Feeling as French as possible in Edgewater WA

Mlle. Chenal (LOC), originally uploaded by The Library of Congress.

Last night, a friend had a most excellent idea of celebrating his birthday French-style. This included baguettes, camembert, four different vegetarian french dishes, wine, champagne and Jean Luc Godard.

We didn't have enough time to watch any features, so we just watched two short films that had been included as extras on his DVDs.

The first film we watched was All the Boys Are Called Patrick, a cute 20 minute film about a Parisian casanova who chats up two room-mates on the same day. This film, written by Éric Rohmer and directed by Godard, is so snappily perfect that it's hard to believe that it was made in 1957. He uses several experimental film techniques that were revolutionary for his time, like cutaways and playing with film speed. This film also was shot in the informal observational style that was soon to become iconic of Godard. This style was most likely influenced by Godard's tertiary study of Ethnology, "the branch of anthropology that compares and analyzes the origins, distribution, technology, religion, language, and social structure of the ethnic, racial, and/or national divisions of humanity."

Heavily influenced also by Jean Rouch, the father of Cinema Verite / Cinema Truth, Godard observed his subjects in a sort of light anthropological style; retaining the randomness and inconsequentiality of every day conversation without any overbearing cloak of dramatic pretense. This has led some people to criticise his films for their superficiality, but as this short film demonstrates, there are other truths to be found in the random banter that fills most of our lives. The girls are pretty cute too.

Watch the film; you will not be disappointed! I truly believe that no cooler film was made in 1957.











We also watched the 1958 short, Une histoire d'eau / A Story of Water which was also very fun but I couldn't find it on youtube.