瑟堡的雨伞

看本片完全是因為N多年前我在一雜誌上讀到本片的介紹心中湧起想看的渴望。這麽多年過去心願終於了了，才發現流逝的歲月導致的物是人非會是如此驚人，我不得不承認，我已經不是以前那個我了。想想當年如果有機會一睹本片的容顏會是怎樣的沈醉？那時外面的一切對於我都是美的，香的，我不做選擇的吸收，享受。現在我早已不是那種不做選擇的狀態了，而且自己的認知也不僅僅只會吸收，享受了。我要比較，然後分析，總結。這樣一來，本片對我的唯一價值 就只剩下圓夢了。有點遺憾，因為這個夢有點失落，但是這種失落建立在對更廣闊的世界的認知，理解和欣賞上。應該為它感到高興。

看本片完全是因為N多年前我在一雜誌上讀到本片的介紹心中湧起想看的渴望。這麽多年過去心願終於了了，才發現流逝的歲月導致的物是人非會是如此驚人，我不得不承認，我已經不是以前那個我了。想想當年如果有機會一睹本片的容顏會是怎樣的沈醉？那時外面的一切對於我都是美的，香的，我不做選擇的吸收，享受。現在我早已不是那種不做選擇的狀態了，而且自己的認知也不僅僅只會吸收，享受了。我要比較，然後分析，總結。這樣一來，本片對我的唯一價值 就只剩下圓夢了。有點遺憾，因為這個夢有點失落，但是這種失落建立在對更廣闊的世界的認知，理解和欣賞上。應該為它感到高興。

用音乐剧的方式来演绎电影，从头唱到尾，配合法国香颂的背景音乐，那个感觉听着超级棒。颜色鲜明不艳丽，在雨季不显得那么沉闷。女主角那个青涩呀，完全看不出是《印度支那》里的那个雍容高贵，成熟气质的德纳芙。。。故事虽然简单，电影表达的很清晰，画面很美，当最后男女主角相遇的时候，发现彼此都过着美满的生活，两人各自孩子的名字就是曾经约定的名字，这就够了，年轻相爱过，没有对于错，回忆是满满的。

2017.12.14 clit2007 term paper
刚交 做了一万年的research 熬了三天 睡了7小时
18年2月更新 这门课拿了A- 所以这篇essay好像写的还不错

How The Umbrellas of Cherbourg Juxtaposes Self-Reflexivity with Realism in the Context of the French New Wave

As a member of the “Left Bank” group, Jacques Demy might not make films that were as avant-garde as those of the Cahiers du cinema filmmakers. When the musical romance, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg came out in 1964, it was considered to hardly have any radical representation of the French New Wave due to its style and aesthetic approach. Yet its unorthodox entirely sung dialogues as well as the beautifully composed music undoubtedly drew a great amount of attention. Consisting of three parts, the film depicts a young couple hopelessly in love with each other, Geneviève and Guy, who are eventually broken apart by fate (mostly the Algerian War) to separate destinies. This essay argues that director Jacques Demy juxtaposes self-reflexive features with hints of realism in The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, endowing the film with an enchanting property that embraces the junction of the conventional French cinema and the emergence of the French New Wave. The idea of this essay was constructed on the premise of Robert Stam’s viewpoint on the interpenetrating coexistence of self-reflexivity and realism within the same cinematic text which challenges the Brechtian critique of realism (152).

