Richard Linklater Calls Criterion's Nouvelle Vague Disc a 'Forever Home'

Richard Linklater says Criterion's new 4K release of Nouvelle Vague is "my best possible scenario of how the film could be available to people." The disc, one of Criterion's more expansive releases this year, is now available.

Speaking to The Film Stage roughly a year after the film's first release, Linklater explained that the transfer's guiding principle was doing as little as possible. "Every time we came to a part where we could make it look better, or clean—do something—I was like, 'No, we want it to look exactly like how it looked,'" he said.

The director went further, deliberately reintroducing the artifacts of photochemical cinema. "I put in little hairs and scratches and lab dust," he said. "We kind of built in the flaws of the film thing, including reel-change marks and all that. We were just all in on creating a theatrical vibe to it."

What's on the disc?

The release includes a director's commentary—now a rarity, as Linklater acknowledged—and supplements he praised as "incredible." Among them:

• Within the Wave, an extended treatment of the Cahiers du Cinéma scene, tracing everyone in the room when Rossellini speaks
• An illustrated reading of Linklater's pre-rehearsal "manifesto" letter to the cast, performed by Zoey Deutch

Linklater said Criterion's producers heard about the manifesto and pushed to make it public. "A deal that was just kind of very inside our movie, just amongst us—the director and actors—becomes this thing that anyone can kind of get in on," he said. He recorded a more personal commentary than a public Q&A would allow, reasoning that "only hardcores would listen to the commentary track."

He has long called Criterion a final resting place for a film, but revised the metaphor at the interview's close: "We need a better name than 'resting place' because it doesn't rest. It's very active there! People are watching." The pair settled on "forever home."

Why were Godard partisans worried?

A cinephile contingent greeted the American production protectively, and Linklater said he understood. "I'm in front of the CNC, I'm over in France, an American making a film about this legend, icon. Who the fuck am I?" he said. "You take on an icon, you're going to have people going 'uh-oh.'"

He distinguished his film from Hazanavicius's Redoubtable, which French audiences disliked. "My film's the good years," Linklater said, noting that the movie's final shot shows Truffaut and Godard in an embrace. "They were friends, you know? It was about a community."

The feedback he prizes most comes from other directors, including one who told him: "I'm in production and I was feeling depressed. I watched Nouvelle Vague just to get me excited about cinema again, and it helped me finish the film." He also joked about a future Dziga Vertov-era Godard film: "I'm gonna give Guillaume [Marbeck] another ten years and then we're gonna make that film."

What's next?

Merrily We Roll Along is in production, shooting this winter for the fourth time. A Lou Gehrig film with Glen Powell at Universal remains early—"No script. It's really early days"—and Linklater noted he may have no films released this year or next. The Austin Film Society, meanwhile, is adding a third theater.

The interview's most fervent passage concerned Michelangelo Antonioni's Zabriskie Point, which Linklater rewatched on Criterion after 20 years. "It blew my mind. It's like a whole new movie to me," he said. "The most subversive studio film ever made. And just beautiful. Beautiful." He defended the untrained leads against decades of criticism: "They're not trained actors but they're just real—they're real people."

"Who wins the long game? Antonioni," Linklater said. "I'm sitting here, raving about this film that I thought I knew. I just love the power of cinema, and time."