Paris vu par...
1965 Comedy / Drama
Credits
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Summary
Six films, six directors, six views of Paris...
Review
By the mid-1960s, there were signs that the French New Wave had all but
run its course. Its leading lights – François Truffaut,
Jean-Luc Godard, Jacques Rivette and Claude Chabrol, had each suffered
major box office failures in the preceding years and it looked as if
their innovative approach to filmmaking had exhausted its novelty
value. Producer Barbet Schroeder conceived Paris vu par... as a means of
promoting, if not re-launching, the French New Wave, at a time when La
Nouvelle Vague was beginning to look distinctly passée.Schroeder’s instinct was (as was the case many times in his career as a director and independent film producer) proven to be correct. Paris vu par..., a series of six short films each set in a different area of Paris, evokes perfectly the essence of the French New Wave, from six quite different perspectives. It gives us the caustic anti-bourgeois humour of Chabrol, the quirky anarchy and misogyny of Godard, a witty moral tale from Rohmer, and three engaging short films from some lesser known but nonetheless influential figures of the French New Wave: Jean Douchet, Jean-Daniel Pollet and Jean Rouch. Whilst the six films are quite different in style, together they form a remarkably coherent whole, representing a style of cinema that is still fresh and engaging more than forty years after they were made. Each film reflects the personality and approach of its creator and offers a different take not just on the French New Wave but also on Paris and its diverse inhabitants. The first film – directed by Jean Douchet – is closest to what most people would recognise as a Nouvelle Vague film: an ironic and witty portrait of young love in the Latin Quarter, home to the city’s Sartre-quoting, Galloise-smoking intelligentsia. This is probably the best of the six films, although Chabrol’s offering (in which the director appears alongside his then wife, Stéphane Audran, looking like the married couple from Hell) is the most memorable, if only for its dark humour and a death scene which is simultaneously shocking and hilarious. It would be pushing it to say that Paris vu par... single-handedly reversed the declining fortunes of the French New Wave. However, it is true that in the years following the making of this film, all of the major Nouvelle Vague directors discovered a new lease of life and would continue to have a major impact on French cinema. Four decades on, Chabrol, Godard, Rivette and Rohmer, are still making films that attract worldwide interest and make healthy financial returns, showing that, far from being dead, the French New Wave is still very much alive and kicking. © James Travers 2008 Write a review for this film... User Comments
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