French New Wave (french: La Nouvelle Vague) is a French
art film
An art film (or arthouse film) is typically an independent film, aimed at a niche market rather than a mass market audience. It is "intended to be a serious, artistic work, often experimental and not designed for mass appeal", "made primarily f ...
movement that emerged in the late 1950s. The movement was characterized by its rejection of traditional
filmmaking
Filmmaking (film production) is the process by which a motion picture is produced. Filmmaking involves a number of complex and discrete stages, starting with an initial story, idea, or commission. It then continues through screenwriting, cast ...
conventions in favor of experimentation and a spirit of
iconoclasm
Iconoclasm (from Greek: grc, εἰκών, lit=figure, icon, translit=eikṓn, label=none + grc, κλάω, lit=to break, translit=kláō, label=none)From grc, εἰκών + κλάω, lit=image-breaking. ''Iconoclasm'' may also be conside ...
. New Wave filmmakers explored new approaches to
editing
Editing is the process of selecting and preparing written, photographic, visual, audible, or cinematic material used by a person or an entity to convey a message or information. The editing process can involve correction, condensation, o ...
, visual style, and narrative, as well as engagement with the social and political upheavals of the era, often making use of irony or exploring
existential
Existentialism ( ) is a form of philosophical inquiry that explores the problem of human existence and centers on human thinking, feeling, and acting. Existentialist thinkers frequently explore issues related to the meaning, purpose, and valu ...
themes. The New Wave is often considered one of the most influential movements in the history of
cinema
Cinema may refer to:
Film
* Cinematography, the art of motion-picture photography
* Film or movie, a series of still images that create the illusion of a moving image
** Film industry, the technological and commercial institutions of filmmaking
...
.
The term was first used by a group of French film critics and cinephiles associated with the magazine ''
Cahiers du cinéma'' in the late 1950s and 1960s. These critics rejected the ''Tradition de qualité'' ("Tradition of Quality") of mainstream French cinema, which emphasized craft over innovation and old works over experimentation. This was apparent in a manifesto-like 1954 essay by
François Truffaut, ''Une certaine tendance du cinéma français'', where he denounced the adaptation of safe literary works into unimaginative films. Along with Truffaut, a number of writers for ''Cahiers du cinéma'' became leading New Wave filmmakers, including
Jean-Luc Godard,
Éric Rohmer
Jean Marie Maurice Schérer or Maurice Henri Joseph Schérer, known as Éric Rohmer (; 21 March 192011 January 2010), was a French film director, film critic, journalist, novelist, screenwriter, and teacher.
Rohmer was the last of the post-World ...
,
Jacques Rivette
Jacques Rivette (; 1 March 1928 – 29 January 2016) was a French film director and film critic most commonly associated with the French New Wave and the film magazine '' Cahiers du Cinéma''. He made twenty-nine films, including '' L'amour f ...
, and
Claude Chabrol. The associated
Left Bank
In geography, a bank is the land alongside a body of water. Different structures are referred to as ''banks'' in different fields of geography, as follows.
In limnology (the study of inland waters), a stream bank or river bank is the terra ...
film community included directors such as
Alain Resnais
Alain Resnais (; 3 June 19221 March 2014) was a French film director and screenwriter whose career extended over more than six decades. After training as a film editor in the mid-1940s, he went on to direct a number of short films which included ...
,
Agnès Varda,
Jacques Demy and
Chris Marker.
Using portable equipment and requiring little or no set up time, the New Wave way of filmmaking often presented a documentary style. The films exhibited direct sounds on film stock that required less light. Filming techniques included fragmented, discontinuous editing, and long takes. The combination of realism, subjectivity, and authorial commentary created a narrative ambiguity in the sense that questions that arise in a film are not answered in the end.
Origins of the movement
Alexandre Astruc
Alexandre Astruc (; 13 July 1923 – 19 May 2016) was a French film critic and film director.
Biography
Before becoming a film director he was a journalist, novelist and film critic. His contribution to the auteur theory centers on his notion ...
's manifesto "The Birth of a New Avant-Garde: The Camera-Stylo", published in ''L'Écran'' on 30 March 1948, outlined some of the ideas that were later expanded upon by
François Truffaut and the ''
Cahiers du cinéma''. It argues that "cinema was in the process of becoming a new means of expression on the same level as painting and the novel ... a form in which and by which an artist can express his thoughts, however abstract they may be, or translate his obsessions exactly as he does in the contemporary essay or novel. This is why I would like to call this new age of cinema the age of the ''caméra-stylo.''"
Some of the most prominent pioneers among the group, including
François Truffaut,
Jean-Luc Godard,
Éric Rohmer
Jean Marie Maurice Schérer or Maurice Henri Joseph Schérer, known as Éric Rohmer (; 21 March 192011 January 2010), was a French film director, film critic, journalist, novelist, screenwriter, and teacher.
Rohmer was the last of the post-World ...
,
Claude Chabrol, and
Jacques Rivette
Jacques Rivette (; 1 March 1928 – 29 January 2016) was a French film director and film critic most commonly associated with the French New Wave and the film magazine '' Cahiers du Cinéma''. He made twenty-nine films, including '' L'amour f ...
, began as critics for the famous film magazine ''Cahiers du cinéma''. ''Cahiers'' co-founder and theorist
André Bazin
André Bazin (; 18 April 1918 – 11 November 1958) was a renowned and influential French film critic and film theorist.
