The Gendered New Wave : Feminist Cleo De 5 a 7 Versus Sexist Les Quatre Cents Coups and Vivre Sa Vie

The French New Wave was one of the most influential and celebrated movements in world cinema. Practically a mainstream movement due to its popularity, it featured a host of emerging young French talent. The movement is traditionally epitomized by the Right Bank filmmakers, the Cahiers du cinema cinephiles that saturated their supposed personal narratives with a masculine fervor that served to marginalize and deteriorate the feminine voice in film. This new, celebrated movement was immortalized by its two most famous directors, Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard, who, although both formally groundbreaking in their cinematic writing, in their presentations of Parisian modern life exacerbated the female condition in France at a time nearing great strides for the Feminist movement in Europe. Their sometimes referred to as misogynistic representations of women, in an artistic circle that was extraordinarily influential, provided a dire contrast when juxtaposed with the freedoms being pursued by women. The French feminist movement, inferior to the American one, occurred at a time when not just Europeans but American women where rising to claim their rights thus it is quite interesting that such directors felt the need to express their machismo and psychological troubles with women so overtly as to denounce the intercontinental battles of these women. What is perhaps even more fascinating is that, in the midst of Right Bank sexism there existed a unique female director that was considered part of the New Wave and yet championed the subjectivity of women. Not as popularized to the extent of Truffaut and Godard, and not as symbolical of the New Wave as these and other gentlemen of the Right Bank, Agnes Varda's feminist voice (defined as being present by the employment of a feminine subject) , exemplified in Cleo de 5 a 7(1961), rivaled the sexism (defined as being present by the employment of the feminine object) of the Right Bank directors, as signified by Truffaut and Godard's works Les Quatre cents coups (1959)and Vivre sa vie (1962), respectively.

It is indubitable that Agnes Varda was a feminist filmmaker, working both as a precursor to the New Wave and the feminist movement. To quote her from Sandy Flitterman-Lewis's book To Desire Differently, "Always a feminist, I was born a feminist." Varda was quite active in the French feminist movement. Although her strongest period of activism was during the 1970s, after Cleo had been made, she is considered a filmmaker whose "film work retains the feminine focus on issues of concern to women and explores new possibilities for a cinematic discourse capable of expressing feminine realities." Varda herself has constantly reiterated and affirmed rather strongly that being a female makes a difference in the cinema. Alison Smith clearly stated that, "Agnès Varda is one of very few French women film-makers who have identified themselves as feminist, " shedding light into the exact feminist condition in France in the 1960s. In France there existed an overt sexism that was publicly displayed in media, perhaps providing the Right Bank filmmakers the justification for their treatment of women. If in any instance the Right Bank can be denounced as possessing mainstream characteristics it is in this treatment. Whereas the New Wave was supposedly reacting against a previously set standard of narrative, Flitterman-Lewis argues that Varda in this sense, because of her counter-sexist, pro-feminist outlook, embodies the rebellion characteristic crucial to the New Wave ideology. In this sense Truffaut and Godard followed in the footsteps of the forefathers they so desperately attempted to go against. The feminist movement in France however, wasn't the strongest counterattack on sexism. Varda herself didn't become heavily involved until after being inspired by her trip to California during the 1970s. As is the case with all movements, there is always opposition that presents itself in various mediums. In this respect, Truffaut and Godard can be seen as the sexist opposition to the militant feminist Varda.

Varda's feminist self-acknowledgement is a strong factor in analyzing and reading her work. Ruth A. Hottell explains that a mainstream attitude in the dismissal of resistance to particular subjects in films is that films in general aren't meant for heavy consideration. But under the scope of the New Wave, where films were meant to be socially engaging and personal narratives, this excuse is unpardonable for the Right Bank directors that inundated their films with misrepresentations of the female condition. Hottell explains how Varda discharged such claims and in effect took full responsibility for her work and its implications (unlike Godard who was infamously evasive and "readily made ridiculous claims") In doing so, everything in Varda's narratives serves a specific function in her discourse. In Cleo, the narrative and the formal devices used function in a manner as to not only reverse the conventional sexist, masculine formulas of storytelling, but also to explicitly subject the viewer to a women's point of view, via the employment of the female as subject (her world is depicted to us not an interpretation of her world or her life seen through another's) and the internal voiceovers and camerawork that emphasize this subject.

