French New Wave
Encyclopedia
The New Wave was a blanket term coined by critics for a group of French filmmakers
of the late 1950s and 1960s, influenced by Italian Neorealism
and classical Hollywood cinema
. Although never a formally organized movement, the New Wave filmmakers were linked by their self-conscious rejection of classical cinematic form and their spirit of youthful iconoclasm
. "New Wave" is an example of European art cinema
. Many also engaged in their work with the social and political upheavals of the era, making their radical experiments with editing, visual style and narrative part of a general break with the conservative paradigm.
, Jean-Luc Godard
, Éric Rohmer
, Claude Chabrol
, 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".) Cahiers du cinéma writers critiqued the classic "Tradition of Quality" style of French Cinema. Notable among these was François Truffaut in his manifesto-like article "Une Certaine tendance du cinéma français". 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 director, Morris Engel
and his film "Little Fugitive
" 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 who showed us the way to independent production with (this) fine movie."
The auteur theory holds that the director
is the "author" of his movies, with a personal signature visible from film to film. They praised movies by Jean Renoir
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
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. Truffaut, with The 400 Blows
(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 1930's and grew up in Paris; relating much to how their viewers were experiencing life. With high concentration in fashion, urban professional life, and all-night parties, the life of France's youth was being exquisitely captured.
French New Wave was popular roughly between 1958 and 1964, although New Wave work existed as late as 1973. 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 novellic 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 approach helped filmmakers get at the essential art form and find what was, to them, a much more comfortable and honest form of production. Charlie Chaplin
, Alfred Hitchcock
, Orson Welles
, Howard Hawks
, John Ford
, and many other forward-thinking film directors were held up in admiration while standard Hollywood films bound by traditional narrative flow were strongly criticized.
Many of the directors associated with the new wave continued to make films into the 21st century.
s (like the famous traffic jam sequence in Godard's 1967 film Week End). Also, these movies featured existential
themes, such as stressing the individual and the acceptance of the absurdity
of human existence.
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) to remove several scenes from the feature using jump cut
s, as they were filmed in one long take. Parts that didn't work were simply cut from the middle of the take, a practical decision and also a purposeful stylistic one.
The cinematic stylings of French New Wave brought a fresh look to cinema with improvised dialogue, rapid changes of scene, and shots that go beyond the common 180º axis. The camera was used not to mesmerize the audience with elaborate narrative and illusory images, but to play with the expectations of cinema. The techniques used to shock and awe the audience out of submission and were so bold and direct that Jean-Luc Godard has been accused of having contempt for his audience. His stylistic approach can be seen as a desperate struggle against the mainstream cinema of the time, or a degrading attack on the viewer's 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. 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 his 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."
. 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 these 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 1950's also benefited from the youthful audience. The two groups, however, were not in opposition; Cahiers du Cinéma advocated Left Bank cinema.
Left Bank directors include Chris Marker
, Alain Resnais
, and Agnès Varda
. 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, and a consequent interest in experimental film
making", as well as an identification with the political left. The filmmakers tended to collaborate with one another. Jean-Pierre Melville, Alain Robbe-Grillet
, and Marguerite Duras
are also associated with the group. 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
.
Cinema of France
The Cinema of France comprises the art of film and creative movies made within the nation of France or by French filmmakers abroad.France is the birthplace of cinema and was responsible for many of its early significant contributions. Several important cinematic movements, including the Nouvelle...
of the late 1950s and 1960s, influenced by Italian Neorealism
Italian neorealism
Italian neorealism is a style of film characterized by stories set amongst the poor and working class, filmed on location, frequently using nonprofessional actors...
and classical Hollywood cinema
Classical Hollywood cinema
Classical Hollywood cinema or the classical Hollywood narrative, are terms used in film history which designates both a visual and sound style for making motion pictures and a mode of production used in the American film industry between roughly the 1910s and the early 1960s.Classical style is...
. Although never a formally organized movement, the New Wave filmmakers were linked by their self-conscious rejection of classical cinematic form and their spirit of youthful iconoclasm
Iconoclasm
Iconoclasm is the deliberate destruction of religious icons and other symbols or monuments, usually with religious or political motives. It is a frequent component of major political or religious changes...
