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2011 Festival Feature Films (March 24-27)

French director Emmanuel Laurent presents Deux de la Vague

director Emmanuel Laurent screenplay Antoine De Baecque starring Islid Le Besco
running time 1 h 30 min general audience

Synopsis

Two in the Wave is the story of a friendship. It’s 1950, Jean-Luc Godard is 20 years old, François Truffaut two years younger. Their love of cinema brings them together. Soon, they go to the same film clubs, write for the same reviews, Les Cahiers du Cinéma and Arts. When Truffaut becomes a filmmaker, with The 400 Blows, which triumphs at Cannes in 1959, he helps his older friend make the shift into directing by offering him a screenplay with the title of Breathless.

Throughout the 1960s, they stick together. Between them, actor Jean-Pierre Léaud is like a child loved in a different way by two older brothers. Then, he’s torn apart, as though his parents have split up. Politics is what separates the two friends. Around 1968, Godard gets involved in the social upheaval rocking France and starts making militant films, whereas Truffaut continues to pursue his own filmmaking path, someway, somehow, no matter the cost. Their breakup is violent and heart-wrenching.

film excerpts conatined in documentary include:

L’Amour en fuite (1979, François Truffaut) 
La Nuit américaine (1973, François Truffaut)
Tout va bien (1972, Jean-Luc Godard)
Les Deux Anglaises et le continent (1971, François Truffaut)
Domicile conjugal (1970, François Truffaut)
Baisers volés (1968, François Truffaut)
Deux ou trois choses que je sais d’elle (1967, Jean-Luc Godard)
La Chinoise (1967, Jean-Luc Godard)
La Religieuse (1966, Jacques Rivette)
Masculin, féminin (1966, Jean-Luc Godard)
Pierrot le Fou (1965, Jean-Luc Godard)
La Peau douce (1964, François Truffaut)
Une femme mariée (1964, Jean-Luc Godard)
Le Mépris (1963, Jean-Luc Godard)
Les Carabiniers (1963, Jean-Luc Godard)
Vivre sa vie: Film en douze tableaux (1962, Jean-Luc Godard)
Cléo de 5 à 7 (1962, Agnès Varda)
Jules et Jim (1961, François Truffaut)
Lola (1961, Jacques Demy)
Une femme est une femme (1961, Jean-Luc Godard)
Le Petit Soldat (1960, Jean-Luc Godard)
Tirez sur le pianiste (1959, François Truffaut)
Les Quatre Cents Coups (1959, François Truffaut)
À bout de souffle (1959, Jean-Luc Godard)
Moi, un noir (1958, Jean Rouch)
Charlotte et son Jules (1958, Jean-Luc Godard)
Histoire d’eau (1958, Jean-Luc Godard)
Les Mistons (1957, François Truffaut)
Monika (1953, Ingmar Bergman)

Director/producer
Emmanuel Laurent

Writer and filmmaker, Emmanuel Laurent taught himself filmmaking by watching movies in the front rows of the Paris Cinémathèque and by editing film. He founded the independent production company Films à Trois in 1984, and has written, directed and produced more than 20 feature-length and short documentaries made for television — most recently, The Quest for the Unicorn, Leonardo’s Last Journey, Mademoiselle V and Two in the Wave.

Writer/narrator
Antoine De Baecque

A former chief editor for Les Cahiers du Cinéma and the culture section of Libération, he is a renowned film critic and historian, and the author of biographies on both François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard. He is currently editing a collection of books on cinema for the publisher Ramsay. Two in the Wave is his first documentary.

