MIRRORS AND MAGNETS
MIRRORS AND MAGNETS | THE EXACT SCIENCE
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![adsertoris:
Filming Jean-Luc Godard’s À bout de souffle (Breathless) behind the scenes. Cameraman Raoul Coutard shooting a scene from a rooftop.
via aconversationoncool
—
Raoul Coutard (born 16 September 1924, Paris) is a French cinematographer. He is most often associated with the Nouvelle Vague period and particularly for his work with director Jean-Luc Godard. Coutard also shot films for New Wave director François Truffaut as well as Jacques Demy, a contemporary frequently associated with the movement.
He shot over 75 films during a career that lasted nearly half a century.
Coutard’s first work collaboration with Jean-Luc Godard was Godard’s first feature, À bout de souffle, shot in 1959. He was reportedly “imposed” on Godard by producer Georges de Beauregard; the director had already settled on a different cinematographer.[1]
Coutard photographed nearly all of Godard’s work in the nouvelle vague era (1959 - 1967), with the exception of Masculin, féminin; their last work during this period was Weekend (1967), which marked the end of Godard’s work as a ‘mainstream’ filmmaker. The two did not work together again until Passion; their final collaboration was Godard’s next feature, Prénom Carmen.
During the New Wave period, Coutard’s work with Godard fell into two categories: black-and-white films, which were all shot full frame, and color films, which were all shot in widescreen. The black-and-white films, which were mostly made on lower budgets, are notable for their use of hand-held camera work and natural lighting, which lends them an unpolished, documentary quality, crucial to Godard’s style, second nature to Coutard. However, in interiors, natural lighting was not always sufficient, and starting with Vivre Sa Vie (1962) Coutard devised a simple lighting rig suspended just below the ceiling with a number of small lights directed onto the ceiling, where white cards were placed to bounce maximum light in an ambient diffusion, giving the whole room of a location adequate light within which Godard could then improvise various camera set-ups. So pleased was Godard with Coutard’s lighting arrangement he promptly devised a 360 degree camera pan to exploit this freedom [2]. A similar ‘documentary aesthetic’ is pursued by all of Godard’s cinematographers, although handheld camera tends to be replaced with more conventional mounting, in Godard’s later work. Godard’s first color film (shot by Coutard), Une Femme est une femme (1961), featured handheld shooting, sometimes even within its studio sets, while later ones, Le Mepris (1963) Pierrot Le Fou (1965) Deux ou Trois chose que je sais d’elle (1966) Le Weekend (1967) tend to coincide with Godard’s growing preference for longer, more conventionally mounted camera work, either in fixed frame, pans, or tracking shots. Work in the 80s and 90s becomes even more refined, consisting of elaborate tableaux or stage directions within a fixed frame, usually on a long lens, enabling abrupt and conspicuous focus pulls between background and foreground (Sauve qui peut (1980) Passion (1982) Prenom Carmen (1983). The last two were photographed by Coutard using no additional lighting whatsoever, but taking advantage of recent developments in camera lenses and film stock to press the documentary approach in striking ways.
Godard envisaged Breathless as a reportage (documentary), and tasked cinematographer Raoul Coutard to shoot the entire film on a handheld camera, with next to no lighting. The production was filmed on location in Paris during the months of August and September in 1959, using an Eclair Cameflex. Almost the whole film had to be dubbed in postproduction because of the noisiness of the Cameflex camera.[5]
Coutard has also stated that the film was virtually improvised on the spot, with Godard writing lines of dialogue in an exercise book, giving the lines to Belmondo and Seberg, having a few brief rehearsals on scenes involved, then filming them. No permission was received to shoot the film in its various locations (mainly the side streets and boulevards of Paris) either, adding to the spontaneous feel that Godard was aiming for.
According to the New York Times, Breathless is both “a pop artifact and a daring work of art” and even at 50, “still cool, still new, still — after all this time! — a bulletin from the future of movies”.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lw1tuvk6Oe1qbfoleo1_500.jpg)