Bazin started to write about film in 1943 and was a co-founder of the renowned film magazine ''Cahiers du cinéma'' in 1951, ...
was a prominent source of influence for the movement. By means of criticism and editorialization, they laid the groundwork for a set of concepts, revolutionary at the time, which the American film critic Andrew Sarris called ''
auteur theory
An auteur (; , 'author') is an artist with a distinctive approach, usually a film director whose filmmaking control is so unbounded but personal that the director is likened to the "author" of the film, which thus manifests the director's unique ...
''. (The original French ''La politique des auteurs'', translated literally as "The policy of authors".) Bazin and
Henri Langlois
Henri Langlois (; 13 November 1914 – 13 January 1977) was a French film archivist and cinephile. A pioneer of film preservation, Langlois was an influential figure in the history of cinema. His film screenings in Paris in the 1950s are often ...
, founder and curator of the
Cinémathèque Française
The Cinémathèque Française (), founded in 1936, is a French non-profit film organization that holds one of the largest archives of film documents and film-related objects in the world. Based in Paris's 12th arrondissement, the archive offers ...
, were the dual father figures of the movement. These men of cinema valued the expression of the director's personal vision in both the film's style and script.
Truffaut also credits the American film ''
Little Fugitive'' (1953) by
Ruth Orkin
Ruth (or its variants) may refer to:
Places
France
* Château de Ruthie, castle in the commune of Aussurucq in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques département of France
Switzerland
* Ruth, a hamlet in Cologny
United States
* Ruth, Alabama
* Ruth, Ar ...
,
Ray Ashley
Raymond Abrashkin (March 9, 1911 – August 25, 1960) was an American writer and filmmaker. He is known for writing, co-producing, and co-directing '' Little Fugitive'' and for co-creating and co-writing with Jay Williams the '' Danny Dunn'' se ...
and
Morris Engel
Morris Engel (April 8, 1918 – March 5, 2005) was an American photographer, cinematographer and filmmaker best known for making the first good-quality, internationally-recognized American film "independent" of Hollywood studios, '' Little Fug ...
with helping to start the French New Wave, when he said "Our French New Wave would never have come into being, if it hadn't been for the young American Morris Engel
icwho showed us the way to independent production with (this) fine movie."
The auteur theory holds that the director is the "author" of their movies, with a personal signature visible from film to film. They praised movies by
Jean Renoir and
Jean Vigo
Jean Vigo (; 26 April 1905 – 5 October 1934) was a French film director who helped establish poetic realism in film in the 1930s. His work influenced French New Wave cinema of the late 1950s and early 1960s.
Biography
Vigo was born to ...
, and made then-radical cases for the artistic distinction and greatness of Hollywood studio directors such as
Orson Welles
George Orson Welles (May 6, 1915 – October 10, 1985) was an American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter, known for his innovative work in film, radio and theatre. He is considered to be among the greatest and most influential f ...
,
John Ford
John Martin Feeney (February 1, 1894 – August 31, 1973), known professionally as John Ford, was an American film director and naval officer. He is widely regarded as one of the most important and influential filmmakers of his generation. He ...
,
Alfred Hitchcock and
Nicholas Ray
Nicholas Ray (born Raymond Nicholas Kienzle Jr., August 7, 1911 – June 16, 1979) was an American film director, screenwriter, and actor best known for the 1955 film '' Rebel Without a Cause.'' He is appreciated for many narrative features p ...
. The beginning of the New Wave was to some extent an exercise by the ''Cahiers'' writers in applying this philosophy to the world by directing movies themselves.
Apart from the role that films by
Jean Rouch
Jean Rouch (; 31 May 1917 – 18 February 2004) was a French filmmaker and anthropologist.
He is considered one of the founders of cinéma vérité in France. Rouch's practice as a filmmaker, for over 60 years in Africa, was characterized b ...
have played in the movement, Chabrol's ''
Le Beau Serge
''Le Beau Serge'' (, literal English translation: "Handsome Serge") is a 1958 French film directed by Claude Chabrol. It has been cited as the first product of the Nouvelle Vague, or French New Wave, film movement. The film is often compared wit ...
'' (1958) is traditionally (but debatably) credited as the first New Wave feature.
Agnès Varda's ''
La Pointe Courte
''La Pointe Courte'' is a 1955 French drama film directed by Agnès Varda (in her feature film directorial debut). It has been cited by many critics as a forerunner of the French New Wave,Kirshner, J. (2021). An Artist in Her Own Right: The Cinema ...
'' (1955) was chronologically the first, but did not have a commercial release until 2008. Truffaut, with ''
The 400 Blows
''The 400 Blows'' (french: Les Quatre Cents Coups) is a 1959 French coming-of-age drama film, and the directorial debut of François Truffaut. The film, shot in DyaliScope, stars Jean-Pierre Léaud, Albert Rémy, and Claire Maurier. One of ...
'' (1959) and Godard, with ''
Breathless'' (1960) had unexpected international successes, both critical and financial, that turned the world's attention to the activities of the New Wave and enabled the movement to flourish. Part of their technique was to portray characters not readily labeled as protagonists in the classic sense of audience identification.
The auteurs of this era owe their popularity to the support they received with their youthful audience. Most of these directors were born in the 1930s and grew up in Paris, relating to how their viewers might be experiencing life. With high concentration in fashion, urban professional life, and all-night parties, the life of France's youth was being exquisitely captured.