publications

Le Dictionnaire Eustache, Léo Scheer, 2010
Godard. Biographie, Grasset, 2010
L'Histoire-caméra, Gallimard, 2008
Doisneau, Portraits d'artistes (text), Flammarion, 2008
Le Dictionnaire Pialat, Léo Scheer, 2008
Crises dans la culture française, Anatomie d'un échec, Bayard, 2008
Histoire et cinéma, Cahiers du Cinéma, 2008
Qu’est-ce qui fait rire les... Belges ? (anthology), Éditions du Panama, 2007
Histoire du festival d’Avignon (a collaboration with Emmanuelle Loyer), Gallimard, 2007
Les Duels politiques. De Danton-Robespierre à Royal-Sarkozy, Hachette, coll. Pluriel, 2007
Jean-Claude Brisseau, L'ange exterminateur (interviews), Grasset, 2006
Avignon, le royaume du théâtre, Gallimard, 2006
Tim Burton, Cahiers du Cinéma, 2005
La Cinéphilie. Invention d'un regard, histoire d'une culture 1944-1968, Hachette, coll. Pluriel, 2005
Le Dictionnaire Truffaut (a collaboration with Arnaud Guigue), La Martinière, 2004
La Cérémonie du pouvoir, Grasset, 2002
Pour ou contre la Révolution Française (ed.), Bayard, 2002
Critique et cinéphilie (anthology), Cahiers du Cinéma, 2001
François Truffaut. Biographie (a collaboration with Serge Toubiana), Gallimard, 2001
Les Eclats du rire. La Culture des rieurs au XVIIIe siècle, Calmann-Lévy, 2000
Marquis de Bièvre, Calembours et autres jeux sur les mots d’esprit, Payot, 2000
La Nouvelle Vague – Portrait d’une jeunesse, Flammarion, 1998
De l’histoire au cinéma (dir. with Christian Delage), Complexe, 1998
La Gloire et l’effroi. Sept morts sous la Terreur, Grasset, 1997
Conversations avec Manoel de Oliveira (a collaboration with Jacques Parsi), Cahiers du Cinéma, 1996
Le Cinéma des écrivains, Cahiers du Cinéma, 1995
Le Corps de l’Histoire : métaphores et politique (1770-1800), Calmann-Lévy, 1993
Cahiers du Cinéma, Histoire d'une revue, Cahiers du Cinéma, 1991
Andrei Tarkovski, Cahiers du Cinéma, 1989
La Caricature révolutionnaire, Presses du CNRS, 1988
Petite anthologie des Cahiers du Cinéma (Cahiers du Cinéma; in collaboration with Gabrielle Lucantonio):

• Volume 1. Le goût de l’Amérique
• Volume 2. Vive le cinéma français !
• Volume 3. La Nouvelle Vague
• Volume 4. La Politique des auteurs, les textes
• Volume 5. La Politique des auteurs, les entretiens
• Volume 6. Critique et cinéphilie
• Volume 7. Théories du cinéma
• Volume 8. Nouveaux cinémas, nouvelles critiques
• Volume 9. Sur la carte du monde

In telling of the friendship between directors Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard, as well as their violent and radical quarrel, Two in the Wave explores one of the adventures and major ruptures of French cinema.

A friendship behind the camera

Letter from Jean-Luc Godard to François Truffaut, mid-July 1959, one month before the making of Breathless:
“Finally I found the internal composition that will make Breathless look poignant. ... I will make you read it in a few days. After all, this is your script. I think you will be quite surprised once again. ... What bothers me is that I had to introduce something of mine in a script that is yours.”

Text from François Truffaut about Jean-Luc Godard, “Two or three things I know about him” (1966):
“... Jean-Luc Godard is not the only one to film as easily as he breathes, but he is the one who breathes the best. He is fast like Rossellini, malicious like Sacha Guitry, musical like Orson Welles, simple like Pagnol, hurt like Nicholas Ray, efficient like Hitchcock, deep, deep, deep like Ingmar Bergman and insolent like no one else. ... The professor Chiarini, the director of Venice Mostra, declared: ‘There is the cinema before Godard and after Godard.’ It’s true, the passing years confirm the certainty that Breathless (1960) has marked a decisive turn in cinema history, just like Citizen Kane did in 1940. ...  Godard turned the system upside down; he stirred up things in the cinema industry, just as Picasso did in painting, and like him he made everything possible.”

Stormy sea ahead: the end of a friendship...

Letter from Jean-Luc Godard to François Truffaut, ending of May 1973:
“Probably no one will call you a liar, so I will. You are a liar because the shot of you and Jacqueline Bisset the other night at Francis’ [a restaurant on Alma square] is not in your film. ...  I finally come to a more practical point. To shoot a simple film, I need five or ten million francs. Having seen La Nuit américaine, you must help me, so that the spectators won’t think we only make films your way. If you want to talk about it, fine.”

Answer from François Truffaut to Jean-Luc Godard, June 1973:
“I could care less about what you think of La Nuit américaine. What is sad is that you continue to go see movies like this one, even when you already know that the content does not coincide with your beliefs on cinema, nor with your beliefs on life. ... You always have to play a role, the best one. I have always been under the impression that the real activists are like housekeepers, who do the ungrateful, daily, necessary work. You are an Ursula Andress, who appears for four minutes, enough time for the flashes to start, two or three striking words and then disappearing, only to return back to your attractive mystery.”

Filmography

Jean-Luc Godard

François Truffaut