You could describe every act of film­mak­ing as an act of film crit­i­cism, and for no group of direc­tors has that held truer than those of the French New Wave. In one of the most excit­ing chap­ters of cin­e­ma his­to­ry thus far, the late 1950s and 1960s saw such new­ly emer­gent auteurs as Jean-Luc Godard, François Truf­faut, Agnès Var­da, Jacques Demy, Claude Chabrol, Éric Rohmer, Jacques Riv­ette, and André Bazin turn away from the estab­lished prac­tices of film­mak­ing and, by a mix­ture of incli­na­tion and neces­si­ty, start a few of their own.

They fol­lowed these new rules to come up with pic­tures like Le Beau Serge, Breath­less, The 400 Blows, Last Year at Marien­bad, Cléo from 5 to 7, and La Jetée. Those and the oth­er movies of the Nou­velle Vague star­tled view­ers with their bold­ness of form and con­tent, but what of impor­tance do they have to say in film cul­ture today? Lewis Bond of Chan­nel Criswell, source of video essays pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here about film­mak­ers like Andrei Tarkovsky and Aki­ra Kuro­sawa, looks at the last­ing achieve­ments of the move­ment in “Break­ing the Rules.”

The mem­bers of the French New Wave told per­son­al sto­ries that reflect­ed per­son­al philoso­phies, shoot­ing doc­u­men­tary-style with hand­held cam­eras, cut­ting those shots togeth­er with pre­vi­ous­ly unheard of con­spic­u­ous­ness, and using a vari­ety of oth­er visu­al and nar­ra­tive tech­niques to estab­lish a new rela­tion­ship between films and their view­ers. “If you’re still skep­ti­cal as to whether the nou­velle vague inten­tion­al­ly toyed with the audi­ence’s expec­ta­tions,” says Bond over a selec­tion of fourth-wall-break­ing shots, “just look at how many times their movies direct­ly acknowl­edge them. The nou­velle vague want­ed to have the audi­ence test­ed as to what could be a movie and how they could push the bound­aries of sto­ry­telling, not just with their tech­niques but with their con­tent too.”

And what do we jad­ed 21st-cen­tu­ry view­ers and film­mak­ers still have to learn from all this? “Just watch the films. They’re so ahead of their time, it’s not dif­fi­cult to see” the influ­ence of their edit­ing on the Scors­eses of the world, their con­cept of the auteur on the Taran­ti­nos, and their cam­era move­ment on the Luzbekis of today. “The thing that the film­mak­ers of la nou­velle vague did was uti­lize one of the most impor­tant process­es I think there is for an artist: look at what works in your medi­um and think, ‘How can it be done dif­fer­ent­ly?’ Because if you don’t have any­thing new to say, what’s the point of say­ing any­thing?” And, now as in the mid-2oth-cen­tu­ry as in the cen­turies before cin­e­ma itself, if you do have some­thing new to say, you can’t say it by fol­low­ing the old rules.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Intro­duc­tion to Jean-Luc Godard’s Inno­v­a­tive Film­mak­ing Through Five Video Essays

How Truf­faut Became Truf­faut: From Pet­ty Thief to Great Auteur

Watch a Video Essay on the Poet­ic Har­mo­ny of Andrei Tarkovsky’s Film­mak­ing, Then View His Major Films Free Online

How Aki­ra Kurosawa’s Sev­en Samu­rai Per­fect­ed the Cin­e­mat­ic Action Scene: A New Video Essay

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

“It’s noth­ing at all. Absolute­ly noth­ing. It was a joke. I want­ed to make a par­o­dy of Jean Cocteau’s first film. That’s all. We shot it in two hours, for fun, one Sun­day after­noon. It has no sort of mean­ing.”–Orson Welles

The Hearts of Age may have indeed been a lark when it was shot in 1934, but giv­en that one of the two teenagers went on to direct Cit­i­zen Kane sev­en years lat­er, no doubt it’s worth a sec­ond look.

