NEW WAVES AROUND THE WORLD: Interview with TCM Host Alicia Malone

Turner Classic Movies is shining a spotlight on cinematic “New Waves” from around the world during the months of October and November. Hosted by Alicia Malone, the programming features six nights devoted to movements from a variety of different countries, focusing on what made each of these New Waves unique while also highlighting the throughlines that connect them all; it’s basically a six-week cinema studies class taught by one of TCM’s most knowledgeable hosts.

I sat down (virtually) with Malone to discuss the importance of TCM airing international classics alongside Hollywood movies, our personal introductions to the cinematic New Waves, and what makes the movement in her native Australia stand out. 

Thank you for your time today! The first thing I wanted to ask is how this New Waves Around the World series came to be because I think it’s a really great idea.

Malone: Me too, I think it’s such a wonderful idea. Our programming team comes up with these series and I’m always amazed at how they have new ideas over and over when we’re often showing the same films. I think it was Ben Cheaves in our programming department who came up with the idea. Funnily enough, at the same time, they’re very kind in that they ask us, hosts, if we have any ideas for programming and things we’d love to do, and I said I’d love to do something about the cinematic New Waves. But it was Ben’s idea that got it through and I was just lucky enough to be able to host it.

Awesome. I think what you said about showing a lot of the same movies is interesting. Part of me loves that about TCM because I can see my old favorites all the time. But part of me also thinks that, because of that, a lot of people predominantly associate TCM with classic Hollywood, or at least classic English-language movies. That’s one of the reasons why I think this series is great: because there’s a lot more international cinema than I’m used to seeing on TCM. I want to know your thoughts about that.

Malone: It’s interesting because for me growing up in Australia, every movie was foreign – all of the classic Hollywood movies were foreign movies. I definitely watched a lot of foreign films as well as classics and they all became classics to me. 

Of course, TCM is known for Hollywood classics, but they’ve always had programming like TCM Imports, where they show foreign films. It’s wonderful to be able to do a series like this, to show that these are classic films, that just because they’re from a different country doesn’t make them any less important than Hollywood films. And it’s always interesting to look at the ways that these films from other countries and filmmakers ended up influencing American cinema, or vice versa. You look at the French New Wave, they were very much influenced by people like Orson Welles, Nicholas Ray, and Alfred Hitchc*ck: directors who had a very distinct point of view but worked a lot in Hollywood. So I think it makes natural sense, and I hope people enjoy it. 

For me, the thing about foreign film—and I know very many people have said this—is the way it opens a window onto the world. It’s a way, as Roger Ebert always said, of creating empathy, because you can see how we are all very much alike. Even if we speak different languages, we all want the same things, we all deal with love and loss and pain, and so much of that is what you see in the cinematic New Wave. 

It’s also interesting to see how film and politics have always worked together. I know a lot of people always want them to be separate—to not talk about politics when we talk about film—but especially with the New Wave, all of these films were created in response to what was happening in that country at that time. 

My introduction to the cinematic New Waves happened when I was a freshman in college, at film school, and I watched Breathless. I think that’s a lot of people’s introduction to the New Wave, to the point that it almost feels like a cliche to talk about it. But at the same time, for me, that was really a landmark movie and it remains one of my favorites. It’s just so lively, the cutting is so interesting, the characters are so stylish and attractive while doing unattractive things. Is there a particular New Wave film that stands out for you as being like an introduction to this movement?

Malone: Yeah, definitely. And with something like Breathless, one of the things I tried to get across in my introductions is how radical these movies were at the time. Because now we have seen them copied so much, parodied even, that we can forget that this was a whole new type of cinematic language that people hadn’t seen before. 

Breathless was definitely one of the introduction films [for me]. I was a late teen, young adult, and I didn’t go to film school, so I was a self-taught “film buff.” I was determined to become a film buff, and it was like, what are the movies you need to see in order to become a film buff? Well, you have to see the French New Wave, you have to see Breathless and The 400 Blows. So those were probably my starter films. Also, some of the Italian films: Rome, Open City was one of my starter films. 

But it’s only as I’ve gotten older that I’ve gotten to appreciate them more. Both for how they changed cinema in general—not just in that particular country, but around the world—and for what they were doing at the time, what they were saying, what they were speaking out against, how different they were. It was the burst of energy from new filmmakers that people hadn’t seen before. 

So it was fun to go back and write an intro for Hiroshima Mon Amour, as an example. You watch that film today and you think, oh, it’s poetic and it’s beautiful, but you read the reviews and the anecdotes of the time from the people who went to the 1959 Cannes Festival, and they said it was like nothing they had ever seen before. Alain Resnais talked about wanting to shatter time completely in his film, and it makes you realize, wow, this was something new at that moment. Easy to forget now when we’ve watched them so many times and talked about them endlessly.