The French New Wave was popular roughly between 1958 and 1962. The
socio-economic
Socioeconomics (also known as social economics) is the social science that studies how economic activity affects and is shaped by social processes. In general it analyzes how modern societies progress, stagnate, or regress because of their local ...
forces at play shortly after
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...
strongly influenced the movement. Politically and financially drained, France tended to fall back on the old popular pre-war traditions. One such tradition was straight narrative cinema, specifically classical French film. The movement has its roots in rebellion against the reliance on past forms (often adapted from traditional novelistic structures), criticizing in particular the way these forms could force the
audience to submit to a dictatorial
plot-line. They were especially against the French "cinema of quality", the type of high-minded, literary period films held in esteem at French film festivals, often regarded as "untouchable" by criticism.
New Wave critics and directors studied the work of western classics and applied new avant garde stylistic direction. The
low-budget
A low-budget film or low-budget movie is a motion picture shot with little to no funding from a major film studio or private investor. Many independent films are made on low budgets, but films made on the mainstream circuit with inexperienced or ...
approach helped filmmakers get at the essential art form and find what was, to them, a much more comfortable and contemporary form of production.
Charlie Chaplin,
Alfred Hitchcock,
Orson Welles
George Orson Welles (May 6, 1915 – October 10, 1985) was an American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter, known for his innovative work in film, radio and theatre. He is considered to be among the greatest and most influential f ...
,
Howard Hawks,
John Ford
John Martin Feeney (February 1, 1894 – August 31, 1973), known professionally as John Ford, was an American film director and naval officer. He is widely regarded as one of the most important and influential filmmakers of his generation. He ...
,
Sam Fuller
Samuel Michael Fuller (August 12, 1912 – October 30, 1997) was an American film director, screenwriter, novelist, journalist, and World War II veteran known for directing low-budget genre movies with controversial themes, often made ou ...
and
Don Siegel
Donald Siegel ( ; October 26, 1912 – April 20, 1991) was an American film and television director and producer.
Siegel was described by ''The New York Times'' as "a director of tough, cynical and forthright action-adventure films whose taut ...
[Movie movements that defined cinema: the French New Wave](_blank)
/ref> were held up in admiration. French New Wave is influenced by Italian Neorealism
Italian neorealism ( it, Neorealismo), also known as the Golden Age, is a national film movement characterized by stories set amongst the poor and the working class. They are filmed on location, frequently with non-professional actors. They pri ...
and classical Hollywood cinema
Classical Hollywood cinema is a term used in film criticism to describe both a narrative and visual style of filmmaking which became characteristic of American cinema between the 1910s (rapidly after World War I) and the 1960s. It eventually b ...
.
In a 1961 interview, Truffaut said that "the 'New Wave' is neither a movement, nor a school, nor a group, it's a ''quality''" and in December 1962 published a list of 162 film directors who had made their feature film debut since 1959. Many of these directors, such as Edmond Agabra and Henri Zaphiratos, were not as successful or enduring as the well-known members of the New Wave and today would not be considered part of it. Shortly after Truffaut's published list appeared, Godard publicly declared that the New Wave was more exclusive and included only Truffaut, Chabrol, Rivette, Rohmer and himself, stating that "''Cahiers'' was the nucleus" of the movement. Godard also acknowledged filmmakers such as Resnais, Astruc, Varda and Demy as esteemed contemporaries, but said that they represented "their own fund of culture" and were separate from the New Wave.
Many of the directors associated with the New Wave continued to make films into the 21st century.
Film techniques
The movies featured unprecedented methods of expression, such as long tracking shot
A tracking shot is any shot where the camera follows backward, forward or moves alongside the subject being recorded. In cinematography, the term refers to a shot in which the camera is mounted on a camera dolly that is then placed on rails ...
s (like the famous traffic jam sequence in Godard's 1967 film '' Weekend''). Also, these movies featured existential
Existentialism ( ) is a form of philosophical inquiry that explores the problem of human existence and centers on human thinking, feeling, and acting. Existentialist thinkers frequently explore issues related to the meaning, purpose, and valu ...
themes, often stressing the individual and the acceptance of the absurdity of human existence. Filled with irony and sarcasm, the films also tend to reference other films.
Many of the French New Wave films were produced on tight budgets; often shot in a friend's apartment or yard, using the director's friends as the cast and crew. Directors were also forced to improvise with equipment (for example, using a shopping cart for tracking shots.) The cost of film was also a major concern; thus, efforts to save film turned into stylistic innovations. For example, in Jean-Luc Godard's '' Breathless'' (''À bout de souffle''), after being told the film was too long and he must cut it down to one hour and a half he decided (on the suggestion of Jean-Pierre Melville
Jean-Pierre Melville (; born Jean-Pierre Grumbach; 20 October 1917 – 2 August 1973) was a French filmmaker and actor. Among his films are ''Le Silence de la mer'' (1949), '' Bob le flambeur'' (1956), ''Le Doulos'' (1962), '' Le Samouraï'' (19 ...
) to remove several scenes from the feature using jump cut
A jump cut is a cut in film editing in which a single continuous sequential shot of a subject is broken into two parts, with a piece of footage being removed in order to render the effect of jumping forward in time. Camera positions of the subje ...
s, as they were filmed in one long take. Parts that did not work were simply cut from the middle of the take, a practical decision, and also a purposeful stylistic one.
The cinematic stylings of the French New Wave brought a fresh look to the cinema with improvised dialogue, rapid changes of scene, and shots that broke the common 180° axis of camera movement. In many films of the French New Wave, the camera was used not to mesmerize the audience with elaborate narrative and illusory images, but rather to play with audience expectations. Godard was arguably the movement's most influential figure; his method of film-making, often used to shock and awe audiences out of passivity, was abnormally bold and direct.
