The New Wave
French Film & Television
Course 1 · Chapter 5 · The Nouvelle Vague
In 1959 and 1960 a group of young French film-makers, many of them former film critics, made films that looked and sounded unlike anything before: shot in the streets, with lightweight cameras, with jump cuts, improvised lines and young stars who talked like real people. The Nouvelle Vague, the New Wave, changed what film-makers all over the world thought was possible, and it is the best-known chapter in French film history. It is also a chapter wrapped in legend. This chapter tells the story and, as in the rest of the course, marks what is record, what is legend and what is reputation. Dates and titles are given from general knowledge and flagged where they should be checked.
The Critics Who Became Directors
The magazine Cahiers du cinéma, founded in 1951 by a group including the critic André Bazin (check), was the training ground. Its young writers, among them François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Éric Rohmer, Claude Chabrol and Jacques Rivette, spent their evenings at the Cinémathèque française (Chapter 1) watching films from all countries and eras. They admired American directors such as Alfred Hitchcock and Howard Hawks and argued that a great director stamps a personal vision on a film, in what became known as the politique des auteurs, "auteur theory" in English. They attacked the cinema of quality (Chapter 4), and then, one by one, made their own films.
The Main Names and Films
| Director | Well-known films | Why remembered |
|---|---|---|
| Claude Chabrol | Le Beau Serge (1958) | Often named as the first New Wave feature, set in a village, made with an inheritance |
| François Truffaut | The 400 Blows (1959) | A semi-autobiographical film about a troubled boy, Antoine Doinel, played by Jean-Pierre Léaud; won the best director prize at Cannes (check) |
| Jean-Luc Godard | Breathless (1960) | A petty criminal and an American girl in Paris; jump cuts, location shooting and a freewheeling style; stars Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg |
| Alain Resnais | Hiroshima mon amour (1959) | A film about memory and the atomic bomb, with a script by the novelist Marguerite Duras |
| Agnès Varda | Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962) | A singer waits for medical results while walking through Paris; Varda's earlier La Pointe Courte (1955) is often called a forerunner |
| Éric Rohmer | My Night at Maud's (1969) | Talkative films about love and moral choices, in series called "tales" |
How They Worked
- Location shooting. Streets, cafés and flats were used instead of studio sets, which made the films look fresh and cost less.
- Light equipment. Smaller cameras and portable sound recorders made it possible to film quickly with a small crew. Godard's Breathless is famous for its hand-held shots.
- Jump cuts and freedom. The editing broke the usual rules about smooth continuity, and scenes were sometimes improvised.
- Young actors. New faces such as Jean-Pierre Léaud, Belmondo, Anna Karina and Jeanne Moreau became stars.
- Self-reference. The films quote other films and acknowledge that they are films.
The Left Bank
A second group, sometimes called the Left Bank group after the area of Paris, overlapped with the Cahiers critics but came to film from literature and documentary. Resnais, Varda and Chris Marker are the best-known names. Their work was more literary and more concerned with memory, politics and time. Last Year at Marienbad (1961) by Resnais is famous for being enigmatic (check).
Money and Support
The New Wave could not have happened without cheap equipment and changes in the funding system. A system of advances against future box-office takings, introduced at the end of the 1950s, helped to finance low-budget first films (check), and producers realised that young directors working cheaply could make profits. Success at Cannes in 1959, when Truffaut's first feature won a major prize, publicised the new group around the world. In this way the movement is another example of the French state's part in film, to be taken up in Chapter 10.
Legend and Record
The legend
A group of young rebels overthrew the old cinema overnight and started a revolution in 1959.
The record
The movement grew out of years of criticism and short films; earlier directors such as Varda, Melville and Bresson were already working in similar ways; and many different directors, over a hundred in a couple of years by some counts (check), made first features. Not all were of the same style or quality.
The reputation
The New Wave is regularly named as the most influential movement in postwar cinema. That is a judgement. It is widely held, and it is also partly a story told by the critics who took part.
Influence and Afterlife
The New Wave influenced directors around the world, and helped to inspire a new wave of American film-makers in the late 1960s and 1970s (check). Its habit of quoting other films and of treating the director as an author has become standard. In France, by the mid-1960s the movement had broken up: some directors became commercially successful, some went on making personal films, and Godard moved toward political film-making. The new freedoms were absorbed into the mainstream.
May 1968
The political events of 1968 reached the film world. In February the government dismissed the head of the Cinémathèque, Henri Langlois, which caused protests among film-makers (check). In May, in the middle of nationwide strikes and demonstrations, film-makers including Truffaut and Godard led a protest that halted the Cannes festival (check). The episode is often treated as the end of the New Wave as a unified spirit, and as a sign that French film and politics were closely tied.
Exercises
Explain how the Cahiers du cinéma critics became directors, naming four of them, and say what the auteur idea meant.
Describe four ways the New Wave films were made differently, and name two films with their directors.
Separate the legend, the record and the reputation of the New Wave, and explain why "a revolution overnight" is too simple.
Quick Reference
- Cahiers du cinéma: founded 1951; Bazin; critics Truffaut, Godard, Rohmer, Chabrol, Rivette
- Auteur idea: the director is the author of a film
- Key films: The 400 Blows (1959), Hiroshima mon amour (1959), Breathless (1960)
- Methods: location shooting, light equipment, jump cuts, young stars
- Left Bank: Resnais, Varda, Marker; more literary
- Support: advances against box-office takings; success at Cannes in 1959
- May 1968: the Cinémathèque row and the closing of Cannes
- Check: dates, the origin of the name and the number of first features
Next chapter: Comedy & Popular Cinema, which turns to the films that most French people actually went to see.