French New Wave (french: La Nouvelle Vague) is a French art film movement that emerged in the late 1950s. The movement was characterized by its rejection of traditional filmmaking conventions in favor of experimentation and a spirit of iconoclasm. New Wave filmmakers explored new approaches to editing, 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 themes. The New Wave is often considered one of the most influential movements in the history of cinema. The term was first used by a group of French film critics and cinephiles associated with the magazine ''

Cahiers du cinéma ''Cahiers du Cinéma'' (, ) is a French film magazine co-founded in 1951 by André Bazin, Jacques Doniol-Valcroze, and Joseph-Marie Lo Duca.Itzkoff, Dave (9 February 2009''Cahiers Du Cinéma Will Continue to Publish''The New York TimesMacnab, Ge ...

'' 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 François Roland Truffaut ( , ; ; 6 February 1932 – 21 October 1984) was a French film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film critic. He is widely regarded as one of the founders of the French New Wave. After a career of more tha ...

, ''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 Jean-Luc Godard ( , ; ; 3 December 193013 September 2022) was a French-Swiss film director, screenwriter, and film critic. He rose to prominence as a pioneer of the French New Wave film movement of the 1960s, alongside such filmmakers as Fran� ...

, Éric Rohmer, Jacques Rivette, and

Claude Chabrol Claude Henri Jean Chabrol (; 24 June 1930 – 12 September 2010) was a French film director and a member of the French New Wave (''nouvelle vague'') group of filmmakers who first came to prominence at the end of the 1950s. Like his colleagues an ...

. The associated Left Bank film community included directors such as Alain Resnais,

Agnès Varda Agnès Varda (; born Arlette Varda; 30 May 1928 – 29 March 2019) was a Belgian-born French film director, screenwriter, photographer, and artist. Her pioneering work was central to the development of the widely influential French New Wave film ...

Jacques Demy Jacques Demy (; 5 June 1931 – 27 October 1990) was a French director, lyricist, and screenwriter. He appeared at the height of the French New Wave alongside contemporaries like Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut. Demy's films are celebrat ...

and

Chris Marker Chris Marker (; 29 July 1921 – 29 July 2012) was a French writer, photographer, documentary film director, multimedia artist and Essay#Film, film essayist. His best known films are ''La Jetée'' (1962), ''A Grin Without a Cat'' (1977) and ''S ...

. 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'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

and the ''

''. 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

, Éric Rohmer,

, and Jacques Rivette, began as critics for the famous film magazine ''Cahiers du cinéma''. ''Cahiers'' co-founder and theorist André Bazin 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''. (The original French ''La politique des auteurs'', translated literally as "The policy of authors".) Bazin and Henri Langlois, founder and curator of the Cinémathèque Française, 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, Ray Ashley and Morris Engel 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 Jean Renoir (; 15 September 1894 – 12 February 1979) was a French film director, screenwriter, actor, producer and author. As a film director and actor, he made more than forty films from the silent film, silent era to the end of the 1960s. ...

and Jean Vigo, and made then-radical cases for the artistic distinction and greatness of Hollywood studio directors such as Orson Welles, John Ford,

Alfred Hitchcock Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock (13 August 1899 – 29 April 1980) was an English filmmaker. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in the history of cinema. In a career spanning six decades, he directed over 50 featur ...

and Nicholas Ray. 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 have played in the movement, Chabrol's '' Le Beau Serge'' (1958) is traditionally (but debatably) credited as the first New Wave feature.

's '' La Pointe Courte'' (1955) was chronologically the first, but did not have a commercial release until 2008. Truffaut, with '' The 400 Blows'' (1959) and Godard, with ''

Breathless Breathless may refer to: Aircraft *Paradelta Breathless, an Italian paraglider design Film and television * Breathless (1960 film), ''Breathless'' (1960 film) (''À bout de souffle''), a French film directed by Jean-Luc Godard * Breathless (1982 ...

'' (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 forces at play shortly after World War II 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 An audience is a group of people who participate in a show or encounter a work of art, literature (in which they are called "readers"), theatre, music (in which they are called "listeners"), video games (in which they are called "players"), or ...

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 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 Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin Jr. (16 April 188925 December 1977) was an English comic actor, filmmaker, and composer who rose to fame in the era of silent film. He became a worldwide icon through his screen persona, the Tramp, and is consider ...

, Orson Welles,

Howard Hawks Howard Winchester Hawks (May 30, 1896December 26, 1977) was an American film director, producer and screenwriter of the classic Hollywood era. Critic Leonard Maltin called him "the greatest American director who is not a household name." A v ...

