French New Wave  

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-'''la Nouvelle Vague''') was a [[blanket term]] coined by critics for a group of [[Cinema of France|French filmmakers]] of the late [[1950s]] and [[1960s]], influenced (in part) by [[Italian Neorealism]]. 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]]. 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.+'''New Wave''' (La Nouvelle Vague) is a French [[European art cinema|art film]] movement which emerged in the late 1950s. The movement was characterized by its rejection of traditional [[Filmmaking|filmmaking]] conventions in favor of experimentation and a spirit of [[iconoclasm]]. New Wave filmmakers explored new approaches to [[film editing|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 [[cinematography|cinema]].
-Some of the most prominent pioneers among the group, including [[François Truffaut]], [[Jean-Luc Godard]], [[Éric Rohmer]], [[Claude Chabrol]] and [[Jacques Rivette]], began as critics for the famous film magazine ''[[Cahiers du cinéma]]''. 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 surge of concepts which was later coined as the ''[[auteur theory]]''. It holds that the [[film director|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 [[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. Chabrol's ''[[Le Beau Serge]]'' (1958) is generally credited as the first New Wave feature. Truffaut, with ''[[The 400 Blows]]'' ([[1959]]) and Godard, with ''[[Breathless (1960 film)|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. Other directors active in the movement although not necessarily part of the core Cahiers contributors included [[Louis Malle]], [[Alain Resnais]], [[Agnès Varda]], [[Robert Bresson]], and [[Jacques Demy]].+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]], [[Jacques Rivette]], and [[Claude Chabrol]]. The associated [[Left Bank Cinema|Left Bank]] film community included directors such as [[Alain Resnais]], [[Agnès Varda]], 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 == == Origins of the movement ==
-When asked where New Wave began, most will point to a famous film journal named ''[[Cahiers du cinéma]]''. Chabrol, Rohmer, Rivette, and others tied closely to the ideas of the movement began as critics for this journal, and used publishing as a lead into what would soon become a wider attack on the classic ‘literary’ style of French Cinema. 
-French New Wave was “in style” roughly between 1958 and 1964, although popular New Wave work existed as late as 1973. The socio-economic forces at play shortly after World War II strongly influenced the movement. A politically and financially drained France tended to fall back to the old popular traditions before the war. 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. New Wave critics and directors studied the work of these and other classics. They did not reject them, but rather found a new outlet for the same creative energies. The low-budget approach helped film-makers get at the essential art form and find what, to them, was a much more comfortable and honest form of production. Charlie Chaplin, Alfred Hitchcock, Orson Welles, Howard Hawks, John Ford, and many other forward-thinkng film directors were held up in admiration while standard Hollywood films bound by traditional narrative flow were strongly criticized.+[[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 [[François Truffaut]] and the [[Cahiers du cinema|''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.''"
-==Film techniques==+Some of the most prominent pioneers among the group, including [[François Truffaut]], [[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".) 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.
-The movies featured unprecedented methods of expression, such as seven-minute [[tracking shot]]s (like the famous traffic jam sequence in Godard's 1967 film ''[[Week End]]''). Also, these movies featured [[existentialism|existential]] themes, such as stressing the individual and the acceptance of the absurdity of human existence. +
-Lightweight cameras, lights, and sound equipment allowed the New Wave directors to shoot in the streets, rather than in studios. This fluid camera motion became a trademark of the movement, with shots often following characters down [[Paris]] streets.+Truffaut also credits the American director [[Morris Engel]] and his film ''[[Little Fugitive (1953 film)|Little Fugitive]]'' (1953) 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."
-Many of the French New Wave films were produced on small budgets, often shot in a friend's apartment, 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 (1960 film)|Breathless]]'' (''À bout de souffle''), several scenes feature [[jump cut]]s, as they were filmed in one long take: parts that didn't work were simply cut right from the middle of the take, a purposeful stylistic decision.+The auteur theory holds that the director is the "author" of his/her 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.
