Where does an artistic revolutionary go once the world has caught up with their ingenuity? Some are put out to pasture, fading into obscurity through struggling to come to terms with a rise in popularity, indicating that they were no longer symbols of the avant-garde and instead highly influential remnants of a bygone era. Others choose to embrace the mainstream and attempt to assimilate into the community that they previously criticised. Then there’s Jean-Luc Godard, whose name alone evokes a vivid image of the cinematic vanguard, a call sign for artistic experimentation, boundless creativity and interminable innovation, all of which are the fundamental reasons he has remained such an important figure, and his career (which spanned over half a century, working its way across every conceivable format) remains incredibly important, revered by even those who are beyond cynical about some of his specific approaches. One of the more challenging works in his oeuvre is Nouvelle Vague, a film that has proven to be one of his more inaccessible titles, both literally, in terms of it being barely released in many major markets, as well as metaphorically, with the themes that guide this film being beyond unconventional, and his style matching these intentions beat-for-beat, never quite finding the consistency that we may anticipate. The film follows a wealthy contessa and her budding relationship with an enigmatic drifter, who becomes the source of both her affection and insecurity, especially when he reveals that he is far more than what he appears to be on the surface. As challenging and unconventional as anything else he made during his peak, with additional elements that pander towards an intriguing sense of complexity that we only started noticing infiltrating Godard’s work later in his career, once he had entirely reinvented himself as someone who was staying about as far from the mainstream as he could get, to the point where every frame of Nouvelle Vague strikes us as a fervent rebellion against what he viewed to be the greatest threat to art at the time: reliability, logic and consistency.

There is a quotation by Roland Barthes that I often return to – “the text is a tissue of quotations drawn from the innumerable centres of culture”, which I find is very useful when starting discussions on film that not only defy categorisation, but are actively incredulous to the idea of following conventions. Godard is perhaps the most famous director who built his entire career from such a sentiment – he was never one to follow the rules, and instead seemed to actively relish in deconstructing the genres and styles with which he was working. It is not a mistake that Nouvelle Vague bears the same name as the cinematic movement that Godard essentially helped pioneer, becoming one of its foremost voices and arguably its most notable mascot (even if we can debate which of his colleagues were actually more skilled filmmakers, a discussion for another day), since this is a film about cinema and what it represents. However, where it deviates comes in how the story is constructed – the entire film is composed of characters whose names are all taken directly from real cinematic figures (both specific characters and the people involved in their creation), and consists of conversations lifted almost verbatim from a wide range of films. It is impossible to recognise absolutely every reference or understand its source, but anyone with even the most surface-level knowledge of cinematic history will be familiar with enough of these clues to understand Godard’s methods. We’ve seen some tremendous examples of filmmakers taking fragments of existing works and creating visual collages, repurposing older footage and breathing new life into familiar images. This exists in the same conceptual vicinity, but rather than taking a visual approach, Godard constructs a unique story, borrowing lines of dialogue, turning Nouvelle Vague into one of the rare film-based audio collages. The results are certainly intriguing, but it’s understandably quite a strange approach, and one that does require the viewer to be willing to leap onto the director’s wavelength for the duration of the film.