. "New Wave" is an example of European art cinema
European art cinema
European art cinema is a branch of cinema that was popular in the 1960s. The formal system that this cinema uses is based on the classical Hollywood cinema; particular a rejection of all tenets and rules of classical Hollywood cinema.-History:...
. Many also engaged in their work with the social and political upheavals of the era, making their radical experiments with editing, visual style and narrative part of a general break with the conservative paradigm.
Origins of the movement
Some of the most prominent pioneers among the group, including François TruffautFrançois Truffaut
François Roland Truffaut was an influential film critic and filmmaker and one of the founders of the French New Wave. In a film career lasting over a quarter of a century, he remains an icon of the French film industry. He was also a screenwriter, producer, and actor working on over twenty-five...
, Jean-Luc Godard
Jean-Luc Godard
Jean-Luc Godard is a French-Swiss film director, screenwriter and film critic. He is often identified with the 1960s French film movement, French Nouvelle Vague, or "New Wave"....
, Éric Rohmer
Éric Rohmer
Éric Rohmer was a French film director, film critic, journalist, novelist, screenwriter and teacher. A figure in the post-war New Wave cinema, he was a former editor of Cahiers du cinéma....
, Claude Chabrol
Claude Chabrol
Claude Chabrol was a French film director, a member of the French New Wave group of filmmakers who first came to prominence at the end of the 1950s...
, and Jacques Rivette
Jacques Rivette
Jacques Rivette is a French film director. His most well known films include Celine and Julie Go Boating, La Belle Noiseuse and the cult film Out 1....
, began as critics for the famous film magazine Cahiers du cinéma
Cahiers du cinéma
Cahiers du Cinéma is an influential French film magazine founded in 1951 by André Bazin, Jacques Doniol-Valcroze and Joseph-Marie Lo Duca. It developed from the earlier magazine Revue du Cinéma involving members of two Paris film clubs — Objectif 49 and...
. Cahiers co-founder and theorist André Bazin
André Bazin
André Bazin was a renowned and influential French film critic and film theorist.-Life:Bazin was born in Angers, France, in 1918...
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
Auteur theory
In film criticism, auteur theory holds that a director's film reflects the director's personal creative vision, as if they were the primary "auteur"...
. (The original French "La politique des auteurs", translated literally, as "The policy of authors".) Cahiers du cinéma writers critiqued the classic "Tradition of Quality" style of French Cinema. Notable among these was François Truffaut in his manifesto-like article "Une Certaine tendance du cinéma français". Bazin and Henri Langlois
Henri Langlois
Henri Langlois was a French film archivist and cinephile. A pioneer of film preservation, Langlois was an influential figure in the history of cinema...
, founder and curator of the Cinémathèque Française
Cinémathèque Française
The Cinémathèque Française holds one of the largest archives of films, movie documents and film-related objects in the world. Located in Paris, the Cinémathèque holds daily screenings of films from around the world.-History:...
, 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 director, Morris Engel
Morris Engel
Morris Engel was an influential American photographer, cinematographer and filmmaker best known for directing the 1953 film The Little Fugitive in collaboration with his wife, photographer Ruth Orkin, and their friend, writer Raymond Abrashkin.Engel completed two more features during the 1950s,...
and his film "Little Fugitive
Little Fugitive
Little Fugitive is a 1953 film written and directed by Raymond Abrashkin , Morris Engel and Ruth Orkin, that tells the story of a child alone at Coney Island....
" 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 who showed us the way to independent production with (this) fine movie."
The auteur theory holds that the director
Film director
A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...
is the "author" of his movies, with a personal signature visible from film to film. They praised movies by Jean Renoir
Jean Renoir
Jean Renoir 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 era to the end of the 1960s...
and Jean Vigo
Jean Vigo
Jean Vigo was a French film director, who helped establish poetic realism in film in the 1930s and was a posthumous influence on the French New Wave of the late 1950s and early 1960s.-Biography:...
, and made then-radical cases for the artistic distinction and greatness of Hollywood studio directors such as Orson Welles
Orson Welles
George Orson Welles , best known as Orson Welles, was an American film director, actor, theatre director, screenwriter, and producer, who worked extensively in film, theatre, television and radio...
