New Wave films in New Wave films

New Wave films in New Wave films

Les Mauvaises Fréquentations (Jean Eustache 1963)

This is a post about mentions of New Wave films in other New Wave films.

In his 1956 short Les Mistons Truffaut brings his characters to the cinema, where they are seen watching Rivette's Le Coup de berger, from the same year:

Le Coup du berger in Les Mistons

It seems unfeasible that this film would be playing alongside the main feature we see announced outside the cinema, Ihr Leibregiment - 'La Princesse et le Capitaine' - a romantic comedy from West Germany:

La Princesse et le Capitaine in Les Mistons

Unfeasible but not impossible. The next time Truffaut has a Rivette film playing in one of his own, Les 400 coups (1959), it is quite impossible. Famously, the Doinel family go for a night out at the Gaumont Palace to see Rivette's Paris nous appartient, a film which wouldn't be finished for almost two years. The film actually playing at the Gaumont Palace is Léo Joannon's Tant d'amour perdu (1958), an old school film that, curiously but coincidentally, has as second female lead Anne Doat, who had been second female lead in Le Coup du berger:

Tant d'amour perdu in Les 400 coups

In 1957 Truffaut himself was referenced in a novel way by another New Wave filmmaker. In Godard's Tous les garçons s'appellent Patrick, a conversation between two protagonists at a café terrace is overheard by a man reading the weekly journal Arts (15 May 1957), on the front page of which is Truffaut's polemical essay attacking the 'false legends' of French cinema:

Tous les garçons s'appellent Patrick, or Charlotte et Véronique

The still on the journal's front page is from Fellini's Nights of Cabiria and is unconnected to the Truffaut essay. I would, however, like to know the connection between the man reading the journal and the French New Wave c. 1957. He looks familiar but I can't put a name to him:

Any suggestions (here) would be much appreciated.

Truffaut's films are much more frequently cited than his essays. He sets the pattern himself in his sequel to Les 400 coups, where Antoine Doinel moves into a new hotel room and puts on the wall a poster of himself from the earlier film:

Les 400 coups in Antoine et Colette

Four years later, in Godard's Masculin Féminin, a character played by the same actor - Jean-Pierre Léaud - pretends to be 'General Doinel' in order to get a military car to come collect him and his girlfriend. (She doesn't believe him when he says he's stolen a car, saying that only men like Pierrot le fou did that sort of thing.)

The same year, in Jean Eustache's Le Père Noël a les yeux bleus, Léaud looks at a poster of himself in Les 400 coups outside a cinema:

Pinocchio & Les 400 coups in Le Père Noël a les yeux bleus

Before that, Jacques Doniol-Valcroze had shown his film-producer protagonist in La Dénonciation (1962) with a still from Les 400 coups on his office wall:

Les 400 coups in La Dénonciation

In that office he also has a poster for Jean Rouch's La Pyramide humaine (1961), a film produced by Pierre Braunberger, the producer of La Dénonciation:

La Pyramide humaine in La Dénonciation

That is Nicole Berger, stepdaughter to Braunberger and a star of Truffaut's Tirez sur le pianiste (1960), also produced by Braunberger. Perhaps this is Braunberger's office, but his office is recorded as the location for the police station in Godard's Vivre sa vie - produced by Braunberger in 1962 - and the two offices don't look much alike. In the office in Vivre sa vie, however, there is a curious citation of Tirez sur le pianiste. Behind the policeman at the typewriter is a photograph:

Vivre sa vie

This must be related somehow to Truffaut's film, because it shows a scaled down version of the poster of poses that draw the attention of that film's timid protagonist:

Tirez sur le pianiste

The photograph in the police station is a very oblique reference to Truffaut's Tirez sur le pianiste. More direct is the reference in Vivre sa vie to Truffaut's Jules et Jim (1962):

Jules et Jim in Vivre sa vie

In Une femme est une f emme (1961),Godard had already mentioned Jules et Jim - while it was still in production. Jeanne Moreau has a cameo role and is asked by Belmondo 'How's it going with Jules and Jim?':

Jules et Jim in Une femme est une femme

Moreau's answer is 'Moderato...', evoking the para-New Wave film she and Belmondo had appeared in together, Peter Brook's Moderato cantabile (1960).

A poster for Une femme est une femme appears in a café in Vivre sa vie:

L'Amérique insolite & Une femme est une femme in Vivre sa vie

The poster to the left is for François Reichenbach's L'Amérique insolite (1960) - another Braunberger production. The poster in the middle is for Kon Ichikawa's 1959 film Nobi (Fires on the Plain) - my thanks to Yiwen Luo for the identification.

Later in Vivre sa vie Karina is standing in front of posters for Robert Rossen's The Hustler (1961), Melville Shavelson's On the Double (1961) and Otto Preminger's Exodus (1960). In the top left corner can just be seen the edge of a poster for Tire au flanc '62, directed by Claude de Givray with help from Truffaut:

Like Vivre sa vie, Une femme est une femme enjoys referencing other New Wave films. Earlier Belmondo had said he wanted to get to the café because they were showing A bout de souffle on tv. I've checked the schedules as thoroughly as I could and it doesn't look like A bout de souffle was on tv at any point around then - indeed I don't think it could have been, since three years had to pass before a a film could be shown on television.

