Band of Outsiders

The Band of Outsiders is a hallmark of the French New Wave Movement. The movement was based on challenging the normal conventions of filmmaking and cinematography. They increased the power of the director during movie production, and changed several essential components of a film. The French New Wave Movement switched up editing conventions such as making what would be a cut a long shot or making a long shot a cut. The movement also added other edits such as random cuts, freeze frames, or zoom-ins. The film, Band of Outsiders, presents these concepts and challenges some well established concepts.

This is evident from the beginning of the film as the title plays to a quick strobing sequence of the three main characters faces with no explanation, which is unusual and not present in traditional cinema. A subtle example is when Franz and Arthur are casing out the villa they are planning to rob and Franz pretends to be shot. The scene continues for what seems to be a long time with no cutting to anything else as Franz squirms on the ground. This differs from how traditional media would cut away after a little bit of squirming, but this movie stretches it out for a long time.  A distinct and extremely visible example occurs in the diner scene as Odile says they need a moment of silence and then they all stare at each other without talking for a minute and all sound cuts out. The movie makes the moment of silence literal, which plays to the New Wave concept of bringing the viewer out of their immersion and showing them that they are watching a movie. In traditional filmmaking the opposite effect is desired and they would not break the flow of the movie to such a high degree. The scene later on in the diner when the three protagonists are dancing also breaks the flow. The scene continues for far longer than it should with a lot of narration interlaced. This is unusual as in non-experimental movies the dancing would conclude quicker or there would be a cut. Much of the movie continues without a major example until the scene in the Metro where Odile sings a song while staring directly at the camera. This is another moment where the filmmakers are bringing the viewer out of their immersion by having the actress acknowledge the camera. Actors looking at the camera is something actors are trained to avoid doing even to the modern day so this is a rather unusual event for a viewer to see especially when it is the only such incident in the movie. The fourth wall is broken in a less obvious way later on in the movie when Arthur mentions it being like a “Bad B movie”. This once again breaks the immersion of the viewer but this time in an amusing way.

There are no more major breaks in immersion, but there are several scenes where the scene extends far past where it normally would. For instance, the scene where Franz and Arthur struggle to put a ladder up the window for an extended amount of time, as well as, when Arthur is shot by his uncle and just continues staggering around for a while. These scenes show how the French New Wave directors experimented with the basics of film to see its effect on the viewer and the art of filmmaking. This appears to be the purpose of the French New Wave.

They wanted to go past the boundaries and rules of filmmaking to see how the art could be improved. The French New Wave experimented with many techniques to see what the effect would be, no matter whether the effect was good or bad they wanted to try it to show that it could be done. These men were pioneers opening doors for future creators to not be bound by restrictive ideals, but instead allow everyone to have their own method of cinematography where the viewers decide what they thought was the best. They succeeded in their mission and changed some of the major parts of film. The French New Wave is the reason we have jump cuts, fourth wall breaks and why montages became so popular. They broke the chains holding film back and we should graciously thank them for creating a new revolution in film.