, John Ford
John Ford
John Ford was an American film director. He was famous for both his westerns such as Stagecoach, The Searchers, and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and adaptations of such classic 20th-century American novels as The Grapes of Wrath...
, Alfred Hitchcock
Alfred Hitchcock
Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, KBE was a British film director and producer. He pioneered many techniques in the suspense and psychological thriller genres. After a successful career in British cinema in both silent films and early talkies, Hitchcock moved to Hollywood...
and Nicholas Ray
Nicholas Ray
Nicholas Ray was an American film director best known for the movie Rebel Without a Cause....
. 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
Jean Rouch was a French filmmaker and anthropologist.He is considered to be one of the founders of the cinéma vérité in France, which shared the aesthetics of the direct cinema spearheaded by Richard Leacock, D.A. Pennebaker and Albert and David Maysles...
have played in the movement, Chabrol's Le Beau Serge
Le Beau Serge
Le Beau Serge is a French film directed by Claude Chabrol, released in 1958. It is often considered the first product of the Nouvelle Vague or "French New Wave" film movement.-Synopsis:...
(1958) is traditionally (but debatably) credited as the first New Wave feature. Truffaut, with The 400 Blows
The 400 Blows
The 400 Blows is a 1959 French film directed by François Truffaut. One of the defining films of the French New Wave, it displays many of the characteristic traits of the movement. The story revolves around Antoine Doinel, an ordinary adolescent in Paris, who is thought by his parents and teachers...
(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 1930's and grew up in Paris; relating much to how their viewers were experiencing life. With high concentration in fashion, urban professional life, and all-night parties, the life of France's youth was being exquisitely captured.
French New Wave was popular roughly between 1958 and 1964, although New Wave work existed as late as 1973. 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 novellic structures), criticizing in particular the way these forms could force the audience
Audience
An audience is a group of people who participate in a show or encounter a work of art, literature , theatre, music or academics in any medium...
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 honest form of production. Charlie Chaplin
Charlie Chaplin
Sir Charles Spencer "Charlie" Chaplin, KBE was an English comic actor, film director and composer best known for his work during the silent film era. He became the most famous film star in the world before the end of World War I...
, Alfred Hitchcock
Alfred Hitchcock
Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, KBE was a British film director and producer. He pioneered many techniques in the suspense and psychological thriller genres. After a successful career in British cinema in both silent films and early talkies, Hitchcock moved to Hollywood...
, Orson Welles
Orson Welles
George Orson Welles , best known as Orson Welles, was an American film director, actor, theatre director, screenwriter, and producer, who worked extensively in film, theatre, television and radio...
, Howard Hawks
Howard Hawks
Howard Winchester Hawks was an American film director, producer and screenwriter of the classic Hollywood era...
, John Ford
John Ford
John Ford was an American film director. He was famous for both his westerns such as Stagecoach, The Searchers, and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and adaptations of such classic 20th-century American novels as The Grapes of Wrath...
, and many other forward-thinking film directors were held up in admiration while standard Hollywood films bound by traditional narrative flow were strongly criticized.
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 shotTracking shot
In motion picture terminology, a tracking shot is a segment in which the camera is mounted on a camera dolly, a wheeled platform that is pushed on rails while the picture is being taken...
s (like the famous traffic jam sequence in Godard's 1967 film Week End). Also, these movies featured existential
Existentialism
Existentialism is a term applied to a school of 19th- and 20th-century philosophers who, despite profound doctrinal differences, shared the belief that philosophical thinking begins with the human subject—not merely the thinking subject, but the acting, feeling, living human individual...
themes, such as stressing the individual and the acceptance of the absurdity
Absurdity
An absurdity is a thing that is extremely unreasonable, so as to be foolish or not taken seriously, or the state of being so. "Absurd" is an adjective used to describe an absurdity, e.g., “this encyclopedia article is absurd”. It derives from the Latin absurdusm meaning "out of tune", hence...
of human existence.
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
Jean-Luc Godard
Jean-Luc Godard is a French-Swiss film director, screenwriter and film critic. He is often identified with the 1960s French film movement, French Nouvelle Vague, or "New Wave"....