One of the reasons Godard attained such a distinct sense of respectability, despite being a controversial figure and someone that was not always appreciated, was mainly because everything he did had purpose, and was rarely shallow or superficial in the way that we have found defines the careers of those misguided individuals who use his approach to filmmaking as a model for their own artistic endeavours. Even at his worst, the most frustrating quality in his work was that it sometimes felt slightly too ambitious, especially when he was often compressing enormous, intimidating ideas into smaller and more unconventional spaces. Nouvelle Vague is not seen as one of his major achievements (or at least this is based on the consensus – it certainly has its passionate defenders), primarily because the process of decoding its meaning is not always easy. However, once we notice the continuous allusions to existing films, both through the dialogue and the characters delivering it, we begin to notice patterns, indicating that this is very much drawn from Godard’s inherent passion for the medium and his willingness to borrow liberally. We are even forced to question whether someone taking dialogue directly from existing works can be considered theft if there is some artistic purpose behind the act. Ultimately, we can condense the argument into one simple sentiment: why create a new sentence when a perfectly decent, well-crafted one already exists? This is the very foundation of postmodernism, and something that Godard is frequently investigating in Nouvelle Vague, which is not a film about cinema in the traditional sense – there aren’t any lavish recreations of film sets, nor frustrated artists sitting in smoke-filled editing rooms, poring over the raw footage in the hopes of cobbling it into what they intend to be a masterpiece. Instead, it’s an experimental deconstruction of the medium, showing how art and culture are inextricably woven together in ways that we tend to find quite difficult to see from a distance. It’s a tremendously fascinating approach, and Godard is delivering absolutely stellar work in the process, questioning just as much as he is asserting, which is a relatively solid description for his entire body of work and his overall artistic ambitions as a whole.

There has been a significant amount of discussion around Godard and his choice of actors – he was someone equally comfortable using major stars as he was enlisting any stranger he found on the street, giving them equal footing in his work and essentially setting out to prove that anyone can deliver a well-crafted performance if handled by someone who has a strong command of his craft. In the case of Nouvelle Vague, we find him peddling mostly in the former, primarily through the casting of Alain Delon to play one of the two primary leads. Much like Godard, Delon has become the face of French cinema in the 20th century, his striking appearance and immense talents making him arguably the most important male actor to emerge from this particular era. Yet, surprisingly we find that this is the first (and ultimately only) collaboration between the two actors, coming about years after what many consider to be their artistic peaks – they both worked steadily for years after the gradual decline of the French New Wave, but were seen as being lingering remnants of the past, solid and talented artists who chose to pursue less-conventional projects as they got older. They work together exceptionally well, with Godard bringing out some of Delon’s inherent talents that had remained dormant for years, but suddenly re-emerge quite brilliantly. Much of Nouvelle Vague does focus on Delon riffing on his own image – his character is killed after being thrown overboard from a boat (a not-subtle callback to Purple Noon, in which he was on the other side of the dynamic), while several other character-based details are found throughout, searching for their meaning one of the most wholeheartedly intriguing aspects of the film. He’s joined by Domiziana Giordano, who portrays the statuesque contessa who serves as the main protagonist – its a very quiet, complex performance that aims for the smaller and more intimate moments, and while she is not as memorable as Delon (who is framed in such a way that he lingers with us long after the film has ended), she nonetheless delivers a very good performance that comes across as entirely compelling and poignant, even at its more off-kilter moments.

Only someone with the rare combination of gall and artistic ingenuity could so seamlessly get away with giving a film a title of an entire cinematic movement, especially one in which he is consistently considered one of the founding members – but yet, he proves that his reputation is well-earned, since every aspect of Nouvelle Vague, while perhaps slightly imperfect, is at the very least profoundly fascinating and deeply moving, even when the film that surrounds it may not always be as exceptionally compelling as we may hope in certain moments. It can be slightly frustrating in some parts, since Godard has never been someone who has intended to make films in which logic and reason are their driving force – even at their most simple, his works are labyrinthine existential odysseys, and this is certainly one of his more challenging cinematic excursions. Nonetheless, we grow to truly appreciate Nouvelle Vague, a film that is essentially based around the folly of art and how it factors into our daily lives. While we may not spend every waking moment immersed in cinema, we do live in a world where it has become a part of the global culture, and where it is truly impossible to entirely escape it as one of the dominant forces guiding our lives. Not necessarily a love letter to cinema so much as it is a steadfast provocation of both form and content, Nouvelle Vague is quite an achievement, and while it may not be as well-regarded as some of his most canonical works, it does remain one of Godard’s most fascinating experiments, and yet another tremendous example of his cinematic mastery and ability to create some unforgettable narratives.