Brayden Benham

Thea 1300 Final Assignment

Submitted to: Faith-Anne Hine

April, 9, 2009

There is no question that the influence of the French New Wave has been

substantial. The seminal film of this movement is most often cited as Jean-Luc

Godard's Breathless (1960) (The French, 128). Countless directors since the French

New Wave's conception and up to the present day regard Godard, The New Wave

and Breathless as having a major influence (The French, 129). Though the

movement is generally regarded to have ended around 1964, the methods that

defined the New Wave have been assimilated into a variety of subsequent cinematic

movements. The Richard Linklater film Slacker (1991) was heavily influenced by

Breathless and the New Wave and itself played a large role in the emerging

American independent filmmaking movement of the early nineties.

Breathless has been described as the best example of French New Wave

cinema. This is because of its comprehensive display of the defining methods of the

movement. It includes innovative camera work, unconventional editing, an

awareness of itself as a film, and challenges of conventional narrative structure.

Most importantly it is the personal vision of its director. This is the defining point of

the New Wave: the ideal of the “Auteur” director (The French, 130). In the film

Godard presents a world formed by his subjective interest. He makes references to

Hollywood through the Protagonists mimicry of Humphrey Bogart and deals with

themes that would continue through his body of work (masculinity and femininity,

individual freedom, communication and morality). He also puts himself in the film

along with friends of his like Jean-Pierre Melville as the novelist being interviewed.

In this way the film is formed by the personal vision of its director.

Slacker carries on Godard's New Wave concept of the tracking shot as a

"question of morality" (Mayne, 133). For conventional Hollywood films the tracking

shot was no more than a simple narrative device employed for the necessary

amount of time needed to show action. But for Godard the length of a tracking shot

had a much deeper meaning. For him it involved the audience’s personal

relationship with the characters on the screen. Very long tracking begin with a sense

of immediacy because of the movement involved, but the longer they are dragged

out the more they become a study of the characters, and a question the extent to

which the audience is willing to observe the subject or subjects involved. In the

scene of Breathless where Poiccard (Jean-Paul Belmondo) walks with Patricia (Jean

Seberg) who is selling newspapers we are given an example of this. The length of the

tracking shot does not immediately serve the plot, although Poiccard has the basic

goal of getting her to come to Rome with him the conversation goes off in a series of

unrelated digressions: Patricia asks Poiccard the meaning of "bummer" and

"horoscope" and they shoot random interjections at each other like "why don't you

ever wear a bra?" All in all the conversation is more realistic then conventional

Hollywood dialogue and other mainstream film. When the dialogue is not serving

the plot we are given a deeper look at the psyche of the characters through how they

interact. Here we see Poiccard as a naive but determined man with little time for

Patricia’s actual feelings but plenty of time to objectify and attempt to posses her.

The length of the tracking shot gives us enough time to understand these qualities in

him and as it progresses it makes us ask what kind of person the protagonist is: is he

good or bad, are we sympathetic towards him, if so what does that say about us? In

this sense the tracking shot is a question of morality. This emphasis on the tracking

shot can be seen in the final scene of the Italian Neo-Realist classic The Bicycle Thief

(1947) and was later employed and advanced by the French New Wave filmmakers

such as in the final scene of Truffaults 400 Blows (1959) and in Agnes Varda's Cleo

from 5 to 7 (1962).

Richard Linklater carries this French New Wave ideal of the tracking shot on

in Slacker. The film consists of a series of loosely related vignettes shown through

fluent panning and tracking shots which change focus from character to character.

There are countless shots in the film that provoke a moral reaction in the viewer for

being either to short or to long. There are about one hundred characters in the film

and since most of them fall into the broad “slacker” category we are given a plethora

of degraded characters who range from apathetic, to eccentric, to crazy, and to just

plain pathetic. Te length of the tracking shots and continuous shots vary from

character to character and there is no overarching flow to the length of time each

vignette is given. Sometimes a tracking shot will follow one group of characters for a

little while and just when their story seems to be getting interesting another

character or group of characters will grab the cameras attention and the audience

will then have to adjust to another story. It can be jarring at times but this is the

desired effect of the director who does it in order to present a voyeuristic vision. But

there is a limit to this voyeurism in that the director is the one controlling the

situations that the audience becomes a part of. The viewer does not get to choose

when they have had enough of a scene or set of characters, and in this way the

voyeurism is turned back on the viewers who thereby question their own moral

limits.

Slacker broadens the French New Wave concept of the tracking shot as a

question of morality, but it has much more in common with the movement than just

this one aspect. It retains a slice-of-life feel, reminiscent of Truffault's 400 Blows,

Breathless, and the Italian Neo-realist films of De Sica and Rossellini, which heavily

influenced the New Wave movement (The French, 142). Much like the Italian Neo-

Realists Godard, Truffault and other New Wave directors would cast non-actors in

large roles in order to create a sense of reality. Similarly there are no big name

actors in Slacker, they are all normal people right off the street, which makes the

acting fairly bland and straight forward giving the dialogue a more true to life feel.

