YINUO ZHANG
Yinuo Zhang is a senior double majoring in Art History and Economics. She is particularly interested in the vanguard movements of the 1920s and their influence on the narrative and visual language of French Cinema. During her study abroad at Oxford, she conducted a semester-long research project on European Cinema, with a focus on Agnès Varda and François Truffaut. Outside the classroom, Yinuo is a Thai food lover, an active member of the Japanese Culture Association, and was inducted to Phi Beta Kappa in fall 2021. She worked with the TED team as a part time translator and is currently a research assistant in the Economics department. After graduation, she will pursue an MA in Art History at the University of Toronto.
FEMALE AGENCY: JEANNE MOREAU IN FRENCH NEW WAVE CINEMA
Jeanne Moreau in L'acenseur pour l'échafaud (dir. Louis Malle, 1958)
Although French New Wave directors of the 1960s have been recognized as trailblazers for experimental cinema, they have also been criticized by first-wave feminist scholars for setting up a disguised campaign for hegemonic patriarchy. In the late twentieth century, a second-wave of feminist scholars have reoriented the debate by drawing attention to the power of the implied female spectator. Building on recent theories of authorial analysis, this paper considers both the issue of female spectatorship and authorship, proposing that during the development of the French New Wave, the "to-be-looked-at-ness" of female characters was already fading. Specifically, I focus on the career of French New Wave actress Jeanne Moreau to exemplify the shift from visual objecthood to female author-spectatorship.
The role for women as objects of passive gaze began to change as more females entered different sectors of film production during the 1950s. As a French actress who worked with most of the major directors of the French New Wave, Jeanne Moreau transformed the screen from a space for objectified representation of her character to a stage for active presentation of herself. Identifying personally with most of her characters, Moreau explored and acted out her own complexity through nuanced manipulation of facial expression and dynamic gestures. Not only did Moreau radically challenge the gender boundaries through her acting, she also facilitated the career of several distinguished New Wave directors by insinuating her wisdom through off-stage participation. The case of Jeanne Moreau leads us to re-evaluate existing perceptions of feminine power in the film industry. It reveals how French New Wave film, rather than mere patriarchal propaganda, provided a venue for female participants to reconfigure the question of "who is the author" into "what defines an author". Presenting women as "outside" authors, the movement set the stage for implicit control and female empowerment.