From a little cinema club in Paris in the 1940s came a movement that changed cinema for ever. Truffaut, Godard, Chabrol, Resnais and Rohmer -- all regular attendees -- got to know each other there.
From there they became acquainted with Andre Bazin and began writing for his journal, Cahiers du Cinema and the "New Wave," auteur theory and camera-stylo (writing with the camera) were born.
These young men were passionately involved not only with cinema, but also with literature, philosophy, art, music and politics.
Each of them went in different directions, but the literacy they brought to film shows in the essays they wrote as critics and in the film essays they "penned" as filmmakers and artists.
In 1959, the same year that Bergman made "Virgin Spring," Fellini made "La Dolce Vita," and Antonioni made "L'Avventura," Truffaut and Godard made their first films.
Truffaut chose to work with genres, playing with and challenging the rules of each individual genre. Nowhere near as overtly political as Godard's "Weekend," the politics of "Shoot the Piano Player" are aesthetic and critical.
Departing from the semi-autobiographical cycle of his first films, "Shoot the Piano Player" represents a return to criticism.
It concerns Charlie, a pianist in a small bar, who in a former life was a famous concert pianist. The film effectively mixes and quotes from genres like the detective film, love story and comedy.
Charlie's brothers, who are still living back at the farm, are petty thieves. When they double-cross their partners Ernest and Momo in a robbery, they drag Charlie and his new girlfriend Lena into the whole mess.
Truffaut said in an interview about the film, "I know that the result seems ill-assorted and the film seems to contain four or five films, but that's what I wanted."
He continued, "I know that the public detests nothing more than changes in tone, but I've always had a passion for changing tone."
The sudden switches, such as from the tense chase in the opening scene to a mellow reflection on men, women and relationships are what make the film so delightful to watch.
Godard developed in a very different direction. Beginning with "Breathless," his films became less narrative-driven and more like intensely personal, political essays.
"Weekend" starts of as the story of a bourgeois couple, Corinne and Roland, on their way to visit Roland's parents. But from the moment a traffic jam holds them up, the plot gets derailed along with everything else.
The film becomes a bleak exploration of the debris of modern life, specifically in terms of the Americanization (read capitalism-ization) of France. Hence the English title "Weekend."
Burnt and twisted corpses of cars and similarly mutilated humans scatter the landscape. But the film is not without a certain black humor such as in the section with Emily Bronte.
Even though the desolation of the film seems alienating, Godard's use of Brechtian distancing mechanisms does not indicate any such desire: he just wishes to engage us in an active dialogue with the film and to take part in constructing the film's meaning.
Approached with a willingness to enter into a world where politics, cinema, philosophy and life are inseparable, "Weekend" is definitely a film that rewards the audience for the time spent watching it.