-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 and break past the common expectations of cinema. The techniques used to shock the audience out of submission and awe 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 naivete. 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 her role in order to address the audience directly, were radically innovative at the time.+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. [[Agnès Varda]]'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 (1960 film)|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.
-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.+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.
-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-WWII 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.+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]] to submit to a dictatorial [[Plot (narrative)|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.
-==Lasting effects==+New Wave critics and directors studied the work of western classics and applied new avant garde stylistic direction. The [[low-budget film|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]], [[Alfred Hitchcock]], [[Orson Welles]], [[Howard Hawks]], [[John Ford]], and many other forward-thinking [[film directors]] like [[Sam Fuller]] and [[Don Siegel]] were held up in admiration while standard [[Hollywood films]] bound by traditional narrative flow were strongly criticized. French New Wave is influenced by [[Italian Neorealism]] and [[classical Hollywood cinema]].
-As with most art-film movements, the innovations of the New Wavers trickled down to the [[Cinema of the United States|American cinema]]. Beginning with the heavily evident stylistic similarities in [[Arthur Penn]]'s ''[[Bonnie and Clyde (film)|Bonnie and Clyde]]'' ([[1967]]), the following generation of American young, studio-hired filmmakers known as ''[[New Hollywood]]'' (e.g. [[Robert Altman|Altman]], [[Francis Ford Coppola|Coppola]], [[Brian De Palma|De Palma]], [[Roman Polanski|Polanski]] and [[Martin Scorsese|Scorsese]]) of the late [[1960s]] and early [[1970s]] all claim and display influence from the French tradition of the previous decade. +
-[[Bob Rafelson]], a member of the ''New Hollywood'' movement (''[[Five Easy Pieces]]''), claimed that the [[Marx Brothers]] and the French New Wave influenced his vision for the television series, [[The Monkees]], which he created and oversaw. Rafelson, with [[Jack Nicholson]], went on to direct the Monkees' feature film, the surrealistic ''[[Head (film)|Head]]'' which displays a strong New Wave influence. +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.
-Likewise, the influence of the movement was seen in a number of other national cinemas globally - beginning in the [[1960s]], and continuing to the present day. Similar movements arose in a number of European countries, and a large [[nuberu bagu]] arose in Japan during the early 1960s, which was somewhat different in its origins, but similar in techniques and trajectory.+Many of the directors associated with the New Wave continued to make films into the 21st century.
-Many contemporary filmmakers, including [[Quentin Tarantino]] and [[Wes Anderson]], claim influence from the New Wave. Quentin Tarantino dedicated ''[[Reservoir Dogs]]'' to Jean-Luc Godard and named his production company [[A Band Apart]], a play on words of the Godard film ''[[Bande à part]]''. Wes Anderson's sardonic comedies are known to carry influence from the French New Wave; for example, the opening scenes of ''[[The Royal Tenenbaums]]'' closely mimic the style and cinematography used in the opening scene of [[Agnes Varda]]'s ''[[Cleo from 5 to 7]]''. Additionally, the 2004 film ''[[Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind]]'' was filmed using techniques borrowed from Godard. +== Film techniques==
 +The movies featured unprecedented methods of expression, such as long [[tracking shot]]s (like the famous traffic jam sequence in Godard's 1967 film ''[[Week End (1967 film)|Week End]]''). Also, these movies featured [[existentialism|existential]] 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.
-== Major figures ==+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 (1960 film)|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 did not work were simply cut from the middle of the take, a practical decision and also a purposeful stylistic one.
-* [[Jean-Pierre Melville]]+ 
-* [[François Truffaut]]+The cinematic stylings of French New Wave brought a fresh look to cinema with improvised dialogue, rapid changes of scene, and shots that broke the common [[180-degree rule|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.
-* [[Jean-Luc Godard]]+ 
-* [[Claude Chabrol]]+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 [[Fourth wall|a character stepping out of their role in order to address the audience directly]], were radically innovative at the time.
-* [[Éric Rohmer]]+ 
 +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 art cinema|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. The two groups, however, were not in opposition; ''Cahiers du cinéma'' advocated for Left Bank cinema.
 + 
 +Left Bank directors include [[Chris Marker]], [[Alain Resnais]], and [[Agnès Varda]]. Roud described a distinctive "fondness for a kind of [[Bohemianism|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 wing|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 (film)|Trans-Europ-Express]]''.
 + 