Godard's stylistic approach can be seen as a desperate struggle against the mainstream cinema of the time, or a degrading attack on the viewer's supposed naivety. Either way, the challenging awareness represented by this movement remains in cinema today. Effects that now seem either trite or commonplace, such as a character stepping out of their role in order to address the audience directly, were radically innovative at the time.
Classic French cinema adhered to the principles of strong narrative, creating what Godard described as an oppressive and deterministic aesthetic of plot. In contrast, New Wave filmmakers made no attempts to suspend the viewer's disbelief; in fact, they took steps to constantly remind the viewer that a film is just a sequence of moving images, no matter how clever the use of light and shadow. The result is a set of oddly disjointed scenes without attempt at unity; or an actor whose character changes from one scene to the next; or sets in which onlookers accidentally make their way onto camera along with extras, who in fact were hired to do just the same.
At the heart of New Wave technique is the issue of money and production value. In the context of social and economic troubles of a post-World War II France, filmmakers sought low-budget alternatives to the usual production methods, and were inspired by the generation of Italian Neorealists before them. Half necessity and half vision, New Wave directors used all that they had available to channel their artistic visions directly to the theatre.
Finally, the French New Wave, as the European modern Cinema, is focused on the technique as style itself. A French New Wave film-maker is first of all an author who shows in its film their own eye on the world. On the other hand, the film as the object of knowledge challenges the usual transitivity on which all the other cinema was based, "undoing its cornerstones: space and time continuity, narrative and grammatical logics, the self-evidence of the represented worlds." In this way the film-maker passes "the essay attitude, thinking – in a novelist way – on his own way to do essays."
Left Bank
The corresponding "right bank" group is constituted of the more famous and financially successful New Wave directors associated with '' Cahiers du cinéma'' ( Claude Chabrol, François Truffaut, and Jean-Luc Godard). Unlike the ''Cahiers'' group, Left Bank directors were older and less movie-crazed. They tended to see cinema akin to other arts, such as literature. However, they were similar to the New Wave directors in that they practiced cinematic modernism. Their emergence also came in the 1950s and they also benefited from the youthful audience.[Thompson, Kristin. Bordwell, David. ''Film History: An Introduction'', Third Edition. McGraw Hill. 2010, p.412] The two groups, however, were not in opposition; ''Cahiers du cinéma'' advocated for Left Bank cinema.[
Left Bank directors include Chris Marker, ]Alain Resnais
Alain Resnais (; 3 June 19221 March 2014) was a French film director and screenwriter whose career extended over more than six decades. After training as a film editor in the mid-1940s, he went on to direct a number of short films which included ...
, and Agnès Varda (Varda's husband, Jacques Demy, is sometimes grouped with the Left Bank filmmakers). Roud described a distinctive "fondness for a kind of Bohemian
Bohemian or Bohemians may refer to:
*Anything of or relating to Bohemia
Beer
* National Bohemian, a brand brewed by Pabst
* Bohemian, a brand of beer brewed by Molson Coors
Culture and arts
* Bohemianism, an unconventional lifestyle, origin ...
life and an impatience with the conformity of the Right Bank, a high degree of involvement in literature and the plastic arts, and a consequent interest in experimental film
Experimental film or avant-garde cinema is a mode of filmmaking that rigorously re-evaluates cinematic conventions and explores non-narrative forms or alternatives to traditional narratives or methods of working. Many experimental films, parti ...
making", as well as an identification with the political left. The filmmakers tended to collaborate with one another.[Jill Nelmes, ''An Introduction to Film Studies'', p. 44. Routledge.] Jean-Pierre Melville
Jean-Pierre Melville (; born Jean-Pierre Grumbach; 20 October 1917 – 2 August 1973) was a French filmmaker and actor. Among his films are ''Le Silence de la mer'' (1949), '' Bob le flambeur'' (1956), ''Le Doulos'' (1962), '' Le Samouraï'' (19 ...
, Alain Robbe-Grillet
Alain Robbe-Grillet (; 18 August 1922 – 18 February 2008) was a French writer and filmmaker. He was one of the figures most associated with the '' Nouveau Roman'' (new novel) trend of the 1960s, along with Nathalie Sarraute, Michel Butor and ...
, and Marguerite Duras
Marguerite Germaine Marie Donnadieu (, 4 April 1914 – 3 March 1996), known as Marguerite Duras (), was a French novelist, playwright, screenwriter, essayist, and experimental filmmaker. Her script for the film '' Hiroshima mon amour'' (1959) e ...
are also associated with the group.Donato Totaro, ''Offscreen'', ''Hiroshima Mon Amour'' review, 31 August 2003. Access date: 16 August 2008.
/ref> The nouveau roman movement in literature was also a strong element of the Left Bank style, with authors contributing to many of the films.
Left Bank films include ''La Pointe Courte
''La Pointe Courte'' is a 1955 French drama film directed by Agnès Varda (in her feature film directorial debut). It has been cited by many critics as a forerunner of the French New Wave,Kirshner, J. (2021). An Artist in Her Own Right: The Cinema ...
'', ''Hiroshima mon amour
''Hiroshima mon amour'' (, lit. , ), is a 1959 romantic drama film directed by French director Alain Resnais and written by French author Marguerite Duras.
Resnais' first feature-length work, it was a co-production between France and Japan, an ...
