Une histoire d'eau (1961)
Directed by Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut

Film Review

Shortly after making his first commercial film, Les Mistons, in 1958, François Truffaut decided to make a short documentary film about the floods being experienced by Paris at the time.  This later evolved into an improvised film, part documentary, part comic fiction, which was dedicated to Mack Sennett, the creator of the Keystone Kops.

Having finished the shooting, Truffaut had a change of heart and decided to abandon the film, partly out of sympathy for those who were made homeless by the floods.  He allowed his friend Jean-Luc Godard to use his footage to complete the film.

Godard's main contribution was the snazzy editing and the addition of his own dialogue and narration.  The resultant film is an entertaining short film, overall baffling and challenging, but simultaneously fresh and engaging.  Somehow, it manages to capture the essence of the French New Wave, with its radical construction and an almost anarchistic synthesis of the mundane and the unashamedly erudite.

Film Synopsis

An attractive young woman leaves her home one morning to find that the streets around her house on the outskirts of Paris are flooded after the early-spring ice thaw.  She borrows a canoe and manages to reach dry land, where she is fortunate enough to hitch a lift from a handsome young man.  The woman is insistent that she must get to Paris before nightfall, and the man kindly agrees to drive her there.  The flood turns out to be far worse than either of them had supposed.  All the major roads into Paris are completely waterlogged and the only option is to take a perilous detour across the countryside.  Both the man and his passenger make the most of their enforced companionship.  As she talks at length about love and literature, he fills the hours boasting about his car.  It's one way to start a romance...