A Story of Water
1961, directed by Jean-Luc Godard & François Truffaut
The real pun in A Story of Water is not the one in the title that everybody knows about. Une histoire d’eau is homophonous with Histoire d’O, an infamous 1954 erotic novel in the style of the Marquis de Sade, not to be confused with George Bataille’s earlier erotic novella Histoire de l’œil (Story of the Eye) which Godard would later draw from in Weekend. It’s a shallow sort of a pun though, as the short film has little in common with erotic or sadomasochistic fiction. It’s a rather innocent story of a girl and a boy falling for each other on their commute to Paris through the February floods. The girl hitches a ride in the boy’s Ford Taunus, and her voice-over keeps returning to the make of the car, even going so far as to call her partner “the Fordist” – a fitting nickname, as he and his car will continually ford the waters, searching for a passable route into Paris.
The pun adds to the sense that we’re following the characters through a labyrinth, searching for the hidden ford that will eventually set them on the right path. Their course is so indirect that halfway through their journey they wind up right back where they started. It’s no coincidence then that the girl, speaking on Louis Aragon’s lectures at the Sorbonne, celebrates the art of digression: “I’m not straying from the subject, and if I do, that’s my real subject.”
It’s hard to say who gets credit for the Ford pun (which assumes a bit of familiarity with English) and the sense of digression. When François Truffaut shot the footage in 1958, he put Jean-Claude Brialy’s character in a Ford Taunus, but it was Jean-Luc Godard who capitalized on it when he took over, editing the footage and adding the dialogue. In most films, whoever coordinates the shooting and directs the acting is the primary author, but Godard’s edits give the film its shape, and they gave him the last word. His cutting and voice-over continually disrupt Truffaut’s cute but seemingly straightforward romance. When the girl says that her digressions are her “real subject”, she speaks for the film as well.
The title suggests an extended meaning. Water is an obstacle to transportation, forcing the detours and digressions that the girl and Godard value so highly… but when the characters ride boats, water is also a conduit for movement. Like a good story, water ebbs and flows. A “story of water” in this sense is a story about storytelling, justifying the girl’s claim that digression makes a proper subject. The film represents an early spark of discovery for Godard, setting a pattern for the starring roles given to language and syntax in his subsequent films. A Story of Water quotes Baudelaire and Balzac, plays with similarities in words and names, and questions its own grammar (“was, or would be, I never know either…”), but it’s the syntax of digression, of the meandering journey, of the indirect statement, that gives Godard his useful model for filmmaking.
Although Godard’s editing and the girl’s irreverent voice-over do substantial violence to Truffaut’s work, foreshadowing the break between the two friends, the result is not disrespectful to the original concept. The couple arrives in Paris, and the girl anticipates sleeping at the boy’s place that night. The intended feeling of a romantic encounter is preserved, and the voice-over gives Truffaut the top credit at the end. Godard’s contributions make a show of superior imagination, but that can’t be helped. Nevertheless, when the girl and boy get out of the car to try walking, Godard goes out of his way to pay respect to Truffaut’s original filmed material. The Fordist tells the girl to “Be quiet,” and she answers:
“Okay, I’ll be quiet. Usually I don’t care about the image. It’s the words that matter. But this time I’m wrong, because here, everything’s beautiful. No noise, no music, silence.”
The film itself then goes quiet for four seconds, and the couple walks past a channel with a beautifully reflected grove in the background. The beauty is not extraneous – it leads directly to the couple’s first kiss, a caress, and a playful series of jokes, laying the groundwork for the happy ending.
In this sense Godard extends to Truffaut a courtesy that the latter was not known for. Truffaut was the firebrand of the French New Wave, railing against the older generation of more traditional filmmakers, shattering careers with his acerbic criticism. Despite developing a style that was more radically unconventional than Truffaut’s, Godard always tended to pay respect to French cinematic tradition. His habit was synthetic rather than destructive – he wanted to build something new by incorporating the old, and he follows the same practice here, building on his partner’s contributions and including them in the final outcome.
Still, Godard’s generosity had its limits. If the girl speaks for Godard in her praise of digression, in her compliment to the picture’s beauty, and elsewhere, it can also be said that the boy speaks for Truffaut, and he’s only allowed seven exceedingly brief inserts of dialogue:
- First, when she says “We sped off… towards Paris,” he inserts the word “together”, implicitly reminding us of the shared efforts behind the film;
- Telling her “The Ford Taunus is the queen” reveals a man of perverse judgment;
- “Don’t worry” reflects a smug attitude;
- “He’s the one who said…” (in preface to the Baudelaire quote) points to another voice behind his own, i.e. Truffaut’s;
- “Be quiet,” as mentioned before, prompts the girl to yield to the visual beauty that corresponds to Truffaut’s footage;
- When she says, “While we passed… from one setting to another,” he inserts “without transition” as if denigrating Godard’s act of making transitions, i.e. editing;
- His last words “We arrived” represent the fulfilment of Truffaut’s original storyline.
On the whole these flashes of dialogue may sound unkind to Truffaut, but Jean-Claude Brialy’s character is sympathetic, and after all it’s a love story, ending with the girl acquiescing to his charms. If we read the relationship or its treatment as an allegory for Truffaut and Godard, then its tone is hopelessly paradoxical, simultaneously affectionate and unflattering toward Truffaut. Further complicating the paradox, it’s Godard’s voice, not Brialy’s, that speaks for the “Fordist”.
Godard, however, thrives on paradox. From its outset the film is filled with contradictions that supply fuel for his dialectical method. The girl opens with a line from a song: “I went to my flower bed to pick some roses red,” which she immediately contradicts: “Not at all,” as if to put us on notice that the film won’t be the simple cheerful story that Truffaut had planned. Her original digression, which sparks the digression on digressions, is about a paradox: “Did you know that on the Riviera, ‘after’ means ‘before’?” She says freedom in France is a lie, then points to the coexistence of streets named for Stalin and the czar, then declares France a free country, while lamenting the lack of freedom amid the floodwaters. Later she’ll say, “The less I pedal less quickly, the more I advance more quickly.”
A Story of Water is ultimately a comment on the paradox of narrative. Like water, which can simultaneously impede and facilitate movement, storytelling can be improved by the obstructions which divert its aims. The girl’s most observant paradox is a comment on art that foreshadows Godard’s later thinking on the subject: “Today, art is ruined because everything’s so serious.” Ironically, the more serious that people are about making art, the less serious the art becomes. To make art for art’s sake is an exercise in vanity. Creative work needs the light touch that an excess of concern tends to kill… and it needs the unpolished roughness that conveys some of the living spirit behind its creation.
Godard’s contributions add – or restore – some of the roughness and complexity of life to Truffaut’s original concept. When the story is over, we feel it’s been a celebration of the inconveniences that brought the couple together, and as they look at the floodwaters climbing the base of the Eiffel Tower, the girl confesses her own perverse wish: “If water covered France, to me, that’s happiness.” Her stated wish is for water everywhere, but in the language of this film that’s equivalent to a wish for the messiness that gives life – and art – its joy.
CONNECTIONS:
Band of Outsiders – Student(s) going from a watery eastern suburb to school in Paris; contest between Truffaut and Godard; line about a wolf; moment of silence
Alphaville – Lament about the disappearance of valuable words from language; contrast of opposites
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT:
Although I reached all of the conclusions here independently, I discovered after writing this that a few of my points were made earlier in the review at Newwavefilm.com, particularly the relevance of detours, the notion that this film augurs the break-up between Godard and Truffaut, and the inference that Godard paid respect to Truffaut in the moment of silence.