctares of ate thi one wor token by Resnaie fant: “Cabo Sir Smperors came #9 rela Here the wsboceo kings and sugarcane pre Casto Cuba some of the Cahiers group (Roger Vailland, Frangoise Sagan, and worse). Then, too, the fact that the Left Bank group have come to the cinema steeped in the tradition of the avant-garde and the literary and artistic preoccupations of recent years, hhas given them a greater interest in the problems of form. The Godard-Truffaut group, on the other hand, have grown up with the cinema. They’ fel that its essence is in its very rav ness, its direct communication of experience—like Hitchcock, like Hawks. Whether this split is due to the difference in ages, whether the Godard-Truffaut group (Who are also, let us remember, hostile to Antonioni) is more “cinematie” or more modern’, is not for us to say. But the fact remains that ther is a basic difference in conception; a difference that has often been covered up by the log-rolling so characteristic of the ‘young French cinema, Perhaps because of their age-group, Marker, Varda and Resnais also seem to have inherited the legacy of the Thirties assionate concern about political and social problems and ‘conviction that these problems have their place in the realm Of art. They are, it seems to me, all humanists, although they ‘might very well quarrel with the term, In an open letter to Armand Gatti (director of L’Bnclos) printed at the end of his book Coréennes, Marker excuses, himself for not having treated in the book the Great Problems ‘There are enough people doing that already, he tells Gatt just refer to your daily newspaper. It is not my job, he Continues, to distribute praise and blame, nor to give lessons. ‘There are plenty of people to do that, too. Marker (and Resnais, and Varda) do not believe that’ the aim of artis 10 teach lessons, nor necessarily to draw conclusions. But unlike ‘Truffaut, [would say, and Goda problems and emotions should be seen in a social context. Resnais’ earlier documentaries (Guernica, Nuit et Broulllard ‘and Les Statues Meurent whieh was co-directed by Marker) all deal more or less directly, if in & highly personal manner, with political and social issues. So, indeed, do all of Marke London (with the exception of Description ofa Strugele), ‘because he is perhaps the collective conscience, the common,

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