I like what you said about thinking about the films differently as you get older and watching them again. I know that for me, Italian Neorealism is something that I appreciate more now than I did in my late teens and early twenties. At the time, they felt really slow in a lot of ways, but now I really relish and appreciate that.

Malone: Me too.

Is there a particular movie that you have come to think about very differently after revisiting it?

Malone: La Strada is one of those for me. I remember seeing that one, and I remember enjoying it but not really understanding much about it and not really delving beyond what the simple story was or thinking about the parable that Fellini was creating with these characters. To watch it now, I appreciate so much—not only the crafting of the story but also the performances. 

You have Giulietta Masina as Gelsomina, and she has been compared to Charlie Chaplin in that film with the way she moves her body and her expressive face. I’ve come to appreciate more of the nuances of her performance and what her character is standing for. When I watched it as a kid, I saw it more as, oh, a girl gets sold to a strong man and goes off with him, and I didn’t think about the deeper themes. And that’s always the pleasure of revisiting films. 

Lately, I’ve been thinking about the idea of film knowledge, and I think so much of what we talk about when it comes to film knowledge is: can you name all the movies? Can you name all the characters? Can you name all the directors? That comes with knowledge but it’s more about recall and memory. For me, knowledge is being able to watch a film over and over again and grapple with the themes, maybe you don’t completely understand it, but just a willingness to sit there and delve deeper than just the surface stuff. That for me is the real pleasure of revisiting films, particularly as you get older and start to see things differently. 

Definitely. And there are definitely some in this series that I want to revisit now because I haven’t seen them in a really long time. Shoot the Piano Player is one.

Malone: Yes! I love Shoot the Piano Player.

That’s one where when I first watched it, I was like, “this is a lot to take in, what is even happening?” So I’d love to revisit that now with more, as you say, film knowledge.

Malone: Exactly. It’s also great to show those kinds of films to people who say, “foreign movies are boring, they have subtitles, I don’t want to read them.” If you show Shoot the Piano Player to someone who says they love film noir…well, they’re going to love it, because it’s so much inspired by American film noir and gangster films. 

We have talked a lot about the French and Italian movements, and I do think that in the United States, those are the main ones people think of when they think of the New Wave. They’re much more mainstream, I would say, than the Polish or German movements.

Malone: Absolutely.

How do you approach crafting introductions for those movements that you know might be a little more obscure? The French New Wave, as you mentioned, was so heavily influenced by Hollywood, which I think is why a lot of American moviegoers end up really liking it.

Malone: Exactly. And the Czech New Wave is so experimental, sometimes I’m like “okay, get ready for an experience, here comes this movie!” For a lot of people who are used to watching American films, it’s completely different. But I try to approach these films by putting them in historical context. That’s our main job as TCM hosts, to try and place the films in the larger historical context of what was happening in the country at that time and who that filmmaker was. 

With the cinematic New Waves, it was great to look at the waves as a whole. We have one night that’s dedicated to the Polish, German, and Czech New Waves, and it was interesting to talk about them not only individually but how one wave influenced the other. So I tried to focus on that and to prepare people that they’re going to see something experimental but also ground them in why these films were made, what they were trying to say, and the reactions to them, such as the government blacklisting filmmakers during the Czech New Wave. 

It’s also interesting to grapple with the idea of what a cinematic New Wave is because the French New Wave is a very clear group of independent film writers, critics, and filmmakers who came together to make these movies. But something like the Japanese New Wave—that was created by movie studios. And the British New Wave is a bit harder to define. So that was also interesting for me, the challenge of trying to create a cohesive story while also acknowledging that some of the films in the programming, people may debate about whether they are New Wave films or not.

What are some examples of films that you think people may debate about?

Malone: Well, especially with the Japanese New Wave, because of the fact that it was created by the studios and it wasn’t independent film directors. There are themes that recur during the Japanese New Wave, such as the so-called Sun Tribe films, which are the rebellious youth movies. That’s a lot of what we focus on when we talk about the Japanese New Wave, but it’s not as easy to define as the French New Wave with its jump cuts and handheld cameras, or Italian Neorealism where it’s shot outside the studio with nonprofessional actors. 

And even a film like La Strada, or Il Posto, which is a film that we played as part of our Italian Neorealism section. That’s a film that was made after what is generally considered to be the end of Italian Neorealism; it has Neorealist elements, but you wouldn’t necessarily call it a Neorealist film because it came well after World War II. So there are movies like that which don’t fit into a neatly defined box, but you can see how Neorealism influenced Il Posto, and Il Posto took it to a new level. 