'', ''La jetée
''La Jetée'' () is a 1962 French science fiction featurette directed by Chris Marker and associated with the Left Bank artistic movement. Constructed almost entirely from still photos, it tells the story of a post-nuclear war experiment in tim ...
'', ''Last Year at Marienbad
''Last Year at Marienbad'' (french: L'Année dernière à Marienbad; released in the United Kingdom as ''Last Year in Marienbad'') is a 1961 Left Bank film directed by Alain Resnais from a screenplay by Alain Robbe-Grillet. Set in a palace in a p ...
'', and '' Trans-Europ-Express''.
Influential names in the New Wave
[New Wave Film.com](_blank)
"Where to Start Guide", section outlining directors. Accessed 30 April 2009.
''Cahiers du cinéma'' directors
* Jean-Luc Godard
*Éric Rohmer
Jean Marie Maurice Schérer or Maurice Henri Joseph Schérer, known as Éric Rohmer (; 21 March 192011 January 2010), was a French film director, film critic, journalist, novelist, screenwriter, and teacher.
Rohmer was the last of the post-World ...
* François Truffaut
* Claude Chabrol
* Jacques Rivette
Jacques Rivette (; 1 March 1928 – 29 January 2016) was a French film director and film critic most commonly associated with the French New Wave and the film magazine '' Cahiers du Cinéma''. He made twenty-nine films, including '' L'amour f ...
Left Bank directors
* Agnès Varda
*Alain Resnais
Alain Resnais (; 3 June 19221 March 2014) was a French film director and screenwriter whose career extended over more than six decades. After training as a film editor in the mid-1940s, he went on to direct a number of short films which included ...
* Chris Marker
*Henri Colpi
Henri Colpi (; 15 July 1921 – 14 January 2006) was a French film editor and film director.
Early life
Colpi graduated from the IDHEC in 1947. During 1950 to 1960, he edited films for such notable French New Wave directors as Agnès Varda and G ...
* Jacques Demy
Other directors associated with the movement
* Alexandre Astruc
Alexandre Astruc (; 13 July 1923 – 19 May 2016) was a French film critic and film director.
Biography
Before becoming a film director he was a journalist, novelist and film critic. His contribution to the auteur theory centers on his notion ...
* Jacques Doniol-Valcroze
Jacques Doniol-Valcroze (; 15 March 1920 – 6 October 1989) was a French actor, critic, screenwriter, and director. In 1951, Doniol-Valcroze was a co-founder of the renowned film magazine ''Cahiers du cinéma'', along with André Bazin and Jo ...
* Jean Douchet
Jean Douchet (; 19 January 1929 – 22 November 2019) was a French film director, historian, film critic and teacher who began his career in the early 1950s at ''Gazette du Cinéma'' and ''Cahiers du cinéma'' with members of the future French N ...
* Marguerite Duras
Marguerite Germaine Marie Donnadieu (, 4 April 1914 – 3 March 1996), known as Marguerite Duras (), was a French novelist, playwright, screenwriter, essayist, and experimental filmmaker. Her script for the film '' Hiroshima mon amour'' (1959) e ...
* Jean Eustache
Jean Eustache (; 30 November 1938 – 5 November 1981) was a French filmmaker. During his short career, he completed numerous short films, in addition to a pair of highly regarded features, of which the first, ''The Mother and the Whore'', is c ...
* Georges Franju
Georges Franju (; 12 April 1912 – 5 November 1987) was a French filmmaker. He was born in Fougères, Ille-et-Vilaine.
Biography Early life
Before working in French cinema, Franju held several different jobs. These included working for a ...
* Philippe Garrel
Philippe Garrel (; born 6 April 1948) is a French director, cinematographer, screenwriter, film editor, and producer, associated with the French New Wave movement. His films have won him awards at Cannes Film Festival and Venice Film Festival.
...
* Pierre Kast
Pierre Kast (; 22 September 1920, Paris20 October 1984, Rome) was a French people, French screenwriter and film and television director.
Biography
A member of the ''Cahiers du cinéma'' in the 1950s, Kast created many short films and documentarie ...
* William Klein
* Louis Malle
Louis Marie Malle (; 30 October 1932 – 23 November 1995) was a French film director, screenwriter, and producer who worked in both French cinema and Hollywood. Described as "eclectic" and "a filmmaker difficult to pin down," Malle's filmogr ...
* Jean-Pierre Melville
Jean-Pierre Melville (; born Jean-Pierre Grumbach; 20 October 1917 – 2 August 1973) was a French filmmaker and actor. Among his films are ''Le Silence de la mer'' (1949), '' Bob le flambeur'' (1956), ''Le Doulos'' (1962), '' Le Samouraï'' (19 ...
* Luc Moullet
Luc Moullet (; born 14 October 1937 in Paris) is a French film critic and filmmaker, and a member of the Nouvelle Vague or French New Wave. Moullet's films are known for their humor, anti-authoritarian leanings and rigorously primitive aesthetic, ...
* Alain Robbe-Grillet
Alain Robbe-Grillet (; 18 August 1922 – 18 February 2008) was a French writer and filmmaker. He was one of the figures most associated with the '' Nouveau Roman'' (new novel) trend of the 1960s, along with Nathalie Sarraute, Michel Butor and ...
* Jean Rouch
Jean Rouch (; 31 May 1917 – 18 February 2004) was a French filmmaker and anthropologist.
He is considered one of the founders of cinéma vérité in France. Rouch's practice as a filmmaker, for over 60 years in Africa, was characterized b ...
