Auteur Study Luc Besson
Submitted by kingeric on 06/30/2008 05:21 PM
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Auteur Study Luc Besson
In this auteur study I will be referring to the French director Luc Besson. In the 1950's French film saw a period of revolution and consequently a small group of film critics turned their back on traditional methods of French film making and sought their inspiration from overseas. The result was French Nouvelle Vague and their heroes were Hitchcock and Ray instead of Renoir and Carne. This shift repeated itself 25 years later as the Novelle Vogue of the 1980's also sought its inspiration from America and from this New Wave emerged Luc Besson, a contemporary director, regarded by some as the French Spielberg.
One of the first characteristics noticeable is Besson's preference to slightly built young women as his leads. The heroines have almost boyish figures and significantly, possess more strength than any of the men in the films. This is true not only in "Nikita" (Anne Parrilaud/Nikita), but also "Leon" (Natalie Portman/Mathilda) and the "Fifth Element" (Milla Jovovich who plays Leeloo). Nikita is a deadly government assassin, while Mathilda was the only survivor at the end of "Leon", and Leeloo was literally a "supreme being".
The principal characters in "Subway", ", "Nikita", "Leon" and the "Fifth Element" all have a number of things in common Besson's protagonists are spontaneous and daring, not afraid to act on impulse and instinct. More notably they are all loners or outcasts from society. They struggle to fit easily into the conformist society that surrounds them, albeit the societies in question are explicably extreme and alien to the majority.
The worlds explored in these films (with the possible exception of "Fifth Element") are dark and uncertain places where conventional views of what is right and wrong are challenged, and where only the principal characters (in spite of appearances, occupation and status) show any real "integrity". Besson repeatedly explores the conflict between his characters and the...
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