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.
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Afracious11 August 2000
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ThreeSadTigers14 March 2008Here 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. -
claudio_carvalho16 February 2009In 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.
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classicsoncall21 May 2016What to me was a generally pointless film short was given a level of credibility by reviewer Graham Greene in the review comments for the picture, so I have to thank him for explaining things here I would never have come up with on my own. When the credits rolled for the writer and director for this short, I actually thought it was a spoof seeing the names of Godard and Truffaut in the same sentence. By that time I was already puzzled why the young lady in the picture (Caroline Dim) got rid of her boots after the first romp through the flood, surely she should have expected more of the same in the swampy surroundings. As 'A Story of Water' there isn't much of a story here, but that probably wasn't even the point for the film makers. I'd suggest they were simply splashing around a few ideas.
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Horst_In_Translation22 July 2016"Une histoire d'eau" or "A Story of Water" is a French short film from 1961, so this one has its 55th anniversary this year. according to IMDb, it runs for 18 minutes, but all the versions I found ran for 12. Godard and Truffaut, the most important French filmmakers of their time, united here for this little black-and-white movie. The setting is a town that is almost completely flooded with water. We follow the ways of a young woman who meets a young man and the two spend time together and fall in love. What do we learn from this film? Jokes in the 1960s were just as bad as they are today. Two great filmmakers do not necessarily make a good film if they collaborate. I did not enjoy the watch too much. It never felt really atmospheric to me and I cared very little about the love story. Brialy, the male actor, worked in so many other projects, while Caroline Dim never appeared in a film again apparently after this one. Polar opposites really. I do not recommend the watch. Thumbs down.
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Michael_Elliott9 December 2013A 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.