* Jacques Rozier
Jacques Rozier (; 10 November 1926) is a French film director and screenwriter. He is one of the lesser known members of the French New Wave movement and has collaborated with Jean-Luc Godard. Three of his films have been screened at the Canne ...
* Straub-Huillet
* Roger Vadim
Roger Vadim Plemiannikov (; 26 January 1928 – 11 February 2000) was a French screenwriter, film director and producer, as well as an author, artist and occasional actor. His best-known works are visually lavish films with erotic qualities, su ...
Other contributors
* Raoul Coutard
Raoul Coutard (16 September 1924 – 8 November 2016) was a French cinematographer. He is best known for his connection with the Nouvelle Vague period and particularly for his work with director Jean-Luc Godard. Coutard also shot films for New Wa ...
– cinematographer
* Henri Decaë
Henri Decaë (31 July 1915 – 7 March 1987) gained fame as a cinematographer entering the film industry as a sound engineer and sound editor. He was a photojournalist in the French army during World War II. After the war he began making document ...
– cinematographer
* Georges Delerue
Georges Delerue (12 March 1925 – 20 March 1992) was a French composer who composed over 350 scores for cinema and television. Delerue won numerous important film music awards, including an Academy Award for '' A Little Romance'' (1980), three C ...
– composer
* Paul Gégauff
Paul Gégauff (10 August 1922 – 24 December 1983) was a French screenwriter, actor, and director. He collaborated with director Claude Chabrol on 14 films. Among his films are ''Les Biches'', ''Plein Soleil'' and the autobiographical '' Une ...
– screenwriter
* Michel Legrand
Michel Jean Legrand (; 24 February 1932 – 26 January 2019) was a French musical composer, arranger, conductor, and jazz pianist. Legrand was a prolific composer, having written over 200 film and television scores, in addition to many son ...
– composer
* Marilù Parolini
Maria Ludovica (Marilù) Parolini (1931–2012) was an Italian photographer and screenwriter.
Parolini moved to Paris in 1957 and worked as a secretary at ''Cahiers du cinéma'' from 1960 to 1962. There she met members of the French New Wave and ...
- photographer, screenwriter
* Suzanne Schiffman
Suzanne Schiffman (née Klochendler; 27 September 1929 – 6 June 2001) was a French screenwriter and director for numerous motion pictures. She often worked with François Truffaut. The 'script girl' Joelle, played by Nathalie Baye in Truffa ...
– screenwriter
Actors and actresses
* Anna Karina
Anna Karina (born Hanne Karin Blarke Bayer; September 22, 1940 – December 14, 2019)
* Anne Wiazemsky
Anne Wiazemsky (14 May 1947 – 5 October 2017) was a French actress and novelist. She made her cinema debut at the age of 18, playing Marie, the lead character in Robert Bresson's ''Au Hasard Balthazar'' (1966), and went on to appear in several ...
* Anouk Aimée
Nicole Françoise Florence Dreyfus (born 27 April 1932), known professionally as Anouk Aimée () or Anouk, is a French film actress, who has appeared in 70 films since 1947, having begun her film career at age 14. In her early years, she studi ...
* Brigitte Bardot
Brigitte Anne-Marie Bardot ( ; ; born 28 September 1934), often referred to by her initials B.B., is a former French actress, singer and model. Famous for portraying sexually emancipated characters with hedonistic lifestyles, she was one of the ...
* Charles Aznavour
Charles Aznavour ( , ; born Shahnour Vaghinag Aznavourian, hy, Շահնուր Վաղինակ Ազնավուրեան, ; 22 May 1924 – 1 October 2018) was a French-Armenian singer, lyricist, actor and diplomat. Aznavour was known for his dist ...
* Jean-Paul Belmondo
Jean-Paul Charles Belmondo (; 9 April 19336 September 2021) was a French actor and producer. Initially associated with the New Wave of the 1960s, he was a major French film star for several decades from the 1960s onward. His best known credits ...
* Gerard Blain
* Jean-Claude Brialy
* Jacques Charrier
Jacques Charrier (born 6 November 1936) is a French actor in both film and the theater, a film producer, and an artist in painting and ceramics. He was married to film actress Brigitte Bardot from 1959 to 1963.
Biography
In 1980 he returned to ...
* Françoise Dorléac
Françoise Paulette Louise Dorléac (21 March 194226 June 1967) was a French actress. She was the elder sister of Catherine Deneuve, with whom she starred in the 1967 musical, ''The Young Girls of Rochefort''. Her other films include Philippe ...
* Stéphane Audran
Stéphane Audran (born Colette Suzanne Dacheville; 8 November 1932 – 27 March 2018) was a French actress. She was known for her performances in award-winning films such as ''The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie'' (1972) and ''Babette's Feast'' ...
* Bernadette Lafont
* Jean-Pierre Léaud
Jean-Pierre Léaud, ComM (; born 28 May 1944) is a French actor, known for playing Antoine Doinel in François Truffaut's series of films about that character, beginning with ''The 400 Blows'' (1959). He also worked several times with Jean-Luc ...
* Claude Jade
Claude Marcelle Jorré, better known as Claude Jade (; 8 October 1948 – 1 December 2006), was a French actress. She starred as Christine in François Truffaut's three films '' Stolen Kisses'' (1968), '' Bed and Board'' (1970) and '' Love on th ...
* Jeanne Moreau
* Maurice Ronet
Maurice Ronet (13 April 1927 – 14 March 1983) was a French film actor, director, and writer.