With regard to identifying and characterizing a genre film, Rick Altman proposes the semantic/syntactic dual theory that categorizes genres along the historic development. He also justifies the three subgenres of the musical, namely the fairy tale musical, the show musical and the folk musical, and associates them with corresponding cultural backgrounds and other musical attributes. In accordance with Altman’s theory, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg nevertheless cannot be defined as a musical semantically, in a sense that there is no shift of ambience in between dialogues and singing and instead every line is presented in a recitative manner which is dubbed by pre-recorded soundtracks by professional singers. The film does not necessarily comply with any of the three subgenres to foreground a specific value which marriage in that particular socio-cultural context establishes. Yet it does pay homage to the classical Hollywood that contemporary New Wavers enamored by embracing the popular musical genre of the Golden Age of Hollywood while incorporating a French take on the story that comments on socio-political issues. A similar gesture of playing tribute to the historic development of the genre by incorporating the innovative can be found in the studio musical Moulin Rouge! (2001), which pointed out by Parfitt-Brown merges technology of the new era with nostalgia of the fin-de-siècle bohemianism to invoke an “artistic reinvention” (24). With the narrative setting evoking Hollywood classics like The Band Wagon (1953) and Singin’ in the Rain (1952), Moulin Rouge!’s show-within-a-film form is reminiscent of Altman’s show musical subgenre in a traditional sense. Feuer identifies that the parallelism between the show that characters in the film try to bring on and the relative reality within the film’s narrative space tends to emphasize the theme of eternal love over the “glorification of show business”, countering to the subject matter dealt with in most show-within-a-film Hollywood classics (61). But this parallelism ultimately addresses to the musical film’s self-reflexive nature, and draws attention to the prosthetic, highly unreal imagery constructed in the film’s fictional world.

If we consider the parallelism in Moulin Rouge! as an approach of reflexivity, then the recurrent postmodern pastiche and dense pop culture quotations further add a layer to the film’s fictional complexion. Acknowledging the director of Moulin Rouge!, Baz Luhrmann’s point of view, Parfitt-Brown notes that the intensive blending of historic artifacts and real-world contemporary cultures that exist outside the fictional entity fulfills the “sensory authenticity” that demands participatory spectatorship (22). In other words, the edgy, transhistorical fusion of cultural artifacts constantly and consciously reminds the spectators of the fictional nature of the film, with the film self-aware of its form. Whereas in The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, this self-consciousness of cinema is achieved through the use of multiple devices.

The most obvious device being the structure of the plot, constitutes of three parts, titled “The Departure”, “The Absence”, and “The Return” respectively. Between the plots of each two parts, there is a time gap indicated by a significant change in characters and the relations among characters over the passage of time. The discontinuity allows certain plots to be omitted from the linear progression, which is quite similar to the structure of a staged musical or play. This manner contributes to the musical’s self-conscious form, just as rising up and putting down the stage curtains do at the opening and the finale of Moulin Rouge!. Furthermore, recurrently breaking the fourth wall by having its actors directly address to the camera in The Umbrellas of Cherbourg is another discernible self-reflexive device that is also applied multiple times in Moulin Rouge!.

As pointed out by Hill, the subtle quasi-Brechtian mise-en-scène of the film might not be able to distract the audience away from the fictional space since the audience are so accustomed to the conventions of musical settings that they cannot be easily bothered by them, but the frequent appearance of mirrors and frames does elicit a taste of reflexivity (44). In the scene where Geneviève reveals her and Guy’s relationship to mother, the two have an argument over the couple’s decision of getting married. There comes along a medium shot of Geneviève alongside the camera positioning at a 45-degree angle to the right of the actress who is at first placed on the left half of the screen. The right half is a mirror on the wall which seemingly unintentionally reflects the image of the mother who is supposedly standing on the other side of the room, telling how astonished she is by their proposed marriage. This framing lasts briefly until the mother’s image walks out of the mirror, with the camera tracking along Geneviève’s forward motion. There we see a perfect two shot of the characters, with a medium close up of Geneviève remaining in the left portion at the same angle as earlier. As the mother walks toward the mirror, the staging of the two is reversed. The camera is still able to capture the mother’s facial expression from the reflection in the mirror although we are facing her back. There are many shots with mise-en-scène like this in the rest of the film where it tends to play with the audience’s visual experience by careful staging of the actors in a way that their faces can be captured simultaneously despite moving around. The smooth, flawless staging reinforces the fictional entity while without necessarily stripping away the fictional, the mirrored and framed images introduce a slight sense of reflexivity such that it calls attention to its process of making the fictional.