Like all things Welles, his 19-year-old life was much more fan­tas­tic than most high school grads. Though he and school chum William Vance shot the film at their alma mater, the Todd School in Wood­stock, Illi­nois, Welles had grad­u­at­ed three years ear­li­er. Accord­ing to Sens­es of Cin­e­ma, Welles

had spurned a schol­ar­ship to Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty, vis­it­ed Ire­land on a sketch­ing tour only to talk his way into per­form­ing for the Dublin Gate The­atre, writ­ten detec­tive sto­ries for pulp mag­a­zines, and trav­elled through Lon­don, Paris, the Ivory Coast, Moroc­co and Seville, where he spent an after­noon as a pro­fes­sion­al bull­fight­er. After return­ing to Amer­i­ca in 1933, intro­duc­tions to Thorn­ton Wilder and Alexan­der Wol­cott led to a posi­tion in Kather­ine Cornell’s tour­ing reper­to­ry com­pa­ny. Welles toured with the Cor­nell com­pa­ny from Novem­ber 1933 to June 1934, appear­ing in three plays and mak­ing his New York debut as Tybalt in Romeo and Juli­et.

Back in Wood­stock to spon­sor a the­ater fes­ti­val at the school, Welles and Vance bor­rowed a cam­era from their old prin­ci­pal and shot this eight minute short.

William Vance, Welles’ friend and co-direc­tor, kept the only copy until he donat­ed it to the Green­wich Pub­lic Library, where film his­to­ri­an and writer Joseph McBride dis­cov­ered it in 1969. McBride then wrote about it in Film Quar­ter­ly and the secret juve­nil­ia of Welles was out of the clos­et. (“Why did Joe have to dis­cov­er that film?” Welles was quot­ed as telling his cam­era­man).

Nev­er entered into copy­right, it’s a pub­lic domain film and so has been avail­able on var­i­ous plat­forms for years. (I saw it in the ‘90s as part of a “before they were famous” short film fes­ti­val with stu­dent work by Lynch, Scors­ese, and Spiel­berg).

The short indeed looks like a par­o­dy of sur­re­al­ist film, a bit like Jean Cocteau’s Blood of a Poet as Welles intend­ed, but with a bit of René Clair’s Entr’Acte and some good ol’ Eisen­stein­ian mon­tage thrown in.

Welles appears in heavy stage make­up as a rich, old­er man in a top hat and cane, look­ing not too far from the elder­ly Charles Fos­ter Kane. His then girl­friend and future first wife Vir­ginia Nichol­son plays an old hag who rides for­lorn­ly back and forth on a bell. There’s a clown in black­face played by Paul Edger­ton, an Indi­an in a blan­ket (co-direc­tor William Vance in a cameo) and a Key­stone cop, which some web­sites say is also Nichol­son. But Charles “Black­ie” O’Neal is also cred­it­ed as a per­former with­out a role and he indeed may be the actor play­ing the Key­stone Cop. (O’Neal, by the way, would lat­er be father to Ryan O’Neal.)

Although he dis­missed the film, Welles’ pre­oc­cu­pa­tions with death are here, right at the begin­ning of his career, with sui­cides, coffins, skulls, and grave­stones fea­tur­ing promi­nent­ly. And though it’s no mas­ter­piece and hon­est­ly a bit of a mess, it shows a direc­tor inter­est­ed in exper­i­ment­ing with film, with humor, and the won­ders of make­up.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stream 61 Hours of Orson Welles’ Clas­sic 1930s Radio Plays: War of the Worlds, Heart of Dark­ness & More

Is It Always Right to Be Right?: Orson Welles Nar­rates a 1970 Oscar-Win­ning Ani­ma­tion That Still Res­onates Today

Young Orson Welles Directs “Voodoo Mac­beth,” the First Shake­speare Pro­duc­tion With An All-Black Cast: Footage from 1936

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

All around the world, each pub­lic tran­sit sys­tem has its own rules. These come in both the offi­cial and unspo­ken vari­eties, the for­mer basi­cal­ly con­sis­tent from place to place, and the lat­ter usu­al­ly reflect­ing the mores of the soci­ety each sys­tem serves. The accept­abil­i­ty of talk­ing to one’s fel­low pas­sen­gers, for instance, tends to vary, and in some coun­tries even mak­ing eye con­tact counts as a no-no. You cer­tain­ly won’t try it in Paris after wit­ness­ing the con­se­quences when Steve Busce­mi breaks that rule in Tui­leries, this short direct­ed by the Coen broth­ers that first appeared in the anthol­o­gy film Paris, je t’aime.