Early life
Maurice Ronet was born Maurice Julien Marie Robinet in Nice, Alpes Maritimes. He was the only child of professional stage actors Émile Rob ...
* Jean Seberg
Jean Dorothy Seberg (; ; November 13, 1938August 30, 1979) was an American actress who lived half of her life in France. Her performance in Jean-Luc Godard's 1960 film ''Breathless'' immortalized her as an icon of French New Wave cinema.
Seb ...
* Delphine Seyrig
Delphine Claire Beltiane Seyrig (; 10 April 1932 – 15 October 1990) was a Lebanese-born French actress and film director. She came to prominence in Alain Resnais's 1961 film ''Last Year at Marienbad'', and later acted in films by Francois ...
* Jean-Louis Trintignant
Jean-Louis Xavier Trintignant (; 11 December 1930 – 17 June 2022) was a French actor. He made his theatrical debut in 1951, and went on to be regarded as one of the best French dramatic actors of the post-war era. He starred in many classic fi ...
* Sami Frey
Sami Frey (born Samuel Frei; 13 October 1937) is a French actor of Iranian Jewish descent. Among the films he starred in are '' En compagnie d'Antonin Artaud'' (1993), in which he portrays French poet and playwright Antonin Artaud, and '' Bande ...
* Catherine Deneuve
Catherine Fabienne Dorléac (born 22 October 1943), known professionally as Catherine Deneuve (, , ), is a French actress as well as an occasional singer, model, and producer, considered one of the greatest European actresses. She gained recogni ...
Theoretical influences
* Alexandre Astruc
Alexandre Astruc (; 13 July 1923 – 19 May 2016) was a French film critic and film director.
Biography
Before becoming a film director he was a journalist, novelist and film critic. His contribution to the auteur theory centers on his notion ...
* André Bazin
André Bazin (; 18 April 1918 – 11 November 1958) was a renowned and influential French film critic and film theorist.
Bazin started to write about film in 1943 and was a co-founder of the renowned film magazine ''Cahiers du cinéma'' in 1951, ...
* Robert Bresson
Robert Bresson (; 25 September 1901 – 18 December 1999) was a French film director.
Known for his ascetic approach, Bresson contributed notably to the art of cinema; his non-professional actors, ellipses, and sparse use of scoring have l ...
* Henri Langlois
Henri Langlois (; 13 November 1914 – 13 January 1977) was a French film archivist and cinephile. A pioneer of film preservation, Langlois was an influential figure in the history of cinema. His film screenings in Paris in the 1950s are often ...
* Roger Leenhardt
Theoretical followers
*Jonathan Rosenbaum
Jonathan Rosenbaum (born February 27, 1943) is an American film critic and author. Rosenbaum was the head film critic for ''The Chicago Reader'' from 1987 to 2008, when he retired. He has published and edited numerous books about cinema and has ...
*Andrew Sarris
Andrew Sarris (October 31, 1928 – June 20, 2012) was an American film critic. He was a leading proponent of the auteur theory of film criticism.
Early life
Sarris was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Greek immigrant parents, Themis (née Katav ...
See also
* Iranian New Wave
Iranian New Wave refers to a movement in Iranian cinema. It started in 1964 with Hajir Darioush's second film ''Serpent's Skin'', which was based on D.H. Lawrence's '' Lady Chatterley's Lover'' featuring Fakhri Khorvash and Jamshid Mashayekhi. ...
(Mowje Now)
* Japanese New Wave
The is a group of loosely-connected Japanese filmmakers during the late 1950s and into the 1970s. Although they did not make up a coherent movement, these artists shared a rejection of traditions and conventions of classical Japanese cinema in ...
(Nūberu bāgu)
* Australian New Wave
The Australian New Wave (also known as the Australian Film Revival, Australian Film Renaissance, or New Australian Cinema) was an era of resurgence in worldwide popularity of Australian cinema, particularly in the United States. It began in the ea ...
* British New Wave
The British New Wave is a style of films released in Great Britain between 1959 and 1963. The label is a translation of '' Nouvelle Vague'', the French term first applied to the films of François Truffaut, and Jean-Luc Godard among others.
Styli ...
* Philippine New Wave
Philippine New Wave (known as ''Filipino New Wave'' or ''Contemporary Philippine Cinema'') is a filmmaking genre that has been popularly associated with the resurgence of independent, digital and experimental films in the Philippines began in the ...
(Contemporary Philippine Cinema)
* Cinema Novo
Cinema Novo (), "New Cinema" in English, is a genre and movement of film noted for its emphasis on social equality and intellectualism that rose to prominence in Brazil during the 1960s and 1970s.Dixon & Foster, 293. Cinema Novo formed in respo ...
(Brazilian New Wave)
* Novo Cinema (Portuguese New Wave)
* Czechoslovak New Wave
The Czechoslovak New Wave (also Czech New Wave) is a term used for the Czechoslovak filmmakers who started making movies in the 1960s. The directors commonly included are Miloš Forman, Věra Chytilová, Ivan Passer, Pavel Juráček, Jiří Me ...
* Film noir
* Hong Kong New Wave
The Hong Kong New Wave is a film movement in Chinese-language Hong Kong cinema that emerged in the late 1970s and lasted into the early 2000s.
Origins of the movement
The Hong Kong New Wave started in 1979 with the release of numerous notable fil ...
* Kitchen sink realism
Kitchen sink realism (or kitchen sink drama) is a British cultural movement that developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s in theatre, art, novels, film and television plays, whose protagonists usually could be described as "angry young men" w ...