Apart from the mirrors and the purposeful framing, there are also several shots in which the camera movement is staged elegantly yet self-consciously that one can hardly fail to observe. One of these noticeable moments is when the competent suitor, Roland, recalls his past relationship with a girl named Lola. As he starts to sink into his memory leaning against the mirror on the wall (which again draws attention to its self-reflexive manner), the camera gracefully dollies towards him until it reaches a close-up scale of his face and subsequently cuts to a flashback POV shot. This camera movement seems abrupt and self- conscious considering the previous image that frames two characters having a casual conversation. It sufficiently places emphasis on Roland’s emotional transition at the moment and his innermost bitterness of being unable to win the person he used to love. Alexandre Astruc states in his 1948 manifesto which greatly influenced the French New Wave that the new cinema should realize the cinematic dynamics by utilizing camera movements to express feelings and emotions, and that such approach would overcome the underlying problem of the old French cinema, which is the incapability of expressing thoughts. His viewpoint figured prominently in the development of the auteur theory in the New Wave. In this regard, Demy’s stylistic, self-conscious and expressive use of camera in The Umbrellas of Cherbourg aligns himself with the contemporary New Wave fashions.

Equivalent to the reflexive function of pastiche in Moulin Rouge!, the intertextuality in The Umbrellas of Cherbourg is achieved through quoting and making references to other art works. At the beginning of the film, Guy’s colleague at the garage directly sings quotes from the famous opera Carmen. Interestingly enough, his other colleague comments afterwards that he prefers movies to operas because he cannot stand the constant singing, which nonetheless playfully reflects the all-singing nature of this movie. Hill suggests that this playfulness is “doubly reflexive” which makes an intertextual reference to another form of art and moreover, attracts attention to the film’s embodiment of such form (47). In addition to operatic reference, Hill pinpoints the intertextuality in this film of other artistic forms, such as many visual components evocative of multiple works by Demy’ favorite painter Jan Vermeer (46), the tendency of long takes and stylistic camera movements that pays explicit homage to films by Max Ophüls (45), as well as the reappearing Lola (1961) character Roland Cassard that references to Demy’s own film (44). All these intertextual references encompass a huge sense of self-reflexivity which, argued by Ott and Walter, “deliberately draws attention to [the film’s] fictional nature by commenting on its own activities” (438).

I have discussed so far how some major cinematic elements in The Umbrellas of Cherbourg contribute to the musical’s high self-reflexivity, which endows itself with a fictional, unreal entity. Before I continue with the observation of the film’s realist features which is something that fundamentally blends a taste of French-ness in this American genre, it is necessary to acknowledge Robert Stam’s outlook on whether reflexivity and realism can coexist within the same context. Although the cinema in the 1930s tends to associate “realist” with “bourgeois” and “reflexivity” with “revolutionary” which are antithetical in political terms, Stam uses Godard’s Numéro Deux (1975) and other examples to illustrate that realism and reflexivity can in fact not only coexist but also penetrate into each other to display the fictional construction of the reality (152). For Moulin Rouge! as a twenty-first century big- budgeted, highly reflexive Hollywood musical production, realism is nowhere to be found as the film aims to use cultural artifacts to construct a distant past of prosthetic authenticity. As a stylistic product of the French cinema’s tendency of emerging to the New Wave, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg nevertheless juggles with reflexivity and realism to manifest the French adaptation to the classical Hollywood genre.

There are three main aspects in this film that attribute to its social realism. Despite the colorful visual style and the apparently artificial lighting effects that might denote a studio production, the film was as a matter of fact entirely shot on location. Several establishing shots at different points throughout the film determinedly highlight the sense of realism, such as the panorama of the dock in the opening credits, a few establishing shots of the train station and the café in the departure scene, as well as the last shot in the film which is a wide shot of the gas station in the beautiful snow. Take the last shot as an example; the jib shot lasts for 50 seconds, which can definitely be considered as a long take. It starts with Guy joyfully greeting his family. He kisses his wife and then plays with his son in the snow. The camera gradually pulls away from the characters’ interaction as it goes on without being interrupted. When the characters enter inside, we can barely observe their activities yet the shot does not fade out from there but rather remains unchanged and uninterrupted for roughly 20 seconds. This continuity in acting and camera movement reinforces the realism in a sense that the audience are watching the characters’ activities in reality.

