French new wave influences “every movie” Noah Baumbach makes
If you don’t know Noah Baumbach, or his movies, but you do know Wes Anderson, then you probably have a treat in store. Baumbach’s films are less easily accessible than Anderson’s, and certainly less popular at the box office, but they also capture the same sideways look at normality and Baumbach tends to focus on the drama of everyday life rather than the more extravagant set-pieces of Anderson.
In terms of the written word, Baumbach’s equivalent would probably be Jonathan Franzen, who wrote the much lauded The Corrections in 2001, indeed the pair teamed up to work on a film version of the book that never came to pass in the end.
Franzen is considered one of the new great American novelists but suffers from some of the same criticisms as Baumbach, of pretentiousness and white male snobbery. But Baumbach treads some of the same paths in peering behind the curtains of American households and doesn’t shy away from the pain found there, especially in the likes of 2019’s A Marriage Story.
A scarring tale of divorce and a custody battle it stars Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson the film picked up six Academy award nominations and won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for Laura Dern in a role that Baumbach had written with her in mind.
It was typical of the tough watches that Baumbach excels in and has done since his breakthrough film The Squid and the Whale in 2005. Starring Jeff Daniels and Laura Linney, that one tells the story of another divorce, this time between two writers set in Brooklyn in the 1980s as their sons struggle to deal with the fall out. Baumbach was nominated for an Oscar for his screenplay for the film and won several critics choice awards.
That film was semi-autobiographical given Baumbach was the son of two writers in Brooklyn, and In terms of his own influences, Baumbach has spoken of his admiration for the directors of the French New Wave, including the likes of Francois Truffaut and Jean Luc Godard.
He told Interview: “I feel like they influence every movie I make. Just because I really like those movies and those filmmakers, so I always feel like I’m thinking about them in some way.”
Emerging in the late 1950s, as the country finally began to find its way out of post-war gloom, the French new wave would become one of the most important cinematic movements ever. Defying convention and fighting against traditionalism, the directors behind it used new camera techniques and editing styles t share original stories.
Godard’s Breathless, the story of a murderous criminal on the loose, and Truffaut’s The 400 Blows, which was a coming-of-age drama set in Paris starring Jean-Pierre Leaud, are just two examples of the brilliance of the movement.
In 2023 Baumbach took something of a different path as he teamed up with frequent collaborator Greta Gerwig to write the Barbie movie. It was an astonishing success, bringing in almost $1.5bn at the box office and a sequel has been much discussed. It isn’t currently in development however, despite rumours.
This week Baumbach returned with his new movie for Netflix entitled Jay Kelly. Co-written with English actor Emily Mortimer, it sees George Clooney and Adam Sandler join the ranks of the director’s favourites in Laura Dern and Adam Driver in the story of a famous actor and his manager travelling across Europe.