Hottell explains that in Cleo a strictly anti-masculine method is used to inscribe the voice of the female subject. The trajectory from spectator to spectacle which is found in masculinist films is reversed or rejected in Varda's cinema. As early as 1961, in Cleo de 5 a 7, we watch as Cleo moves from narcissistic doll to a questioning adult, gazing at and reflecting on life around her and life itself. The path taken by Cleo portrays a woman's story, as the film functions as a subjective documentary. In this method of making the female a subject Varda differs most significantly from the Right Bank. In her rejection of the typical masculine objectivity of women Varda makes her narrative feminine yet inarguably engaging. As Hottell argues, "[Varda] actively seeks to disrupt the system without alienating the average spectator." Varda also works to empower her female subjects "in a way not found in masculinist films.^" Whereas in Truffaut's Les Quatre cents coups the female character (Antoine's mother Gilberte) is marginalized and made an object for the spectator to identify as the source of Antoine's frustrations, Cleo de 5 a 7 is a film about a woman (as is alluded to by the film's title) with marginalized men who are identified as Cleo's frustrations (the boyfriend that she rarely sees, the doctor that holds the secret to her health which causes her anxiety, the musicians that ridicule her talent and lack of musical knowledge).

Cleo is a woman that undergoes a journey that details her personhood. Varda presents us a character that is distinctively female yet not so effeminate as to disregard her as a person. In masculine films, women play specific roles that are determined by their gender. They are placed into very narrow professions such as that of the mother, the virgin, or the whore. Cleo de 5 a 7 doesn't feature these roles; instead it places the focus on Cleo's inner anxieties and troubles. It is not gender-specific to be anxious about potentially being terminally ill. In such a device Varda differs greatly from her male counterparts. In these differences presented Varda can ultimately be considered as the anti-New Wave or more precisely the anti-Right Bank filmmaker. Her voice involves both profoundness for the narrative and subject and a fluid use of the camera as a stylo. The Right Bank, as most dramatically exemplified by Godard, was more interested in the cinema and the discussions in their works where more significantly on the medium than those of the Left Bank's.

Francois Truffaut's Les Quatre cents coups was an extraordinarily celebrated film that won Truffaut the Best Director award at the Cannes Film Festival. In its celebratory and personal narrative however, existed devices that functioned to criticize and alluded to Truffaut's vision of women. Molly Haskell asserts that the women in Truffaut's films were sacrificed in the name of innocence. "Truffaut's artistic weakness, in refusing to grow up, expresses itself in an insistence on preserving his own innocence and purity, a compulsion to which his women become, very subtly, sacrificial scapegoats.^" In Les Quatre cents coups, Mme. Doinel is killed off by Antoine when he fabricates her death as an excuse created to appease his schoolteacher. In Truffaut's "insistence" it is also found that a harsh criticism of not just the "scapegoat" women but of all the women that seem to pollute rather than populate his characters exists. The very first sequences of the film feature Antoine passing around postcards of women in objectionable dress. From the very beginning of the film the audience is introduced to a school of boys with a fascination for women of the not-so-honorable professions. These sexually explicit women (whores, a form of a highly objectified woman) are, in an extraordinarily old fashioned manner, strongly disdained by Truffaut when the schoolteacher reprimands the students for the postcards, and further in the film, when Antoine is found in a prison next to three incarcerated prostitutes, and as his mother is discovered cheating on her husband, being the female that is most harshly regarded in the film. Women as in Varda's cinema are obsolete in Les Quatre cents coups. It is a masculine film with a subject that perceives all aspects through a masculine point of view. This is an extreme contrast from Varda, further emphasizing her rivalry with the Right Bank.

Susan Hayward and Ginette Vincendeau argued that Antoine's mother presented insight into the ambivalence that he possessed towards the female body. To them, various signifiers in the film work towards this purpose. Their studies on Gilberte are more psychological than the feminist ones but in their discussions of the character's functions they pursue that she is ever-present to indicate a quality of Antoine's character (and the other women: the three prostitutes and the pictured women in the postcards). From the feminist scholarly standpoint it can thus be inferred that Gilberte is not a character of her own but instead a person that exists in a narrative under subjection by the main character. Her presence is crucial not to the story itself and not as a major contribution to the main character but as an aspect that serves to express Antoine's psychology (his misery, his ambivalence). The emphasis is solely placed on Antoine and she, in effect, exists as object.