In this way Slacker opposes mainstream Hollywood film in much the same way that

the French new wave opposed conventional French cinema (Pierson). The film

offers slice-of-life situations that are not presented merely to serve the plot but

rather for the simple reason of showing how people interact, much like what Godard

achieved in Breathless. There are no sets in Slacker, just as all the mis-en-scene in

Breathless is purely natural. The overall budget of Slacker was about $23,000 just as

Breathless had a very low budget. In this way Richard Linklater carries on the

sentiment of the New Wave that anyone can make a film. Breathless is a testament to

low-budget filmmaking, this can be seen in that it was dedicated to American B-

movie company Monogram pictures (The French, 136). One of the main sentiments

of the New Wave movement was that films shouldn’t have to be made on huge

budgets by large production companies, but instead should be made by individuals

with the goal of impressing their own unique vision upon film. This spirit is very

much alive in Slacker. Here we are given an idiosyncratic look into the slacker

culture of early nineties Austin, Texas. Linklater produced directed and scripted the

whole film and casts himself and friends of his in it. The whole film is shaped by

Linklaters personal vision and the result is a wholly incomparable film. Linklater

cites Max Olphus’ La Ronde (1950) and Luis Bunuel’s The Discreet Charm of the

Bourgeoisie (1972) as influences for Slacker (Pierson), but despite some thematic

and methodic similarities we are offered something wholly different and new.

While the sort of naturalistic in acting, mis-en-scene, and innovative camera

work - which characterized the French New Wave - is present in Slacker, the film is

in no way an attempt to display the tenets of the French New Wave movement, but

merely employs some of its distinctive methods. There is not much in the way of

Brechtian distancing in Slacker like there is in Breathless and throughout the New

Wave movement. The editing is not nearly as eccentric as the rampant jump cutting

in Breathless. Slacker is simply less technically experimental. But it still retains the

spirit of the French New Wave. In a way Linklater selects what he thinks works best

from the New Wave and puts it to use in Slacker in his own way. This method - in

keeping with the New Wave tenet of auteur(ship) - retains the true spirit of the

movement and at the same time distances itself from it.

Jean-Luc Godard has said that watching Orson Welles’ A Touch of Evil (1958)

is what inspired him to make Breathless (Mayne, 133). It can be said that a good deal

of New Wave directors got a desire to make films after watching Breathless (Pierson,

139). Though it cannot be said that watching Breathless inspired Linklater to make

Slacker, he was definitely inspired by the movement. And it can be said from there

Slacker has had an enormous impact on the American independent film movement

of the nineties. The film was a major success in Austin, Texas in 1991 and went on to

play a part in popularizing the term Slacker and the subsequent slacker based

“generation-x” films that would emerge in the nineties. For example the twenty-four

hour structure of Slacker is present in Kevin Smith’s highly influential 1992 film

Clerks (1994), which he has said he would never have made if it weren’t for Slacker

(Smith). The study of aimless twenty-something’s against a big city backdrop of

underground and pop culture went on to define the emerging “generation-x” films of

the nineties, such as Cameron Crowe’s Singles (1992), Ben Stiller’s Reality Bites

(1994), and Noah Baumbach’s Kicking and Screaming (1995) (Williams). Similar to

the way in which the methods that defined the French New Wave were eventually

swallowed up by major film studios (The French, 142), the techniques that made

Slacker so original were exploited by big studios who saw a market in the success of

such “generation-x” fair. The 1995 film Empire Records follows the 24-hour motif of

“Slacker” and also has two actors who’ve have worked with Linklater in the past,

Rory Cochrane and Joey Lauren Adams. But in it is none of the New Wave spirit that

made “Slacker” so original. But this is beside the point, what matters is the influence

that Slacker had on film through channeling the spirit of the French New Wave.

Linklater is not the only director to do this he is merely an example of how the spirit

of the New Wave continues to show its influence throughout time and in different

ways.

Richard Linklater’s Slacker is evidence of the lasting influence of the French

New Wave movement on film. It shares the methods of naturalism and auter(ship)

that characterized the films of the movement, specifically Jean-Luc Godard’s

Breathless. Though it shares the French New Wave tenets of naturalism and

auteur(ship), it is in no way a simple recreation of a French New Wave film.

Linklater keeps with the spirit of the movement by impressing his own personal

mark upon the film and is not restricted to any objective cinematic guidelines. The

influence of Slacker has been seen in the American independent film movement of

the early nineties and in “generation-x” films, which were then popular. Slacker is a

testament to the eternal inspirational power of the French New Wave.

Bibliography

Mayne, Judith. Claire Denis. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2005.

Marie, Michel, and Neupert Richard. The French New Wave: An Artistic School. London: Blackwell Publishing, 2002.

Pierson, John. "Slacking Off". Criterion.com. April, 9, 2009 <http://www.criterion.com/current/posts/338>.

Smith, Kevin. "Slacker Now on Hulu". hulu.com. April, 9, 2009 <http://blog.hulu.com/2008/10/9/slacker>.

Williams, Karl. "Kicking and Screming". Allmovie.com. April, 9, 2009 <http://www.allmovie.com/work/kicking-and-screaming-135655>.