 +== Influential names in the New Wave ==
 + 
 + 
 +=== ''Cahiers du cinéma'' directors ===
 +*[[Jean-Luc Godard]]
 +*[[Éric Rohmer]]
 +*[[François Truffaut]]
 +*[[Claude Chabrol]]
* [[Jacques Rivette]] * [[Jacques Rivette]]
-* [[Alain Resnais]]+ 
-* [[Agnes Varda]]+=== Left Bank directors ===
 +*[[Agnès Varda]]
 +*[[Alain Resnais]]
 +*[[Chris Marker]]
 +*[[Henri Colpi]]
* [[Jacques Demy]] * [[Jacques Demy]]
-== Minor figures ==+=== Other directors associated with the movement ===
 + 
 +* [[Alexandre Astruc]]
 +* [[Jacques Doniol-Valcroze]]
 +* [[Jean Douchet]]
* [[Marguerite Duras]] * [[Marguerite Duras]]
* [[Jean Eustache]] * [[Jean Eustache]]
-* [[Bernadette Lafont]]+* [[Georges Franju]]
-* [[Chris Marker]]+* [[Philippe Garrel]]
 +* [[Pierre Kast]]
 +* [[William Klein (photographer)|William Klein]]
 +* [[Claude Lelouch]]
 +* [[Louis Malle]]
 +* [[Jean-Pierre Melville]]
* [[Luc Moullet]] * [[Luc Moullet]]
 +* [[Alain Robbe-Grillet]]
 +* [[Jean Rouch]]
* [[Jacques Rozier]] * [[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
-== Frequent Collaborators ==+=== Actors and actresses ===
* [[Anna Karina]] * [[Anna Karina]]
 +* [[Anne Wiazemsky]]
 +* [[Anouk Aimée]]
* [[Brigitte Bardot]] * [[Brigitte Bardot]]
 +* [[Charles Aznavour]]
 +* [[Jean-Paul Belmondo]]
* [[Gerard Blain]] * [[Gerard Blain]]
* [[Jean-Claude Brialy]] * [[Jean-Claude Brialy]]
-* [[Jeanne Moreau]]+* [[Jacques Charrier]]
-* [[Jean Paul Belmondo]]+* [[Françoise Dorléac]]
 +* [[Stéphane Audran]]
 +* [[Bernadette Lafont]]
* [[Jean-Pierre Léaud]] * [[Jean-Pierre Léaud]]
 +* [[Claude Jade]]
 +* [[Jeanne Moreau]]
 +* [[Maurice Ronet]]
* [[Jean Seberg]] * [[Jean Seberg]]
-* [[Raoul Coutard]]+* [[Delphine Seyrig]]
 +* [[Jean-Louis Trintignant]]
 +* [[Sami Frey]]
* [[Catherine Deneuve]] * [[Catherine Deneuve]]
 +
 +=== Theoretical influences ===
 +* [[Alexandre Astruc]]
 +* [[André Bazin]]
 +* [[Robert Bresson]]
 +* [[Henri Langlois]]
 +* [[Roger Leenhardt]]
 +
 +=== Theoretical followers ===
 +*[[Jonathan Rosenbaum]]
 +*[[Andrew Sarris]]
 +
 +== See also ==
 +* [[Iranian New Wave]] (Mowje Now)
 +* [[Japanese New Wave]] (Nūberu bāgu)
 +* [[Australian New Wave]]
 +* [[British New Wave]]
 +* [[Cinema Novo]] (Brazilian New Wave)
 +* [[Cinema of Portugal#1960s.E2.80.931970s|Novo Cinema]] (Portuguese New Wave)
 +* [[Czechoslovak New Wave]]
 +* [[Film noir]]
 +* [[Hong Kong New Wave]]
 +* [[Kitchen sink realism]]
 +* [[L.A. Rebellion]]
 +* [[National cinema]]
 +* [[New French Extremity]]
 +* [[New German Cinema]] (German New Wave)
 +* [[New Hollywood]] (American New Wave)
 +* [[No Wave Cinema]]
 +* [[Nuevo Cine Mexicano]]
 +* [[Parallel Cinema]] (Indian New Wave)
 +* [[Romanian New Wave]]
 +* [[Remodernist Film]]
 +* [[Cinema of Taiwan#New Wave Cinema, 1982–1990|Taiwan New Wave]]
 +* [[Third World Cinema]]
 +* [[Dogme 95]]
 +* [[Yugoslav Black Wave]] (Jugoslovenski crni talas)
 +* [[Vulgar auteurism]]
 +* [[Extreme cinema]]
 +* [[Slow cinema]]
 +* [[Film gris]]
 +* [[B movie]]
 +* [[Cinephilia]]
 +* [[Postmodernist film]]
 +* [[Pauline Kael]]-film critic in opposition of the auteur theory popularized by Sarris
 +* [[Independent film]]
 +* [[Experimental film]]
 +* [[John Cassavetes]]-American independent filmmaker in the same vein as the French New Wave
 +* [[Arthouse action film]]
 +
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New Wave (La Nouvelle Vague) is a French art film movement which 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 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, Jacques Rivette, and Claude Chabrol. The associated Left Bank film community included directors such as Alain Resnais, Agnès Varda, 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.

Contents

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 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, 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".) 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 (1953) 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/her 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. Agnès Varda'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 (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 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, Alfred Hitchcock, Orson Welles, Howard Hawks, John Ford, and many other forward-thinking film directors like Sam Fuller and Don Siegel were held up in admiration while standard Hollywood films bound by traditional narrative flow were strongly criticized. 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 Week End). Also, these movies featured existential 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) 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 French New Wave brought a fresh look to 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. The two groups, however, were not in opposition; Cahiers du cinéma advocated for 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 filmmaking", 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.

Influential names in the New Wave

Cahiers du cinéma directors

Left Bank directors

Other directors associated with the movement

Other contributors

Actors and actresses

Theoretical influences

Theoretical followers

See also




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