The ambivalence expressed by Antoine is strictly sexual. The criticisms on women by Truffaut are sexual and thus (as Haskell successfully argues) they are to be obliterated in order to preserve the innocence pertinent to Truffaut's adolescent-focused cinema. In order to sacrifice Gilberte, Truffaut has to sexualize her and he does so rather perversely. In the film, Antoine's stepfather invites him to admire his mother's legs. She is presented to the audience as a promiscuous woman when Antoine sees her kissing another man and most significantly serving to criticize Gilberte, there is mention made to the abortion she once considered. The abortion serves to flawlessly anti-mother her, decomposing any possible relations to the "virgin mother" character that women are often placed in. This process of sexualizing women is very prevalent in Truffaut's films. In Jules et Jim Truffaut features a promiscuous woman prominent to the narrative, in Tirez sur le pianiste another promiscuous woman kills herself, and in Les Mistons a purely objectified woman whose legs are the center of attention is one of the main characters. Les Quatre cents coups is just one example of Truffaut's machismo at work in extreme contrast to Varda's feminism.

Jean-Luc Godard's work is so severely sexist that it has been readily called misogynistic by some critics. Vivre sa vie is no exception to this claim, presenting the story of a woman turned prostitute and ending her narrative with her unfortunate death. The film received the Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival for its exceptional narration but, all merits aside, the film is one of the best examples of sexist cinema. Haskell explains that Godard had a complex view of women. He was ambivalent and intimidated by their power; he found them to be betraying and amoral. Haskell describes his attitude as "a mixture of idealism and misogyny" She asserts that Godard had a love-hatred sentiment towards women and this sentiment is clearly visible in Vivre sa vie, where a woman that is practically forced into prostitution to pay her bills is ruthlessly shot at the end by two pimps.

Godard flawlessly objectifies Nana, the main character. Hottell argues that a voice over, like the one present in the film, serves to establish dominance over women, "authority within the traditional text and over the female characters is enforced further by the use of an omniscient, seemingly objective voiceover.^" If it is unpardonable to call Godard's treatment of women conventional then it is unpardonable to call his cinema revolutionary. Haskell argues that the French had a specific notion of the functions of women in their society and taking into consideration this fact, along with the claim made by Richard Neupert that states that Godard saw the cinema as "the principal means of culture formation," it is clearly evident as to why Godard's treatment is so persistent. At a time right before the feminist movement commenced its rhetoric on the female body and sexuality, Godard was making his own claims on the female body, sexualizing and objectifying women to his own accord. Similar to Truffaut and different from Varda, Godard regularly inundated his narratives with women as "subjects" who were more objects of his own personal fascination and ambivalence.

Vivre sa vie is supposedly told as a documentary, further diminishing Nana's significance as the main character because she now becomes a single example of an entire institution. In Truffaut's Les Quatre cents coups, the world revolved around Antoine however, in Vivre sa vie, the world is does not belong to Nana instead, she belongs to the world as a person functioning in its society (and as a slave to its demands, as indicated when she wanted to end her prostitution and instead was shot). Unlike Varda who makes a statement in a personal manner on social subjects, Godard alienates the viewer from Nana by packaging her story as a "realistic" account and thus dismisses any responsibility for the discourse he presents, also highly unlike Varda.

The sexualizing of women in Godard's cinema is even more prominent than it is in Truffaut's. Whereas Truffaut utilizes the sexualized woman to sacrifice her in the name of innocence, a sexist yet comprehensive device in the service of the narrative, Godard seems to inundate his films with sexualized women in order to fulfill his own personal desires, in other words, to express that personal notion that is characteristic of New Wave cinema. In Une femme est une femme, the main character is a stripper, in A Bout de souffle she is a stupid wild American college woman that sleeps with men to advance careers (a notion visited in Truffaut's Tirez sur le pianiste), and in Pierrot le fou, the main character's legs take center stage. This sexualizing of women is practically non-existent in Cléo, where Cléo herself is presented as someone whose mate is frequently absent.

It is quite interesting that although existing in different gender poles Varda actually features Godard in Cléo de 5 a 7. Varda however, is implicitly making a suggestion when she gives him the role of the man who is easily confused and whose eyes are so covered he confuses his own lover. Varda was considered a sub-set of the New Wave but in her cinematic endeavors and her aesthetics she exemplified the New Wave's theories. Her battles with the conventions of sexism led the way to the French feminist movement that eventually created an audience for women. To her extreme right were Godard and Truffaut, the formidably talented filmmakers who persisted in such traditions as the sexism of the French populace. Making claims to go against the standards, no one exemplified this quality of rebellion more than Varda for even in their storytelling innovations Truffaut and Godard still persisted in following the same cultural ideals of their forefathers. In their highly sexist cinemas where women were objectified, Varda proved to be quite an opposing force, geared towards a modern age unequaled by the supposed newness of the Right Bank.