Later we see a television in a shop window that is showing Varda's L'Opéra Mouffe (1958), for which three years had passed, but it does seem an unlikely televisual offering, and more like a hommage to a friend:

L'Opéra Mouffe in Une femme est une femme

Une femme est une femme also references Tirez sur le pianiste, at some length. Angela meets her friend and asks what she is reading. The friend mimes the title and Angela guesses correctly, adding that she has seen the film - 'Aznavour is brilliant':

Tirez sur le pianiste in Une femme est une femme

Angela's friend is played by Marie Dubois, star of Tirez sur le pianiste, alongside Charles Aznavour. Later still we see a jukebox playing an Aznavour record, 'Tu te laisses aller', with the E.P.'s cover displayed, next to the cover of the E.P. from Tirez sur le pianiste:

Tirez sur le pianiste in Une femme est une femme

Une femme est une femme includes a cameo from Catherine Demongeot, star of Louis Malle's para-New Wave Zazie dans le métro (1960), and sets her cameo in a bookshop showing a copy of home cinema magazine Le Cinéma chez soi, with Catherine Demongeot on the cover:

Zazie dans le métro in Une femme est une femme

These are just gags, as befits the comic mode of Une femme est une femme. In the not-at-all comic Une femme mariée (1964), Godard refers to a Truffaut film by inserting a close-up of a magazine article (in Elle, I think) on La Peau douce, establishing a strong and serious intertextual connection between their two films - the one adultery-centred film as a riposte to the other:

La Peau douce in Une femme mariée

La Peau douce appears again, via a Godardian connection of sorts, in Jean Aurel's De l'amour (1964). The protagonist makes home-movies of his lovers, including, here, Anna Karina in front of a poster for Truffaut's film:

La Peau douce in De l'amour

In Godard's Bande à part (1964), Karina's 'peau douce' - her soft skin - is mentioned, another drop of the name of Truffaut's film.

Another of Godard's protagonists in this film whistles the theme from Jacques Demy's Les Parapluies de Cherbourg (1964), music by Michel Legrand, who also wrote the music for Bande à part.

I detect a similar, if more obscure, reference when Odile brings fresh meat to a nearby circus tiger - Claude Chabrol's upcoming film was Le Tigre aime la chair fraîche (The tiger likes fresh meat'):

Le Tigre aime la chair fraîche in Bande à part

Chabrol's film has a murderous dwarf called Jean-Luc, apparently in homage to Godard (who was not short, but was shorter than Chabrol):

Le Tigre aime la chair fraîche

This same actor plays another murderous dwarf the following year in Godard's Pierrot le fou, a memory of Chabrol's film, and perhaps of the name Jean-Luc - Marianne, played by Godard's estranged wife Karina - kills the dwarf with those scissors:

Pierrot le fou

A scene at the cinema in Pierrot le fou shows us Belmondo looking at his co-star from five years before, Jean Seberg, acting in the sketch Godard made for the film Les Plus Belles Escroqueries du monde (1964) - the young man in front of Belmondo is Jean-Pierre Léaud, again:

Pierrot le fou

Le Grand Escroc in Pierrot le fou

Earlier, a poster for Godard's Le Petit Soldat (1960) had made a connection between the politics of the two films, and grounded the later staging in Pierrot le fou of the same torture method used in the earlier film:

Le Petit Soldat in Pierrot le fou

Le Petit Soldat

Pierrot le fou

Two years earlier, in Les Mauvaises Fréquentations, Jean Eustache had pointed to Le Petit Soldat more discretely, putting a still from the film on the wall in his protagonist's room, as well as a postcard of a painting by Paul Klee that had been discussed at length in Godard's film:

Le Petit Soldat in Les Mauvaises Fréquentations

Le Petit Soldat

Klee's woher? wo? wohin? in Les Mauvaises Fréquentations

Klee's woher? wo? wohin? in Le Petit Soldat

Le Petit soldat will have a later intertextual career through quotations in Bertolucci's The Conformist, Tarantino's Pulp Fiction, Denis's Beau travail and her L'Intrus. Almost every one of Godard's sixties films gets referenced by someone, somewhere.