'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) to remove several scenes from the feature using jump cut
Jump cut
A jump cut is a cut in film editing and vloging in which two sequential shots of the same subject are taken from camera positions that vary only slightly. This type of edit causes the subject of the shots to appear to "jump" position in a discontinuous way...
s, as they were filmed in one long take. Parts that didn't work were simply cut from the middle of the take, a practical decision and also a purposeful stylistic one.
The cinematic stylings of French New Wave brought a fresh look to cinema with improvised dialogue, rapid changes of scene, and shots that go beyond the common 180º axis. The camera was used not to mesmerize the audience with elaborate narrative and illusory images, but to play with the expectations of cinema. The techniques used to shock and awe the audience out of submission and were so bold and direct that Jean-Luc Godard has been accused of having contempt for his audience. His stylistic approach can be seen as a desperate struggle against the mainstream cinema of the time, or a degrading attack on the viewer's 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. 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
European art cinema
European art cinema is a branch of cinema that was popular in the 1960s. The formal system that this cinema uses is based on the classical Hollywood cinema; particular a rejection of all tenets and rules of classical Hollywood cinema.-History:...
, 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 his 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 Left Bank, or Rive Gauche, group is a contingent of filmmakers associated with the French New Wave, first identified as such by Richard RoudRichard Roud
Richard Roud was an American writer on film and co-founder, with Amos Vogel, and a former program director and latterly director of the New York Film Festival from 1963 to 1987....
. The corresponding "right bank" group is constituted of the more famous and financially successful New Wave directors associated with Cahiers du Cinéma
Cahiers du cinéma
Cahiers du Cinéma is an influential French film magazine founded in 1951 by André Bazin, Jacques Doniol-Valcroze and Joseph-Marie Lo Duca. It developed from the earlier magazine Revue du Cinéma involving members of two Paris film clubs — Objectif 49 and...
(Claude Chabrol
Claude Chabrol
Claude Chabrol was a French film director, a member of the French New Wave group of filmmakers who first came to prominence at the end of the 1950s...
, François Truffaut
François Truffaut
François Roland Truffaut was an influential film critic and filmmaker and one of the founders of the French New Wave. In a film career lasting over a quarter of a century, he remains an icon of the French film industry. He was also a screenwriter, producer, and actor working on over twenty-five...
, and Jean-Luc Godard
Jean-Luc Godard
Jean-Luc Godard is a French-Swiss film director, screenwriter and film critic. He is often identified with the 1960s French film movement, French Nouvelle Vague, or "New Wave"....
).. Unlike the Cahiers these 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 1950's also benefited from the youthful audience. The two groups, however, were not in opposition; Cahiers du Cinéma advocated Left Bank cinema.
Left Bank directors include Chris Marker
Chris Marker
Chris Marker is a French writer, photographer, documentary film director, multimedia artist and film essayist. His best known films are La jetée , A Grin Without a Cat , Sans Soleil and AK , an essay film on the Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa...
, Alain Resnais
Alain Resnais
Alain Resnais is a French film director whose career has 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 Nuit et Brouillard , an influential documentary about the Nazi concentration camps.He began...
, and Agnès Varda
Agnès Varda
Agnès Varda is a French film director and professor at the European Graduate School. Her movies, photographs, and art installations focus on documentary realism, feminist issues, and social commentary — with a distinct experimental style....
. Roud described a distinctive "fondness for a kind of Bohemian
Bohemianism
Bohemianism is the practice of an unconventional lifestyle, often in the company of like-minded people, with few permanent ties, involving musical, artistic or literary pursuits...
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
Experimental film or experimental cinema is a type of cinema. Experimental film is an artistic practice relieving both of visual arts and cinema. Its origins can be found in European avant-garde movements of the twenties. Experimental cinema has built its history through the texts of theoreticians...
making", as well as an identification with the political left. The filmmakers tended to collaborate with one another. Jean-Pierre Melville, Alain Robbe-Grillet
Alain Robbe-Grillet
Alain Robbe-Grillet , was a French writer and filmmaker. He was, along with Nathalie Sarraute, Michel Butor and Claude Simon, one of the figures most associated with the Nouveau Roman trend. Alain Robbe-Grillet was elected a member of the Académie française on March 25, 2004, succeeding Maurice...
