A Contrast

I had a most wonderful film class this afternoon. We began with a very animated discussion of an article by Arlette Farge about the relationshp between History, film, the subject, and history. From there we moved onto a general discussion of the New Wave. We'd all read an article by Antoine deBaeque that situates the New Wave in a very specific historical context, 1957-1962. As part of this dicussion we watched a few excerpts from some classic new wave films. Most notably, we watched a wonderful scene from Godard's "Band of Outsiders". The scene begins with the three main characteris seated at a table in a brasserie. They are having a conversation that is at once mundane and profoundly philosopical. At some point, the conversation moves into a discussion of silence and then, whoopp!, all of the sudden the sound dissapears, and we the viewers enjoy a 'minute' (actually around 40 seconds I think) of silence. Dialogue, and sound, then return with an invitation by one of the three to dance. A very cheerful, upbeat, dance routine then begins. At some point however, all the onscreen sound stops, and we hear Godard's (off-screen) voice narrating what's going on between the characters. It then returns to dancing, then to Godard, then dancing, till the scene ends. I couldn't stop tapping my fingers and humming for quite a while after we'd stopped watching. The song the dance to is great (I'll have to look it up). The reason this post is titled contrast is because after this jovial movie watching experience, we quickly finished the discussion and the prof screened Alain Renais' "Nuit et Brouillard" (Night and Fog) for us. I don't want to hasard a description of this film. It is a very well done documentary of the Holocaust. Very painful. Very sad.