Jacques Demy has his protagonist in Lola (1960) speak of his friend Michel Poiccard - protagonist of A bout de souffle - who was gunned down by the police. More obliquely, Alain Cavalier's protagonist in Le Combat dans l'île (1963) goes to the same hotel that features in A bout de souffle, and to the same room, no. 12:

A bout de souffle in Le Combat dans l'île

In Fahrenheit 451 (1966) Truffaut shows a burning copy of Cahiers du Cinéma, with Jean Seberg in that hotel room on the cover:

A bout de souffle in Fahrenheit 451

Post-New Wave, Truffaut shows the character he plays in La Nuit américaine (1973) receiving a parcel of studies of directors: Bunuel, Dreyer, Lubitsch, Bergman, Hitchcock, Rossellini, Hawks... Among these, between Bergman and Hitchcock, is a collection of essays on Godard, with Macha Méril in Une femme mariée on the cover:

Godard himself quotes Vivre sa vie twice, firstly in Le Mépris, where an Italian poster for the film can be seen alongside posters for films by Hitchcock, Hawks and Rossellini:

Hatari, Vivre sa vie, Vanina Vanini & Psycho in Le Mépris

Hatari & Vivre sa vie in Le Mépris

In Deux ou trois choses que je sais d'elle (1966), an image from Vivre sa vie appears alongside posters for intercontinental airlines:

Vivre sa vie in Deux ou trois choses que je sais d'elle

The conection made between two films about prostitution is an obvious one, but the image that makes the connection is very strange. It can't be a film poster, since there are no words. It looks like a painting or drawing done from the film, but the original image has been reversed:

Vivre sa vie

Another New Wave connection in Deux ou trois choses is made more conventionally, with a view of the poster for Alain Resnais's Muriel (1963):

Muriel in Deux ou trois choses que je sais d'elle

Muriel had already been playing the New Wave game of inter-reference: the theme music from Tirez sur le pianiste can be heard for a moment in Resnais's film. That seems to me like a riposte to Braunberger, since a respectful pastiche of Resnais's L'Année dernière à Marienbad had served as the film-within-the-film in the Braunberger-produced La Dénonciation:

La Dénonciation

Godard had already referenced Resnais in his debut feature A bout de souffle, with a view of a cinema playing Hiroshima, mon amour (1959), supported by Varda's Du côté de la côte (1958):

Hiroshima mon amour & Du côté de la côte in A bout de souffle

A poster for Hiroshima, mon amour can also be seen, six years later, in Eric Rohmer's Une étudiante aujourd'hui:

This is the only reference to a New Wave film that I have so far found in a New Wave film by Rohmer.

Referencing films by established New Wave filmmakers would become a device used by debutants to affiliate themselves with their older peers. Robert Enrico has his protagonist in La Belle Vie (1963) quote Rivette and exclaim that 'Paris belongs to us now'. Guy Gilles's L'Amour à la mer (1963) has a cameo by Truffaut's Jean-Pierre Léaud (see here, section 3), and shows a cinema playing Godard's Le Mépris:

Le Mépris in L'Amour à la mer

Gilles also includes posters for Louis Malle's Le Feu follet and Michel Drach's Amélie ou le temps d'aimer (1961), both para-New Wave films:

Amélie & Le Feu follet in L'Amour à la mer

Une fille et des fusils (1965), Claude Lelouch's second complete feature, is a homage to New Wave cinephilia that verges on the parodic. It shows one of its would-be criminals looking at an advertisement for the film that served as its principal model, Godard's Bande à part:

Bande à part in Une fille et des fusils

Lelouch's awful film is not really a good way to end this overview of New Wave inter-referentiality. A further post will collect New Wave references to non-New Wave films, from famous instances such as Preminger's Whirlpool in A bout de souffle to minor mentions like that of Renoir's On purge bébé in Eustache's la Maman et la Putain (1973) - the last New Wave film.

In the meantime, this post finishes with four mentions of French New Wave films by non-French filmmakers in the 60s:

- Une femme est une femme in Bernardo Bertolucci's Primo della rivoluzione ['Before the Revolution'] (Italy 1964):

Une femme est une femme in Before the Revolution

- Les 400 coups in Istvan Szabo's Almodozasok kora ['The Age of Illusion'] (Hungary 1964):

Les 400 coups in The Age of Illusion

- Jules et Jim in Jose Luis Ibanez's Las dos Elenas ['The Two Helens'] (Mexico 1965):

Jules et Jim in Las dos Elenas

Truffaut in Las dos Elenas

Jules et Jim in Las dos Elenas

This same E.P. cover can be seen in Fassbinder's Bande à part-style homage to the New Wave, Das kleine chaos (1966). In the same room is a still from Vivre sa vie and a poster for Rohmer's le Signe du Lion (1959):

Jules et Jim in Das kleine chaos

Vivre sa vie & White Heat & Montherlant's novel Les Jeunes Filles in Das kleine chaos

Le Signe du Lion in Das kleine chaos

Brazilian Rogério Sganzeria has one of his protagonists contemplate a poster for Godard's Alphaville in his 1966 film Documentario:

Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski's Belgian film Le Départ (1967) uses the cinematographer Willy Kurant, who shot Godard's Masculin Féminin, as well as two cast members from that film, Catherine-Isabelle Duport and Jean-Pierre Léaud. The film opens with Léaud pulling a jumper over his head, quoting in the process the image of himself from Les 400 coups that Léaud puts on his wall in 'Antoine et Colette':

Antoine et Colette

Le Départ

Les 400 coups

For related posts, see New Wave cameos and Cahiers du Cinéma on screen.