, and Marguerite Duras
Marguerite Duras
Marguerite Donnadieu, better known as Marguerite Duras was a French writer and film director.-Background:...
are also associated with the group. The nouveau roman
Nouveau roman
The nouveau roman is a type of 1950s French novel that diverged from classical literary genres. Émile Henriot coined the title in an article in the popular French newspaper Le Monde on May 22, 1957 to describe certain writers who experimented with style in each novel, creating an essentially new...
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
Hiroshima Mon Amour
Hiroshima mon amour is an acclaimed 1959 drama film directed by French film director Alain Resnais, with a screenplay by Marguerite Duras. It is the documentation of an intensely personal conversation between a French-Japanese couple about memory and forgetfulness...
, La jetée
La Jetée
La jetée is a 1962 French science fiction film by Chris Marker. It is also known in English as The Jetty or The Pier. Constructed almost entirely from still photos, it tells the story of a post-nuclear war experiment in time travel. The film runs for 28 minutes and is in black and white...
, Last Year at Marienbad
Last Year at Marienbad
L'Année dernière à Marienbad is a 1961 French film directed by Alain Resnais from a screenplay by Alain Robbe-Grillet....
, and Trans-Europ-Express
Trans-Europ-Express (film)
Trans-Europ-Express is a 1966 film written and directed by Alain Robbe-Grillet and starring Jean-Louis Trintignant and Marie-France Pisier. The title refers to the Trans Europ Express, a former international rail network in Europe....
.
Cahiers du Cinema Directors
- Claude ChabrolClaude ChabrolClaude Chabrol was a French film director, a member of the French New Wave group of filmmakers who first came to prominence at the end of the 1950s...
- Jean-Luc GodardJean-Luc GodardJean-Luc Godard is a French-Swiss film director, screenwriter and film critic. He is often identified with the 1960s French film movement, French Nouvelle Vague, or "New Wave"....
- Jacques RivetteJacques RivetteJacques Rivette is a French film director. His most well known films include Celine and Julie Go Boating, La Belle Noiseuse and the cult film Out 1....
- Éric RohmerÉric RohmerÉric Rohmer was a French film director, film critic, journalist, novelist, screenwriter and teacher. A figure in the post-war New Wave cinema, he was a former editor of Cahiers du cinéma....
- François TruffautFrançois TruffautFrançois Roland Truffaut was an influential film critic and filmmaker and one of the founders of the French New Wave. In a film career lasting over a quarter of a century, he remains an icon of the French film industry. He was also a screenwriter, producer, and actor working on over twenty-five...
Left Bank Directors
- Henri ColpiHenri ColpiHenri Colpi was a French film editor and film director.Colpi directed the 1961 film Une aussi longue absence, which is well-known for sharing the Palme d'Or at the 1961 Cannes Film Festival with Viridiana, which was directed by Luis Buñuel...
- Jacques DemyJacques DemyJacques Demy was one of the most approachable filmmakers to appear in the wake of the French New Wave. Uninterested in the formal experimentation of Alain Resnais, or the political agitation of Jean-Luc Godard, Demy instead created a self-contained fantasy world closer to that of François...
- Chris MarkerChris MarkerChris Marker is a French writer, photographer, documentary film director, multimedia artist and film essayist. His best known films are La jetée , A Grin Without a Cat , Sans Soleil and AK , an essay film on the Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa...
- Alain ResnaisAlain ResnaisAlain Resnais is a French film director whose career has 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 Nuit et Brouillard , an influential documentary about the Nazi concentration camps.He began...
- Agnès VardaAgnès VardaAgnès Varda is a French film director and professor at the European Graduate School. Her movies, photographs, and art installations focus on documentary realism, feminist issues, and social commentary — with a distinct experimental style....
Other Directors associated with the movement
- Alexandre AstrucAlexandre AstrucAlexandre Astruc is a French film critic and film director born 13 July 1923, in Paris .Before becoming a film director he was a journalist, novelist and film critic...
- Jacques Doniol-ValcrozeJacques Doniol-ValcrozeJacques Doniol-Valcroze was a French actor, critic, screenwriter, and director...
- Marguerite DurasMarguerite DurasMarguerite Donnadieu, better known as Marguerite Duras was a French writer and film director.-Background:...
