Terminale
(See here for the rather amusing idea)
1955's confusing Terminale is not regarded as one of the Nouvelle Vague's high points. Ti and Ki, presented as missionaries from the future, are parallel unreliable narrators. Ki represents "the Apparatus," the regimented and possibly even robotic government of the future which is all that stands between humanity and death by starvation as a consequence of overpopulation and constant warfare. Ki is an agent of change, possibly even a madman, who claims to represent the last hope for the survival of humanity against the institutions which threaten to reduce people to cogs in a vast machine. Both have fled to the past to preserve aspects of their future which are intertwined with a cafe waitress, Sabrina Conneur, whom Ti and Ki believe will be the mother of a scientist who will create the Apparatus but also eventually destroy it. Ti is uncreative but implacable, working Paris's bureaucracy to track down the woman, while Ki drags her on a twisted trail through the city's parks, museums, and underground in order to save her, though she constantly doubts his motives (but she sleeps with him anyway). Ki is eventually killed, but, in an ironic twist, Ti also dies when Sabrina lures him into a factory (heavy machinery is used through the film as a motif to indicate Ti's presence) and pushes him into the machinery. Sabrina is left in the factory to wonder if the Apparatus already exists around her, and whether survival of any kind in the future is possible.
The central point of criticism has to do with the future of the Apparatus and Sabrina's child. Ti is hunting Sabrina to prevent the birth of the person who will destroy the Apparatus, but without the child, the Apparatus will never be created. Ki is attempting to save her for the sake of the destruction of the Apparatus, but if she lives, the Apparatus will inevitably arise.
That the film is remembered at all is surely a result of many of its striking images. The one most cited is the page-turning montage where the landlord of Ti's pension bangs on the door and demands the rent. Ti, cleaning and reassembling a pistol, looks up into a mirror, then at the door. A series of pages flipping, turning up the words and phrases which make up his eventual response, is superimposed over the scene and is elegantly coordinated with his movements. Likewise, the heavy use of jump cuts to represent how Ki had become "unstuck" in time was a significant influence on later New Wave films. Ultimately, the film is regarded as a far inferior work to other New Wave attempts at science fiction such as Le Jetee and Alphaville, though its influence on both is clear.
Naturally (as avant garde critics say with some contempt), Cameron's 1984 remake vastly simplifies matters and mercilessly rips out the ambiguities and whatever elegance the film once had. The child whose birth is at issue is reduced to a savior of mankind, with the Apparatus reduced to a spontaneous development from computer networks. Ki and Sabrina's long discussions about the nature of time and the need for chaos against the backdrop of some of Paris's more attractive public places become nigh-wordless car chases across Los Angeles. And it appears that Cameron didn't understand that Ti's repeated promise to return to the locations he visited (frequently outside of regular hours) was a joke about his hidebound attitudes.
1955's confusing Terminale is not regarded as one of the Nouvelle Vague's high points. Ti and Ki, presented as missionaries from the future, are parallel unreliable narrators. Ki represents "the Apparatus," the regimented and possibly even robotic government of the future which is all that stands between humanity and death by starvation as a consequence of overpopulation and constant warfare. Ki is an agent of change, possibly even a madman, who claims to represent the last hope for the survival of humanity against the institutions which threaten to reduce people to cogs in a vast machine. Both have fled to the past to preserve aspects of their future which are intertwined with a cafe waitress, Sabrina Conneur, whom Ti and Ki believe will be the mother of a scientist who will create the Apparatus but also eventually destroy it. Ti is uncreative but implacable, working Paris's bureaucracy to track down the woman, while Ki drags her on a twisted trail through the city's parks, museums, and underground in order to save her, though she constantly doubts his motives (but she sleeps with him anyway). Ki is eventually killed, but, in an ironic twist, Ti also dies when Sabrina lures him into a factory (heavy machinery is used through the film as a motif to indicate Ti's presence) and pushes him into the machinery. Sabrina is left in the factory to wonder if the Apparatus already exists around her, and whether survival of any kind in the future is possible.
The central point of criticism has to do with the future of the Apparatus and Sabrina's child. Ti is hunting Sabrina to prevent the birth of the person who will destroy the Apparatus, but without the child, the Apparatus will never be created. Ki is attempting to save her for the sake of the destruction of the Apparatus, but if she lives, the Apparatus will inevitably arise.
That the film is remembered at all is surely a result of many of its striking images. The one most cited is the page-turning montage where the landlord of Ti's pension bangs on the door and demands the rent. Ti, cleaning and reassembling a pistol, looks up into a mirror, then at the door. A series of pages flipping, turning up the words and phrases which make up his eventual response, is superimposed over the scene and is elegantly coordinated with his movements. Likewise, the heavy use of jump cuts to represent how Ki had become "unstuck" in time was a significant influence on later New Wave films. Ultimately, the film is regarded as a far inferior work to other New Wave attempts at science fiction such as Le Jetee and Alphaville, though its influence on both is clear.
Naturally (as avant garde critics say with some contempt), Cameron's 1984 remake vastly simplifies matters and mercilessly rips out the ambiguities and whatever elegance the film once had. The child whose birth is at issue is reduced to a savior of mankind, with the Apparatus reduced to a spontaneous development from computer networks. Ki and Sabrina's long discussions about the nature of time and the need for chaos against the backdrop of some of Paris's more attractive public places become nigh-wordless car chases across Los Angeles. And it appears that Cameron didn't understand that Ti's repeated promise to return to the locations he visited (frequently outside of regular hours) was a joke about his hidebound attitudes.