American New Wave: Context and Breakdown

What's involved?

So what exactly is a new wave and what happens? Well during a great period of change within the country that then boosts the film industry that it then causes new ideas and concepts to be brought forward with new techniques. The precursor to all of them was by the French as they brought with them new concepts such as authors and camera styles that then become unique to the Director of the film. The actual name for these is auteur and camera stylo which we can link to a certain style of camera movement that the director then becomes known for.  It's almost similar to that of a creative signature that you'd see on a piece of art (which also got re-vamped in this wave but it's not overly relevant).

So how does this all link to the American New Wave, well if we look at techniques used then we start to see some greater influences such as the extended cut. This is where the scene or shot has the camera in a specific position with the emphasis on the scene for an extended period of time without cutting, this allows for more meaning to be built for characters yet it can then become part of a directors signature. Yet this is not one of the biggest parts of the American New Wave, that comes from the basis of the contents and context of what's happening at the time. How is this relevant? Well look at a lot of films from the period of the sixties to seventies what was going on, well you have the Vietnam war one of the worst for America as the actual cost of the time and resources that went into it for as long as it did had a large impact to the economy and the industry as a whole, next was the movement of the time which was a hippie/free-love type so it was about mind-bending drugs and altered perspectives which gave way to a lot of different camera moves and edits.

So what was made with the New American Wave? The first thing would be the topics contained within them such as MASH, now during the period of the sixties the cold war was raging and the war had gotten over to Vietnam and this is quite possibly one of the most unpopular wars within modern history because of the expense and the effect across both America and Vietnam. It gave rise to film creators making clear but changed messages about the war hence MASH, so you can see within the contexts certain films gain an extra layer of depth.

The story is that it follows a group during the Korean war and the effect that it has on the group that's a part of an American camp. If you follow actions of the characters some of it seems to be a minor comment on the insanity that the Americans faced during the war, which the film kind of follows as it goes along with the series f events that goes across the entire film until the end. If you look at the football game there's another metaphor within it even though both sides are American, there's one side which has the upper-hand almost endlessly (Vietnamese) then another side which seems to be at the underhand of everything no matter what they try (American) which reinforces the metaphor of the futility of the American campaign.

Another example to give to support the idea of depth would be two that relate in different ways, one is Easy Rider. In brief it's about a road trip between two friends that sort of hints at the idea of freedom and none conformity with the social norms of the time. Of course this was already well versed in America at the time because at the time it was brought from the death of Kennedy and then the government started to bring the hammer down on the drugs and other things that the movement brought.

This was then brought into the industry with films such as Easy Rider to highlight or better demonstrate in a more visual way the idea of free-love and drugs that went against the system standard.

However going back to the techniques used, there's an iconic one that was made popular with the French and that is the long cut. If you remember back to the Cemetery trip scene from a previous post that had a near three minute continuous cut of them just being sat in the graveyard with almost no dialogue exchange between characters which was a popular method of the French as they too had similar long stretches where there was either all diegetic or non-diegetic without any audio playing over. 

If you look back at the Cemetery scene it starts out calm and measured with an extended cut for almost the entire length of the clip which then gets changed to a lot of quick cuts and visuals to demonstrate the chaos of the drug but also to demonstrate the damage that it seems to do to the person/people taking them.

Earlier I mentioned that I was drawing from two films for this section on the idea of freedom and going against the system that this movement brought with it, the second is an earlier film form the 60's called Bonnie and Clyde.

When looking at this there's a good source within a book by Peter Biskind (Quote and name in research links post) that details not only what made them so popular with the themes of the time [this made them more relatable for the public] but also what was considered far enough to sink the film.

But as previously mentioned this was at the time of free-love and the need to go against traditional society as while the idea of them and the actual art behind them (dubbed a renaissance) and so this developed more yet they were still frowned upon if use the book as an example.

So how do these two films link, surely there's no way that a film about motorbikes and drugs could relate to another about bandits and robbers but the basic message is the same, it's about going against the system and the norms of the period and they're the almost poster models for it. 

The story follows a couple as they travel and go on the run for robberies of banks and other such things but it all comes to end when they get shot by a law pose at the end of the film, the reason why this is significant is because it goes against the norms of the time for these two people since maybe it would be calm and measured jobs like an office rather than going everywhere robbing and getting into trouble. During the sixties was also the women liberation movement and this movement reflects on it by giving the women the chance to go against what was deemed normal and show that you can do something huge and extraordinary even if the impact is negative or exposes the world.