- Jean EustacheJean EustacheJean Eustache was a French filmmaker. During his short career, he completed numerous shorts, in addition to a pair of highly regarded features, of which the first, The Mother and the Whore, is considered a key work of post-Nouvelle Vague French cinema.In his obituary for Eustache, the influential...
- Georges FranjuGeorges Franju-External links:* at Allmovie...
- Philippe GarrelPhilippe GarrelPhilippe Garrel is a French director, cinematographer, screenwriter, editor and producer. His movies have won him awards at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival and Venice Film Festival...
- Pierre KastPierre KastPierre Kast was a French screenwriter and film and television director.Kast died from a heart attack on board an aircraft on 20 October 1984, aged 64.- Director :...
- Claude Lelouch
- Louis MalleLouis MalleLouis Malle was a French film director, screenwriter, and producer. He worked in both French cinema and Hollywood. His films include Ascenseur pour l'échafaud , Atlantic City , and Au revoir, les enfants .- Early years in France :Malle was born into a wealthy industrialist family in Thumeries,...
- Jean-Pierre Melville
- Luc MoulletLuc MoulletLuc Moullet 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, which is heavily influenced by his love of American B-movies.Though such influential...
- Alain Robbe-GrilletAlain Robbe-GrilletAlain Robbe-Grillet , was a French writer and filmmaker. He was, along with Nathalie Sarraute, Michel Butor and Claude Simon, one of the figures most associated with the Nouveau Roman trend. Alain Robbe-Grillet was elected a member of the Académie française on March 25, 2004, succeeding Maurice...
- Jean RouchJean RouchJean Rouch was a French filmmaker and anthropologist.He is considered to be one of the founders of the cinéma vérité in France, which shared the aesthetics of the direct cinema spearheaded by Richard Leacock, D.A. Pennebaker and Albert and David Maysles...
- Jacques RozierJacques RozierJacques Rozier 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 Cannes Film Festival...
- Straub-Huillet
- Roger VadimRoger VadimRoger Vadim was a French screenwriter, director, and producer as well as a journalist, author and actor, who launched Brigitte Bardot's career in the film And God Created Woman.-Early life:...
Other Contributors
- Raoul Coutard - cinematographer
- Henri DecaëHenri DecaëHenri Decaë 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 documentary shorts, directing and photographing industrial and commercial films...
- cinematographer - André WeinfeldAndré WeinfeldAn alumnus of prestigious Lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris, André Weinfeld is a French and American film and television producer, director, screenwriter, photographer and journalist.-Early life:...
- cinematographer - Georges DelerueGeorges DelerueGeorges Delerue , was a French film composer who composed over 350 scores for cinema and television. He won numerous important awards including Rome Prize , Emmy Award , Genie Award , ACE Award and Academy Award for Best Original Score in 1979 for A...
- composer - Paul GégauffPaul GégauffPaul Gégauff 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 Partie de Plaisir...
- screenwriter - Michel LegrandMichel LegrandMichel Jean Legrand is a French musical composer, arranger, conductor, and pianist...
- composer - Suzanne SchiffmanSuzanne SchiffmanSuzanne Schiffman was a screenwriter and director for numerous motion pictures. She often worked with François Truffaut. The 'script girl' Joelle, played by Nathalie Baye in Truffaut's Day for Night was based on Schiffman...
- screenwriter
Actors & Actresses
- Stéphane AudranStéphane AudranStéphane Audran is a French film and television actress, known for her performances in Oscar winning movies such as Le charme discret de la bourgeoisie and Babette's Feast and in critically acclaimed films like The Big Red One and Violette Nozière .She married...
- Anouk AimeeAnouk AiméeAnouk Aimée is a French film actress. Aimée has appeared in 70 films since 1947. She began her film career in 1947 at age 14. In 1958 she portrayed the tragic artist Jeanne Hébuterne in the film Les Amants de Montparnasse...
- Fanny ArdantFanny ArdantFanny Marguerite Judith Ardant is a French actress. She has appeared in more than fifty motion pictures since 1976. Ardant won the César Award for Best Actress in 1997 for her performance in Pédale douce.-Early life:...
- Charles AznavourCharles AznavourCharles Aznavour, OC is an Armenian-French singer, songwriter, actor, public activist and diplomat. Besides being one of France's most popular and enduring singers, he is also one of the best-known singers in the world...
