The Lies We Tell: Godard and Grillet
In 1967, the radical American feminist Valerie Solanas published SCUM, a manifesto advocating the idea that men drove our society into the ground and that it was time to fix it by eliminating men altogether. Figuratively speaking, she additionally drove the point home by shooting Andy Warhol, one of the most famous artists and society figures of the late 20th century in America. He ruled supremely over the pop art crowd that attracted celebrities like Michael Jackson, Bianca Jagger and Grace Jones who congregated at Steve Rubell’s Studio 54 in New York. Warhol survived the assasination attempt, which profoundly changed his character and attitude. What was once a glamorous, eccentric figure got reduced to something resembling a homeless serial killer in a thrift shop wig.
Whatever you make of extremists like Solanas, two French movies do agree with her viewpoint to a certain degree: Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless (1960) and Alain Robbe-Grillet’s The Man Who Lies (1968). The two directors considerably contributed to the history of cinema with important work like the aforementioned ones. The New Wave in France created a new and unique aesthetic retaining the same influence today as back then when it first appeared. Just like everything else to do with France, this is plays into the mainstream idea of a country that looks like a fashion editorial or a lifestyle rather than a sovereign political entity. If you look closer, it’s much more interesting than that. Originally called Nouvelle vague, it emerged in the late 1950s, with directors like Truffaut, Godard, Chabrol and others.
Its origins can be traced to the French magazine called Cahiers de Cinema, where Truffaut published his 1954 manifesto “A Certain Tendency of French Cinema” extensively criticizing their film industry, specifically lack of innovation and bravery. This new approach to cinematography is front and center in Godard’s Breathless, where Jean-Paul Belmondo plays Michel, a good-looking thief who keeps getting deeper and deeper into trouble after shooting a policeman. Somehow, he manages to say one step ahead of the authorities closing in on him to the very end. He’s cocky, selfish and with morals as loose as his tie. Michel manages to entice Patricia, a young American who falls for him without knowing what exactly she’s getting into. He moves in with her and is uncapable of controlling his libido, trying to seduce her into doing it again, irreverent of her mood.
When push comes to the shove, he tries to persuade her to join him on the run to Italy. Jean Seberg plays the female lead with a coquettish charm. Partially because of subdued elegance of costumes like the Herald Tribune shirt or the short-sleeved dress with stripes the color of which is still debated since it was filmed in black and white. They’re no Bonnie and Clyde because they’re not really a team: Seberg is enjoying her life in Paris too much to suddenly turn into a renegade saving him from comeuppance. He’s lying and cheating his way throughout the whole story, ignoring the fact that every road sooner or later comes to the end. At least he’s looking like Bogart’s knock-off throughout all of it. Michel doesn’t even try to win your sympathies. He’s a leech who jumps ship as soon as he gets what he wants from you, which usually involves cash, sex or preferably, both.
The movie is remarkable for its cinematography, tracking shots that make you feel you’re in the backseat of Belmondo’s Ford with the smoke of his cigarette in your nostrils, and most distinctively, the soundtrack composed by Martial Solal, the French jazz pianist and composer whose tunes made the pace of events move even faster. The scale of space also plays an important role: from grand boulevards to Patricia’s small apartment. She’s working for the Herald Tribune and wants to be a journalist. Very Louis Lane, but her guy didn’t need Clooney’s benippled batsuit to seduce you. In the meantime, Paris has changed, and the Hotel de Suede where a room doubled as the apartment in the film, was torn down. In the aftermath, Claude Ventura did the 1993 documentary Chambre 12, Hotel de Suede about the making of Breathless, interviewing people who were involved with the project, like the director and actors. A true walk down the memory lane.
One of the best qualities od Godard’s masterpiece is that it’s very difficult to hate his characters. Though the murder of the policeman was an instinctive reaction more than truly intentional and the only person you shouldn’t be afraid of is Seberg’s Patricia. It’s a bit like Larry David: in Curb Your Enthusiasm, he’s an overprivileged white asshole, but he doesn’t hide it and hence gets away with it. Why? There’s no pretense and that makes him relatable. Whatever backlash he’s getting, it’s primarily ridicule and disgust about what he allows himselg. Of course, he didn’t kill anyone and couldn’t pull off Belmondo’s fedora for the life of him. Although Seberg isn’t French, she doesn’t seem to be cosplaying which is a trap American actresses tend to fall into. It’s called acting, but it fits her like a glove. Her performance is the definition of New Wave method: subdued, seductive and disturbing.
