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The New Wave By Itself

Dir. Robert Valey and André S. Labath

First Run Icarus, 1995

Reviewed by Michael Punt

mpunt@easynet.co.uk

This videotape comprises a series of brief statements by directors associated with the New Wave, and some clips from films of that period. For those who are familiar with the New Wave there will be hardly anything that they have not seen (or read about) before, for those who are not it is difficult to see how they will make sense of what is on offer. The collection of interviews and clips was shot in 1964, it is a historic document of nostalgic interest (at best) to all but the specialist film scholar. As the videotape sleeve suggests it is ‘a priceless record of the time, place and people who invented modern cinema.’ Without really addressing the implications of such a claim, The New Wave By Itself becomes an impenetrable hagiography. During the late 1950s and early 1960s something quite remarkable happened to European cinema as a consequence of a complex network of social, technological and political factors. The tape is valuable as a partial reflection of the energy and invention of the film makers, it may have a place in education, but without the contextualisation of the special conditions that enabled these film makers to confront on the hegemony of U.S and French cinema, the tape as it stands is in danger of conflating politics with style.

The real problem is that the videotape falls between its possible audiences in a way that as a film screening or a television programme it would not. Both demand different sorts of attention, not least by enforcing a passivity on the viewer as the programme unfolds in real time. Videotape on the other hand invites activity, first in the positive act of programming, then in the re-editing of the tape with the fast forward and replay buttons. The parts one would want to revisit on this tape are probably already in the collections of its target audience. Nonetheless, Icarus films are to be congratulated on the publication of The New Wave by Itself, it is a valiant attempt to bring into the public domain significant historical material that would otherwise languish in the memories of a few, but it would be more valuable with a good essay in the cassette cover that situated the New Wave movement in a wider vision for those who might be curious as to why the films looked the way that they did.

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Updated 29th March 2003


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