- Jean Paul Belmondo
- Gerard BlainGérard BlainGérard Blain was a French actor and film director. He appeared in 60 films between 1944 and 2000. He also directed nine films between 1971 and 2000.-Selected filmography:* Les Mistons...
- Jean-Claude BrialyJean-Claude BrialyJean-Claude Brialy – died 30 May 2007, Monthyon, Seine-et-Marne, France was a French actor, director, and socialite.-Biography:...
- Jacques CharrierJacques CharrierJacques Charrier is a French actor. He was married to Brigitte Bardot from 1959 to 1962.-Selected filmography:- External links :...
- Catherine DeneuveCatherine DeneuveCatherine Deneuve is a French actress. She gained recognition for her portrayal of aloof and mysterious beauties in films such as Repulsion and Belle de jour . Deneuve was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress in 1993 for her performance in Indochine; she also won César Awards for that...
- Alexandre Marques
- Françoise DorléacFrançoise DorléacFrançoise Dorléac was a French actress. Born in Paris, she was the daughter of screen actor Maurice Dorléac and Renée Deneuve, and was the elder sister of Catherine Deneuve. The two sisters starred together in the 1967 musical, The Young Girls of Rochefort...
- Claude JadeClaude JadeClaude Marcelle Jorré, better known as Claude Jade , was a French actress, known for starring as Christine in François Truffaut's three films Stolen Kisses , Bed and Board and Love on the Run . Jade acted in theatre, film and television...
- Anna KarinaAnna KarinaAnna Karina is a Danish film actress, director, and screenwriter who has spent most of her working life in France. Karina is known as a muse of the director, Jean-Luc Godard, one of the pioneers of the French New Wave...
- Bernadette LafontBernadette LafontBernadette Lafont is a French actress and the mother of Pauline Lafont .Bernadette Lafont won the César Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for L'Effrontée...
- Jean-Pierre LéaudJean-Pierre Léaud-Early years:Born in Paris, Léaud made his major debut as an actor at the age of 14 as Antoine Doinel, a semi-autobiographical character based on the life events of French film director François Truffaut, in The 400 Blows....
- Jeanne MoreauJeanne MoreauJeanne Moreau is a French actress, singer, screenwriter and director.She made her theatrical debut in 1947, and established herself as one of the leading actresses of the Comédie-Française...
- Maurice RonetMaurice RonetMaurice Ronet was a French film actor, director and writer.-Biography:Maurice Ronet was born Maurice Julien Marie Robinet in Nice, Alpes Maritimes, the only child of professional stage actors Émile Robinet and Gilberte Dubreuil. He made his stage debut in 1941, along side his parents, in Sacha...
- Jean SebergJean SebergJean Dorothy Seberg was an American actress. She starred in 37 films in Hollywood and in France, including Breathless , the musical Paint Your Wagon and the disaster film Airport ....
- Delphine SeyrigDelphine SeyrigDelphine Claire Beltiane Seyrig was a stage and film actress and a film director.-Early life:...
- Jean-Louis TrintignantJean-Louis TrintignantJean-Louis Trintignant is a French actor who has enjoyed an international acclaim. He won the Best Actor Award at the 1969 Cannes Film Festival.-Career:...
Theoretical influences
- Alexandre AstrucAlexandre AstrucAlexandre Astruc is a French film critic and film director born 13 July 1923, in Paris .Before becoming a film director he was a journalist, novelist and film critic...
- André BazinAndré BazinAndré Bazin was a renowned and influential French film critic and film theorist.-Life:Bazin was born in Angers, France, in 1918...
- Robert BressonRobert Bresson-Life and career:Bresson was born at Bromont-Lamothe, Puy-de-Dôme, the son of Marie-Élisabeth and Léon Bresson. Little is known of his early life and the year of his birth, 1901 or 1907, varies depending on the source. He was educated at Lycée Lakanal in Sceaux, Hauts-de-Seine, close to Paris, and...
- Henri LangloisHenri LangloisHenri Langlois was a French film archivist and cinephile. A pioneer of film preservation, Langlois was an influential figure in the history of cinema...
- Roger LeenhardtRoger LeenhardtRoger Leenhardt was a French writer and filmmaker.Born in Languedoc, France, in a bourgeois Protestant family, this brilliant student of philosophy was very soon fascinated by cinema...