Alain Robbe-Grillet’s hero in The Man Who Lies (1968) may have a different narrative, but his goal is similar: deceit. This film is one of those Seinfeldian lesser babkas in the canon of the New Wave in France, because it’s not as famous as his Last Year in Marienbad, nominated for best screenplay Oscar in 1963. In post-World War II France, a mysterious man arrives in a small town with something of a split personality, introducing himself as Jean and Boris. No one knows who he is, but he claims to be involved with the Resistance. His alter-egos are a mystery too, as they embody both sides of the conflict: Jean, the heroic fighter and the other, the traitor of the cause. One can tolerate many characters, but traitors aren’t welcome anywhere. Especially in sensitive times like that, when the wounds are still healing. He’s trying to fit in, but people aren’t buying it.
I have a friend who’s a bit like Grillet’s liar: his whole life is shrouded in a veil of secrecy, he’s almost paranoid about his privacy and reluctant to show ID even when it’s mandatory. The fear is perplexing and his mind must be a claustrophobic place. Maybe I’m puzzled because I’m nothing if not open to interpretation. This movie does ask an important question: how well do we perceive others? Is the community around us comprised of mere passers-by that brush off you by chance? What are the limits of reinvention? Jean-Louis Tritignant play him with distinctive nuances that make Michel so memorable too. But he’s not so cocky and needs a shelter, not a hideout. This is where things get tricky, because he engages in a dangerous game with fatal consequences, as it will turn out in the end.
He finds a house that’s obviously seen better days with three women who might feel the same about themselves: Jean’s widow, sister and maid. Before they know it, they’ve succumbed to his urges and now live in an ecstatic seclusion, shielded from reality and the truth about him. He proceeds with convincing them of his false identity, occassionally switching narratives until we can hardly tell one from the other. While Breathless looks more or less like a postcard, this is a different eperience. It’s slow, bleak and makes you reconsider watching it to the end. Jean’s experience is on the thin line between a dream and a nightmare. There are aesthetic traces of Italo Calvino’s phantasmagoric novel The Castle of Intertwined Destinies. In it, a traveler is looking for a shelter in a castle where people, unable to speak, tell their stories through tarot cards.
The stories they come with are individual in character, like chapters of a book. His narrative method is designed in a playful and puzzling manner, which makes this particular one stand out among the rest of his bibliography. But you can’t accuse them of lying just like it wouldn’t make sense to accuse Calvino of plagiarizing Giovanni Bocaccio’s Decameron. Though both take place in a remote location among a closed circle of characters. It doesn’t really matter who they are, but Grillet’s man is all about who he isn’t. The only ones who aren’t in on his game are the women. In this sense, the title already works as a spoiler. Eventually all will untangle and the fake Jean will meet a similar fate like Michel.
One of the few who got away with an almost intangible web of lies is Patricia Highsmith’s Tom Ripley, portrayed with perfection by Andrew Scott in the Netflix series that was a true discovery. Just like Michel and Jean, he’s a liar, but there’s a much more sinister side to him: eventually, he starts believing it. While Matt Damon’s Tom in Anthony Minghella’s The Talented Mr Ripley feels at least a little bit benign and rather confused, this guy is a cold-blooded, calculated grifter that barely holds it together as suspicions arise and authorities slowly close in on him. He’s obsessed with what his life has denied him, while people like Dickie Greenleaf waste it as if were paper towels instead of cash. In spite of his successful pretense, Ripley is defeated by the disappointing truth he can’t wipe away.
He’s not a heir living a bohemian life in Italy but a grifter who found a way to invade his privacy. No matter how many new identities he comes up with, the original always stays the same. Just like Belmondo, he looks the part, but that’s just a shell for the dark truth. However, the nouvelle vague is different, without a hint of the traditionally Italian dolce vita wiewers see in the new Ripley. The black and white cinematography is the aesthetic cherry on top. There’s a poignant scene where Dicky finds Tom wearing his suit. That’s the whole point of all three films: trying on a new person for size before assimilating them completely. If Godard and Grillet are to be believed, it takes much more than a bespoke linen suit and a great alibi. Because you may be able to sell a rich story, but you can’t lie to yourself.