Following up on something you previously said about the Polish, German, and Czech New Waves being put together on one night—why do you think those New Waves work well together? 

Malone: Well, particularly with the Polish and the Czech New Waves, I think you can see a throughline from when the Polish New Wave started: that began at the film school, with the students being exposed to new films. Then teachers at the national film school in the former Czechoslovakia heard about that and said “let’s do that here” and exposed their students to all of the various New Waves, like the French New Wave, and told their students to go out and make their own stories. 

So these New Waves build upon one another. And the way that TCM has programmed them, which I think is brilliant, is in chronological order. So we start with Italian Neorealism in the 1940s and go through to the Australian New Wave, which started in the 1970s. So you can see a throughline connecting each of these new waves and how they inspired each other but also how they are unique because they’re filmmakers telling their own stories about that country.

As you said, the Australian New Wave is the one that concludes the programming. I’d love to hear from you, as an Australian, about what you think makes these movies special and what they convey about life and culture in Australia.

Malone: This is obviously near and dear to my heart. The Australian New Wave is really interesting to look at because it came so late, in the 1970s. But then you look back at why that was. The film industry in Australia has had many ups and downs. We were responsible for creating what many people think is the first narrative feature made, in 1906, with The Story of the Kelly Gang. So we were there at the beginning of cinema, in the 1920s and 1930s we produced films, and then during World War II it really dropped off to the point that there was virtually no film industry at all in Australia for many decades. We were watching American movies, in particular Hollywood movies, which still happens today. 

It wasn’t until the 1970s that the government realized, we need to do something about this, we need to make it easier for new filmmakers to tell their stories. So they opened up tax cuts and grants and that led to a burst of creativity. Not only the Australian New Wave, but also what is called Ozploitation, which Quentin Tarantino is a big fan of: that kind of shocking genre film filled with sex and violence. That’s where Mad Max came from, which has since become a classic.  

But the Australian New Wave was actually kicked off by two directors who were not Australian: the Canadian Ted Kotcheff, with Wake in Fright, and the Englishman Nicolas Roeg, with Walkabout. The reason a lot of people say these films helped spur creativity among local filmmakers is that they saw their country on the big screen for the first time in many decades, and they realized Australia was a very cinematic place. Those films gave an outsider’s perspective to what Australia really is and also showed how Australia is such a mixture of contrasts. That’s what you see throughout the Australian New Wave: you have the outback, which is really harsh and uninhabitable, and also the beautiful side, with the beaches. 

You also see how English colonialism impacted Australia. In films like Picnic at Hanging Rock and Walkabout, you have the very structured, English way of living that was forced onto Australia, which is very wild and untamable. That’s really interesting to explore in terms of the country and I hope people get to see some of that in our films. And also, it was really the first time people had seen indigenous Australians on the big screen. Even today, there’s what we call the Great Australian Silence, which is you just don’t talk about racism, you don’t talk about the indigenous Australians—out of sight, out of mind. And so, to have Walkabout, where Nicolas Roeg, an Englishman, puts an indigenous Australian, David Gulpilil, front and center, and makes him sexually attractive to the white English girl—that was revolutionary for the time. 

I like what you said about the contrast between the colonialism of the English and the wildness of Australia in regards to Picnic at Hanging Rock in particular because that really does perfectly encompass it, doesn’t it? The proper, prim English schoolgirls going out into the Australian outback and everything going crazy and no one being prepared for what was going to happen.

Malone: Exactly. It not only gives you those haunting images of the girls in white dresses scaling up this massive rock, but it also makes you think about how unnatural it was to force this English way of life onto a new country like Australia, and how colonialism as a whole is something quite abhorrent and led to those horrors. 

Is there any single film among the Australian films in the series that you would say, if you only watch one Australian New Wave film, make it this one? 

Malone: Yes—My Brilliant Career, by Gillian Armstrong. When she made that film, she was the first female director in almost fifty years to helm a movie in Australia; she didn’t realize at the time that it was hard for women to get films made because it was hard for everyone to get films made. It is a movie that I distinctly remember seeing as a teenager. The wildness of the character of Sybylla, played by Judy Davis, just compliments the wildness of the landscape of Australia. Again, you have that idea of the English way or the colonial way of doing things versus the wildness of the country and how it doesn’t fit together. So, she wants to have her own brilliant career and doesn’t want to marry Sam Neill.

It’s been called a feminist fairy tale but it’s just an entertaining movie with brilliant performances and beautiful cinematography. Beautiful Australia. And as soon as it opens, and the birds chirp, it takes me right back to Australia. That particular birdsong, it’s like, oh yeah, this is Australia. 

TCM Spotlight: New Waves Around the World is hosted by Alicia Malone and airs Tuesday nights in October and November on TCM.