“Paris is known as the City of Lights,” Buscemi’s appar­ent tourist reads in his guide­book as he sits await­ing a train in the sta­tion from which the film takes its name. “A city of cul­ture… of fine din­ing and mag­nif­i­cent archi­tec­ture. Paris is a city for lovers: lovers of art, lovers of his­to­ry, lovers of food, lovers of… love.”

Though he seems to be hav­ing a some­what less than love­ly time there, includ­ing get­ting pelt­ed by a pass­ing child’s spit­balls, he endures. Not five sec­onds after read­ing about the no-eye-con­tact cus­tom on Paris’ “rea­son­ably clean” sub­way (a laugh line for any Parisian) does he look fate­ful­ly up, catch­ing the eye of a girl across the tracks and send­ing her boyfriend into a jeal­ous rage.

For­eign­ers have long felt as intim­i­dat­ed by Paris as they’ve admired it, a mix­ture of emo­tions the Coen Broth­ers play on with­out leav­ing the Tui­leries plat­form, as does Alexan­der Payne in the alto­geth­er dif­fer­ent expe­ri­ence of the Amer­i­can alone in the City of Lights he essays at the end of Paris, je t’aime. In the decade since the movie came out, we’ve seen a few oth­er city-themed anthol­o­gy films, includ­ing New York, I Love You, Rio, Eu Te Amo, and the unre­lat­ed Tokyo!, albeit none with a sec­ond con­tri­bu­tion by the Coen broth­ers or a sec­ond appear­ance by Busce­mi — whose char­ac­ter may have yet to recov­er from from his trip to Paris any­way.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How the Coen Broth­ers Sto­ry­board­ed Blood Sim­ple Down to a Tee (1984)

How the Coen Broth­ers Put Their Remark­able Stamp on the “Shot Reverse Shot,” the Fun­da­men­tal Cin­e­mat­ic Tech­nique

Watch the Coen Broth­ers’ TV Com­mer­cials: Swiss Cig­a­rettes, Gap Jeans, Tax­es & Clean Coal

World Cin­e­ma: Joel and Ethan Coen’s Play­ful Homage to Cin­e­ma His­to­ry

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Car­rie Fish­er, the actress who played Princess Leia in Star Wars, has died. She was only 60 years old.

Last week, she suf­fered a mas­sive heart attack on a flight from Lon­don to LA. News reports ini­tial­ly indi­cat­ed that her con­di­tion was improv­ing. But alas fate then moved things in anoth­er direc­tion.

Above, you can watch a young Car­rie Fisher–only 19 years old–audition for the part that made her famous. (On YouTube, see oth­er audi­tion footage fea­tur­ing Mark Hamill, Har­ri­son Ford, and Kurt Rus­sell.) Last month, while pro­mot­ing her brand new mem­oir The Princess Diarist, Fish­er talked with NPR’s Ter­ry Gross about the chal­lenge of mak­ing that first Star Wars film. “I think I sort of felt iso­lat­ed. I did­n’t real­ly have any­one. I did­n’t con­fide in men. [The cast and film­mak­ers were all men.] I did­n’t con­fide in any­one then.” “I was so inse­cure.” But she kept it well hid­den. Only poise and con­fi­dence are on dis­play here.

Note: You can down­load The Princess Diarist as a free audio­book from Audible.com if you take part in their no-strings-attached free tri­al pro­gram. Get more details on that here.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hard­ware Wars: The Moth­er of All Star Wars Fan Films (and the Most Prof­itable Short Film Ever Made)

The Com­plete Star Wars “Fil­mu­men­tary”: A 6‑Hour, Fan-Made Star Wars Doc­u­men­tary, with Behind-the-Scenes Footage & Com­men­tary

16 Great Star Wars Fan Films, Doc­u­men­taries & Video Essays to Get You Ready for Star Wars: The Force Awak­ens

Learn to Code with Star Wars: The Force Awak­ens and Minecraft

How Star Wars Bor­rowed From Aki­ra Kurosawa’s Great Samu­rai Films