The second aspect is the film’s attitude toward the contemporary social issues. Avoiding explicitly presenting the Algerian war image, the film comments on the negative post-war phenomenon like veteran soldiers’ alienation from the society and the failed human relations. It also addresses the generational debates of values in post-war French families, with the materialism and social hierarchy among elder generation versus the younger generation’s utopianism that love transcends everything. A similar value discourse can also be found in Moulin Rouge!.

Lastly, the majority of the cast hardly had any recognition prior to the production of the film. The fact that the audience at the time were seeing fresh faces instead of glamorous stars on the screen somewhat made them feel less detached from the fictional world. Film Reference points out that the femininity portrayed in traditional French cinéma de papa which the New Wave resists is mostly associated with sophisticated maturity. The way that Geneviève is portrayed as a simple and innocent girl next door naturally sides this film against the “Tradition of Quality”. All in all, the three attributes mentioned above are in alliance with three of the eight characteristics of New Wave cinema raised by Michel Marie in terms of the location-shooting, addressing contemporary social/cultural issues, and the new-face actors (70).

In conclusion, with the juxtaposition of the high self-reflexivity of the musical genre and a sense of realism regarding the contemporary French cinema, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg is Jacques Demy’s uttermost homage to the classical Hollywood. The coexisting reflexive nature and realism do not necessarily get in each other’s ways, but rather becomes Demy’s stylistic syntax in this French-accented art piece of an American genre. Released during the active period of the French New Wave, although the film does not entirely identify as radical New Wave representation, it adopts certain characteristics that comply with the New Wave aesthetics. Its uniqueness and avant-garde production approach makes it one of the most celebrated and influential original musicals of the twentieth century.


Works Cited

Altman, Rick. “A Semantic/Syntactic Approach to Film Genre.” Cinema Journal, vol. 23, no. 6, Spring 1984, pp. 6-18.

Altman, Rick. “The Musical.” The Oxford History of World Cinema. Ed. Geoffrey Nowell-Smith. Oxford: OUP, 1996. 294-303.

Astruc, Alexandre. “The Birth of a New Avant-Garde: La Caméra-Stylo.” Trans. Peter Graham. The French New Wave: Critical Landmarks. Ed. Peter Graham and Ginette Vincendeau. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. 31-38.

Feuer, Jane. “The International Art Musical: Defining and Periodising Post-1980s Musicals.” The Sound of Musicals. Ed. Steven Cohan. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. 54-63.

Hill, Rodney. “The New Wave Meets the Tradition of Quality: Jacques Demy’s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg.” Cinema Journal, vol. 48, no. 1, Fall 2008, pp. 27-50.

“Legacy and Regeneration: 1944 to 1959.” Film Reference, http://www.filmreference.com/encyclopedia/Criticism-Ideology/France-LEGACY-AND-REGENERATION-1944-TO-1959.html

Marie, Michel. “The New Wave’s Aesthetic.” Trans. Richard Neupert. The French New Wave: An Artistic School. Paris: Blackwell Publishing, 2003. 70-71.

Ott, Brian, and Cameron Walter. “Intertextuality: Interpretive Practice and Textual Strategy.” Critical Studies in Media Communication, vol. 17, no. 4, December 2000, pp. 429-446.

Parfitt-Brown, Clare. “An Australian In Paris: Techno-Choreographic Bohemianism in Moulin Rouge!.” The Oxford Handbook of Dance and the Popular Screen. Ed. Melissa Blanco Borelli. New York, NY: OUP, 2014. 21-40.

Stam, Robert. “The Politics of Reflexivity.” Film Theory: An Introduction. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2000. 151-153.