History and Development

French New Wave

The ‘New Wave’ (la nouvelle vague) refers to a group of filmmakers who, between the end of the 1950s and early to mid-1960s  transformed the French cinema and had a great impact on filmmakers throughout the world.

The term ‘New Wave’ was not invented by the film makers. It was coined by Françoise Giroud, a journalist in late 1957 who wrote a series of articles on French youth for the weekly news magazine L’Express. The association of ‘youth’ with New Wave cinema was sealed by the triumph at the 1958 Cannes Film Festival of Les Quatre cents coups (The 400 Blows), the debut feature film by the 27-year-old former film critic François Truffaut. A number of successful films by other directors followed, all of which enhanced the identity of New Wave cinema as ‘youthful’ and ‘modern’; these included A bout de soufflé (Breathless, Jean-Luc Godard, 1960), Hiroshima, mon amour (Alain Resnais, 1959) and Les Cousins (Claude Chabrol, 1959).

However, these new filmmakers had not emerged from out of the blue. They had all been involved in filmmaking for the best part of the 1950s, writing film criticism, making short films and documentaries. Truffaut, Godard, Rivette, Chabrol and Rohmer had all written for the magazine throughout the 1950s. The New Wave was in part characterized by the unusual phenomenon of film critics. Before outlining some of the chief ideas that these filmmakers advanced in their work as critics, it is worthwhile describing the film culture that existed in France after Second World War and which the New Wave would have a profound impact.

While France was under Nazi occupation between 1940 and 1945, the importing of American films was banned by the collaborationist government, they only had access to the 200 odd French films that were produced during the period of 4 years. Shortly after the liberation of France in 1945 this backlog of American cinema started to hit the country’s screens to the enthusiasm of French film-goers. This exposure to Hollywood films was a formative influence on the young critics who would become the directors of the New Wave in the late 1950s. 

For the generation of cinephiles like Andre Bazin, Alain Resnais and Eric Rohmer who had grown up in rich cinematic culture of the 1920’s and 30’, this lack of choice were added to their heartfelt sense of loss as a consequence of the war. Not to forget the banned American genre films everyone loved, this experience of loss led them to prize freedom of expression and truth of representation above all else, which became their central of later work. They were too young to know very much about the films that had come before the war, and had no reviews or criticism to guide them, but they instinctively cherished a handful of films made during the occupation like Les Visiteurs du Soir (1943) by Carne and Prevert, Le Destin Fabuleux de Disiree Clary (1941) by SachaGuitry, and above all, Le Corbeau (1943) by Henri-Georges Clouzot.

In 1944, the year of liberation, cinema became even more popular in France. Several French Films were produced while Italian and British imports were in demand. Meanwhile, the most popular of all were the stockpile of films streaming in from Hollywood after the ban was lifted by the 1946 Blum-Byrnes agreement where nearly a decade’s worth of missing films arrived in French cinemas in the space of a single year.

Film clubs on the other hand are highlighted as one of the important elements of French New Wave. The first film club named Henri Langlois’ Cinematheque Française opened its doors in 1948. Langlois believed that the Cinematheque was a place for learning and not just mere watching. They wanted the audience to understand what they were watching, so it became his practice to screen films with different styles, genres and country of origin. Sometimes he would show foreign films without translation or silent films without musical accompaniment. This approach was to make sure that the audience would pay more attention towards the technique used to film the movies.

In 1951, one of the most important and famous film journals called Les Cashiers du Cinema appeared and was set up by Jacques Doniol-Valcroze and Andre Bazin out of the ashes of La Revue du Cinema, which had closed down the previous year. The very first issue of the review with a distinctive yellow cover featured the best critics’ articles about films during the mid-1950s.

A group of young critics including Eric Rohmer, Jean-Luc Godard, Jacques Rivette, Claude Chabrol and Francois Truffaut all work for Cahiers du Cinema, critics the filmmakers where they said the traditional way of filming in the studio are old fashioned and unimaginative. Although some critics about the filmmakers were deemed harsh and had raised offences, those young men never failed to praise directors such as D.W Griffith, Victor Sjostrom, Buster Keaton and etc in the early years. Inspired by them, silent movies became an element for the New Wave directors. 

The concept of “Auteur” were also developed at that time, where there are some arguments between Andre Bazin and others about how a film should reflect the director’s personal vision, but it was Truffaut who mentioned it first. He said that the best directors have a distinctive style, and it is an individual creative vision that made the director the true author of the film. However, writing criticisms couldn’t satisfy those young impatient men and they started shooting short films by borrowing money from their friends and shoot on location. By 1959, Rivette filmed Paris nous appartient (Paris Belongs to Us); Godard made A Bout de soufflé (Breathless); Chabrol made his second feature, Les Cousins; and in April Truffaut’s Les Quatre cent coups (The 400 Blows) won the Grand Prize at the Cannes Festival.

The Nouvelle Vague gave a new lease of life to French cinema, which had survived the 1950s with declining audiences but which with the spread of television was about to lose its mass audience for good. The government supported the industry through enforced quotas, bank had invested heavily and there was a flourishing business of international coproduction. New Wave directors shot films much more quickly and cheaply then did reigning directors and could be designated as ‘art movies’. Moreover the young director helped one another out and thus reduced the financial risk of the established companies. Thus the French industry supported the New Wave through distribution, exhibition and production. (Forbes, 1998)

The final moment of radical change to affect the French cinema was the revolt of May 1968. Filmmakers were involved in a number of ways, they demonstrated in support of Henri Langlois, the director of the Cinematheque and against government proposals to take over the organization. Many filmmakers like Jean-Luc-Godard were involved in making so-called Cinetracts or film leaflets. These were film records of events in the streets and public buildings that were intended to serve as a counterweight to the strongly pro-Gaullist ORTF television service. This long term effects of May 1968 were to throw into sharp relief the ideology of the Nouvelle Vague. It marked the divergence of the careers of the Nouvelle Vague directors, and had revealed how fragile and temporary the apparent homogeneity of the group had been.