, John Ford, Sam Fuller and Don SiegelMovie movements that defined cinema: the French New Wave
/ref> were held up in admiration. French New Wave is influenced by Italian Neorealism and classical Hollywood cinema. 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 shots (like the famous traffic jam sequence in Godard's 1967 film '' Weekend''). Also, these movies featured existential themes, often stressing the individual and the acceptance of the

absurdity An absurdity is a state or condition of being extremely unreasonable, meaningless or unsound in reason so as to be irrational or not taken seriously. "Absurd" is an adjective used to describe an absurdity, e.g., "Tyler and the boys laughed at ...

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

's ''

'' (''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) to remove several scenes from the feature using jump cuts, 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 ''

'' (

, and

). 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

, Alain Resnais, and

(Varda's husband,

, is sometimes grouped with the Left Bank filmmakers). Roud described a distinctive "fondness for a kind of Bohemian life and an impatience with the conformity of the Right Bank, a high degree of involvement in literature and the

plastic arts Plastic arts are art forms which involve physical manipulation of a plastic medium by molding or modeling such as sculpture or ceramics. Less often the term may be used broadly for all the visual arts (such as painting, sculpture, film and pho ...

, and a consequent interest in experimental filmmaking", as well as an identification with the political

left Left may refer to: Music * ''Left'' (Hope of the States album), 2006 * ''Left'' (Monkey House album), 2016 * "Left", a song by Nickelback from the album ''Curb'', 1996 Direction * Left (direction), the relative direction opposite of right * L ...

. The filmmakers tended to collaborate with one another.Jill Nelmes, ''An Introduction to Film Studies'', p. 44. Routledge. Jean-Pierre Melville, Alain Robbe-Grillet, and Marguerite Duras 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'', '' Hiroshima mon amour'', '' La jetée'', '' Last Year at Marienbad'', and ''

Trans-Europ-Express The Trans Europ Express, or Trans-Europe Express (TEE), was an international first-class railway service in western and central Europe that was founded in 1957 and ceased in 1995. At the height of its operations, in 1974, the TEE network compri ...

''.

Influential names in the New Wave

New Wave Film.com
"Where to Start Guide", section outlining directors. Accessed 30 April 2009.

''Cahiers du cinéma'' directors

* Éric Rohmer *

* Jacques Rivette

Left Bank directors

* Alain Resnais *

* Henri Colpi *

Other directors associated with the movement

* Alexandre Astruc * Jacques Doniol-Valcroze * Jean Douchet * Marguerite Duras * Jean Eustache * Georges Franju * Philippe Garrel * Pierre Kast * William Klein * Louis Malle * Jean-Pierre Melville *

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 * Jean Rouch * Jacques Rozier * Straub-Huillet * Roger Vadim

Other contributors

* Raoul Coutard – cinematographer * Henri Decaë – cinematographer * Georges Delerue – composer * Paul Gégauff – screenwriter * Michel Legrand – composer * Marilù Parolini - photographer, screenwriter * Suzanne Schiffman – screenwriter

Actors and actresses

* Anna Karina * Anne Wiazemsky * Anouk Aimée * Brigitte Bardot * Charles Aznavour * Jean-Paul Belmondo *

Gerard Blain Gerard is a masculine forename of Proto-Germanic origin, variations of which exist in many Germanic and Romance languages. Like many other early Germanic names, it is dithematic, consisting of two meaningful constituents put together. In this ca ...

Jean-Claude Brialy Jean-Claude Brialy (30 March 1933 – 30 May 2007) was a French actor and film director. Early life Brialy was born in Aumale (now Sour El-Ghozlane), French Algeria, where his father was stationed with the French Army. Brialy moved to mainland ...

* Jacques Charrier * Françoise Dorléac * Stéphane Audran *

Bernadette Lafont Bernadette Lafont (28 October 1938 – 25 July 2013) was a French actress who appeared in more than 120 feature films. She has been considered "the face of French New Wave". In 1999 she told ''The New York Times'' her work was "the motor of my e ...

* Jean-Pierre Léaud * Claude Jade *

Jeanne Moreau Jeanne Moreau (; 23 January 1928 – 31 July 2017) was a French actress, singer, screenwriter, director, and socialite. She made her theatrical debut in 1947, and established herself as one of the leading actresses of the Comédie-Française. Mo ...

* Maurice Ronet * Jean Seberg * Delphine Seyrig * Jean-Louis Trintignant * Sami Frey * Catherine Deneuve

Theoretical influences

* Alexandre Astruc * André Bazin * Robert Bresson * Henri Langlois *

Roger Leenhardt Roger Leenhardt (23 July 1903 – 4 December 1985) was a French writer and filmmaker. Early life Born in a bourgeois Protestant family, this brilliant student of philosophy was very soon fascinated by cinema. Through a cousin, he started working ...

Theoretical followers

* Jonathan Rosenbaum * Andrew Sarris

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