User reviews

This short film follows a woman's trip to Paris through a vast flooded area. On the way she meets a man who teases her. The story is narrated by the woman most of the time. I liked the end credits where the woman just narrated the credits, as if to say this is nothing really.

Here we find directors Jean Luc Godard and Francois Truffaut at their most playful and frivolous; taking a loose and two-dimensional concept and creating something that exists for no other reason than to encapsulate the excitement and imagination of real film-making. As a result, the story is meaningless; something about a couple trying to make their journey home by car before torrential rain floods the neighbouring towns. The idea is really as simple as it sounds; something that was no doubt hashed out over a quick luncheon conversation between Godard and Truffaut, both of whom were at the time preparing for more meaningful feature-length debuts.

The images here hold a great debt to the films they made prior to this experiment, with clear nods to both The 400 Blows and Breathless; though we can already see Godard's obsession with post-apocalyptic, possibly religious imagery, creeping slowly to the forefront of his work.

The film signals the way forward for both filmmakers... though whether or not it holds anything in the way of cinematic interest for the viewer is debatable. Short films mainly work towards satisfying the curious. Here we can see how youthful exuberance once lead a generation of young people to believe that they could do anything, as long as they had access to a camera. On a semi-related note, I'm currently enjoying a mini-short-film festival to satisfy my own interest in the auteur theory; largely to discover if certain filmmaker's have the same visual and narrative trademarks at the beginning of their careers, as they do when they come to the end.

Godard does. I believe he has a handful of concerns when approaching a film, and these concerns have remained the same from the 1960's on. Whether this constitutes as a great film under that criteria is unimportant. This is a simple romp for those who see the joy that is prevalent in the art of making films, and not something that is meant to be taken that entirely seriously.

In February, the heat melts the snow in the Alpes and Ile-de-France, flooding the area of Villeneuve Saint Georges. A young woman (Caroline Dim) wants to go to Paris, but she finds that the buses are not traveling. She takes a lift in a car driven by a young man (Jean-Claude Brialy). While trying to find a way out of the flooded area, they get close to each other until they finally reach the Eiffel Tower.

What a boring and uninteresting monologue this experimental "Une Histoire d'Eau" is! Fortunately it is a short and there is no time to sleep. I was absolutely disappointed with such fiasco, since the authorship is signed by Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut. The originality is in the final credits narrated by Caroline Dim; and that is all. My vote is three.

Title (Brazil): Not available

A Story of Water (1961)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Francois Truffaut directed this story of a woman trying to get to Paris but she's unable to due to the streets being flooded. She eventually catches a ride with a young man and the two begin to get to know one another as they make their way to the Eiffel Tower. The introduction I watched to this film stated that Truffaut directed the majority of the scenes here and then handed the material over to Jean-Luc Godard who edited everything and then added the narration and weird soundtrack. If you're familiar with either filmmaker's work then it's pretty easy to see the two styles going against one another but I'm sure this here is one reason why so many people love this short. As for me, I can't say that I loved it but at the same time I didn't hate it either. I thought the "story" aspect was the most interesting part as we see the two becoming closer as they go on this journey together. The weird music score adds a certain campy nature to the picture and the strange dialogue does the same. There are some interesting touches with the two styles going up against one another but in the end it doesn't make this anything more than mildly entertaining.