A Story of Water
Early Short Films of the French New Wave
•
12m
Directed by Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut • Drama • 1958 • 12 minutes
As the spring melt floods the streets of a town outside Paris, a student (Caroline Dim) faces one obstacle after another while trying to get to the Sorbonne. Eventually, she meets up with a dashing young driver (Jean-Claude Brialy) who is at first more enamoured of his Ford sedan than of her. This is a delightful short driven by the lead character’s stream-of-consciousness narration (filled with clever wordplay, and including her thoughts on everything from Beaudelaire to the playfulness of art) as she and her newfound beau navigate flooded streets and fields. Co-directed by François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard.
Up Next in Early Short Films of the French New Wave
-
The Song of Styrene (Le chant du styr...
Directed by Alain Resnais • Documentary • 1957 • 13 minutes
Recently restored and digitized in 2K!
THE SONG OF STYRENE is the perfect example of how to turn a commissioned industrial film into a lyrical, satirical film masterpiece. When the young Alain Resnais was asked by the Péchiney plastics...
-
500 Francs
Directed by Melvin Van Peebles • Drama • 1961 • 12 minutes
Set to a percussive, syncopated soundtrack, this early Melvin Van Peebles short is a small-scale tale of obsession, greed and violence. In a run-down neighborhood, a boy notices a 500-franc note in a sewer. His improvised efforts to pull...
-
Janine
Directed by Maurice Pialat • Drama • 2023 • 17 minutes
During a desultory night on the town—playing pool, buying the paper, eating fries—two men talk about their experiences with women. One of them (Hubert Deschamps) disparages his ex-wife, “the queen of whores,” who he admits to beating with hi...