See also
- Iranian New Wave (Mowje No)
- Japanese New Wave (Nuberu bagu)
- Australian New WaveAustralian New WaveThe Australian New Wave was an era of resurgence in worldwide popularity of Australian cinema...
- British New WaveBritish New WaveThe British New Wave is the name given to a trend in filmmaking among directors in Britain in the late 1950s and early 1960s. 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.There is considerable overlap...
- Cinema NovoCinema NovoCinema Novo was practised by Brazilian filmmakers in the 1950s and 1960s. In Portugal, Novo Cinema flourished after the 1960s, where it lasted, inspired by Italian Neo-Realism and the French movement of the New wave, the direct cinema techniques, and by the ideals the Carnation Revolution up to...
(Brazilian New Wave) - Novo Cinema (Portuguese New Wave)
- Czechoslovak New WaveCzechoslovak New WaveThe Czechoslovak New Wave is a term used for the early films of 1960s Czech directors Miloš Forman, Věra Chytilová, Ivan Passer, Jaroslav Papoušek, Jiří Menzel, Jan Němec, Jaromil Jireš, Vojtěch Jasný, Evald Schorm and Slovak directors Juraj Herz, Juraj Jakubisko, Štefan Uher, Ján Kádár, Elo...
- Film noirFilm noirFilm noir is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize cynical attitudes and sexual motivations. Hollywood's classic film noir period is generally regarded as extending from the early 1940s to the late 1950s...
- Hong Kong New WaveHong Kong New WaveThe Hong Kong New Wave was a blanket term applied to a number of young, groundbreaking Hong Kong filmmakers of the late 1970s and 1980s, many trained in overseas film programs and with experience in the territory's thriving television drama scene...
- L.A. RebellionL.A. RebellionL.A. Rebellion film movement, sometimes referred to as the "Los Angeles School of Black Filmmakers", refers to the time from roughly the late-1960s to the late-1980s when a new generation of young African and African American filmmakers emerged from UCLA Film School to produce works that provided...
- New French ExtremityNew French ExtremityNew French Extremity 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. The filmmakers are also discussed by Jonathan Romney of The Independent...
- New HollywoodNew HollywoodNew Hollywood or post-classical Hollywood, sometimes referred to as the "American New Wave", refers to the time from roughly the late-1960s to the early 1980s when a new generation of young filmmakers came to prominence in America, influencing the types of films produced, their production and...
(American New Wave) - True Cinema movementTrue Cinema movementTrue Cinema movement is a film movement founded by Rajan Sarma, a Tamil film director of the 1980s. The movement mainly focus on initiating necessary steps on bringing out or developing 'expressive cinema' in contrast to the so called 'dramatic cinema' prevalent commonly in India.The main...
- No Wave CinemaNo Wave CinemaNo Wave Cinema was a Colab sponsored boom in underground filmmaking on the Lower East Side neighborhood of New York City. Its name, much like its cousin No Wave music, was a stripped down style of guerrilla/punk filmmaking that emphasized mood and texture above everything else.This brief movement,...
- Parallel CinemaParallel CinemaThe Indian New Wave, commonly known in India as Art Cinema or Parallel Cinema as an alternative to the mainstream commercial cinema, is a specific movement in Indian cinema, known for its serious content, realism and naturalism, with a keen eye on the sociopolitical climate of the times...
(Indian New Wave) - Romanian New WaveRomanian New WaveThe Romanian New Wave is a blanket term applied to a torrent of internationally acclaimed films made in Romania from the mid 2000s, starting with Trafic, which won the Short Film Palme d'Or at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival...
- Remodernist FilmRemodernist FilmRemodernist 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...
- Serbian Black Wave
- Taiwan New Wave
- Dogme 95Dogme 95Dogme 95 was an avant-garde filmmaking movement started in 1995 by the Danish directors Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg, who created the "Dogme 95 Manifesto" and the "Vow of Chastity". These were rules to create filmmaking based on the traditional values of story, acting, and theme, and...
External links
- Nouvelle Vague on imusic.am
- New Wave Film.com encyclopedia & film guide
- Sexism in the French New Wave, Jonathan Rosenbaum, Film Quarterly, Spring 2009