* L.A. Rebellion
The L.A. Rebellion film movement, sometimes referred to as the "Los Angeles School of Black Filmmakers", or the UCLA Rebellion, refers to the new generation of young African and African-American filmmakers who studied at the UCLA Film School in ...
* National cinema
National cinema is a term sometimes used in film theory and film criticism to describe the films associated with a specific nation-state. Although there is little relatively written on theories of national cinema it has an irrefutably important ro ...
* New French Extremity
New French Extremity (New French Extremism or, informally, New French Extreme) is a term coined by ''Artforum'' critic James Quandt for a collection of transgressive films by French directors at the turn of the 21st century. Also available othe ...
* New German Cinema
New German Cinema (german: Neuer Deutscher Film) is a period in German cinema which lasted from 1962 to 1982, in which a new generation of directors emerged who, working with low budgets, and influenced by the French New Wave and Italian Neore ...
(German New Wave)
* New Hollywood
The New Hollywood, also known as American New Wave or Hollywood Renaissance, was a movement in American film history from the mid-1960s to the early 1980s, when a new generation of young filmmakers came to prominence.
They influenced the types o ...
(American New Wave)
* No Wave Cinema
* Nuevo Cine Mexicano
Nuevo Cine Mexicano, also referred to as New Mexican Cinema is a Mexican film movement started in the early 1990s. Filmmakers, critics, and scholars consider Nuevo Cine Mexicano a "rebirth" of Mexican cinema because of the production of higher-q ...
* Parallel Cinema
Parallel cinema, or New Indian Cinema, is a film movement in Indian cinema that originated in the state of West Bengal in the 1950s as an alternative to the mainstream commercial Indian cinema.
Inspired by Italian Neorealism, Parallel Cinema ...
(Indian New Wave)
* Romanian New Wave
* Remodernist Film
Remodernist film developed in the United States and the United Kingdom in the early 21st century with ideas related to those of the international art movement Stuckism and its manifesto, Remodernism. Key figures are Jesse Richards and Peter Rina ...
* Taiwan New Wave
* Third World Cinema
* Dogme 95
Dogme 95 is a 1995 avant-garde filmmaking movement founded by the Danish directors Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg, who created the "Dogme 95 Manifesto" and the "Vows of Chastity" ( da, kyskhedsløfter). These were rules to create films ...
* Yugoslav Black Wave
Yugoslav Black Wave (also referred to as Black Wave; or sh-Latn-Cyrl, label=none, separator=" / ", Crni talas, Црни талас) is a blanket term for a Yugoslav film movement of the 1960s and early 1970s. Notable directors include Dušan M ...
(Jugoslovenski crni talas)
* Vulgar auteurism
Vulgar auteurism is a movement that emerged in early 2010s cinephilia and film criticism associated with championing or reappraising filmmakers, mostly those working in the horror and action genres and whose work has otherwise received little atte ...
* Extreme cinema
Extreme cinema is a subgenre used for films distinguished by its use of excessive sex and violence, and such various extreme nature as mutilation and torture. It recently specializes in genre film, mostly both horror and drama.
Reception
The r ...
* Slow cinema
Slow cinema is a genre of art cinema characterised by a style that is minimalist, observational, and with little or no narrative, and which typically emphasizes long takes.Steven RoseTwo Years At Sea: little happens, nothing is explained ''The Gua ...
* Film gris
Film gris (, French language, French for "grey film"), a term coined by experimental filmmaker Thom Andersen, is a type of film noir which categorizes a unique series of films that were released between 1947 and 1951. They came in the context of th ...
* B movie
* Cinephilia
Cinephilia (; also cinemaphilia or filmophilia) is the term used to refer to a passionate interest in films, film theory, and film criticism. The term is a portmanteau of the words cinema and philia, one of the four ancient Greek words for love. ...
* Postmodernist film
Postmodernism is an intellectual stance or mode of discourseNuyen, A.T., 1992. The Role of Rhetorical Devices in Postmodernist Discourse. Philosophy & Rhetoric, pp.183–194. characterized by skepticism toward the " grand narratives" of moderni ...
* Pauline Kael
Pauline Kael (; June 19, 1919 – September 3, 2001) was an American film critic who wrote for ''The New Yorker'' magazine from 1968 to 1991. Known for her "witty, biting, highly opinionated and sharply focused" reviews, Kael's opinions oft ...
-film critic in opposition of the auteur theory popularized by Sarris
* Independent film
* Experimental film
Experimental film or avant-garde cinema is a mode of filmmaking that rigorously re-evaluates cinematic conventions and explores non-narrative forms or alternatives to traditional narratives or methods of working. Many experimental films, parti ...
* John Cassavetes
John Nicholas Cassavetes ( ; December 9, 1929 – February 3, 1989) was an American actor, film director, and screenwriter. First known as a television and film actor, Cassavetes also helped pioneer American independent cinema, writing and direc ...
-American independent filmmaker in the same vein as the French New Wave
* Arthouse action film The arthouse action genre is an emerging film genre in contemporary cinema that traces its roots back to Asian and European films. Characteristics of arthouse action films include stylized action, an arthouse atmosphere, and a disjointed, fragmented ...
Notes and references
External links
French New Wave encyclopedia & film guide
Movie movements that defined cinema: the French New Wave on EMPIRE
{{Authority control
French New Wave,
New Wave
Jacques Rivette
Movements in cinema
New Wave in cinema
1950s in film
1960s in film