"Nouvelle Vague" redirects here. For the music group of the same name, see Nouvelle Vague (band).
The New Wave
(French: La Nouvelle Vague
) 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 and is an example of European art cinema. [2] 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.
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Origins of the movement
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
(or, more correctly, "La politique des auteurs" ("The policy of authors")).
Cahiers du cinéma
writers attacked the classic "literary" style of
French Cinema.
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
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 arguably 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. Techniques and portrayed characters not readily labeled as protagonists in the classic sense of audience identification.
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. 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 filmmakers 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-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.
[3]
Film techniques
The movies featured unprecedented methods of expression, such as seven-minute
tracking shots (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, 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 to remove several scenes from the feature using
jump cuts. As they were filmed in one long take: parts that didn't work were simply cut right 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 360º 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.
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.
Lasting effects
As with most art-film movements, the innovations of the New Wavers trickled down to the
American cinema. Beginning with the heavily evident stylistic similarities in
Arthur Penn's
Bonnie and Clyde
(1967), the following generation of American young, studio-hired filmmakers referred to as
New Hollywood, such as
Altman,
Coppola,
De Palma and
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
which displays a strong New Wave influence.
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
[4] [5].
Many contemporary filmmakers, including
Quentin Tarantino,
Wong Kar Wai, 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. Additionally, the 2004 film
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
was filmed using techniques borrowed from Godard.
[6]
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 Roud.
[7] The corresponding "right bank" group is constituted of the earlier, more famous and financially successful New Wave directors associated with
Cahiers du Cinéma
(
Claude Chabrol,
François Truffaut, and
Jean-Luc Godard).
[ 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 filmmaking", as well as an identification with the political left.][ The filmmakers tended to collaborate with one another. [8] Jean-Pierre Melville, Alain Robbe-Grillet and Marguerite Duras are also associated with the group. [9] 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 Hiroshima Mon Amour
, La Jetée
, Last Year at Marienbad
, and Trans-Europ-Express
.
]
Influential names in the New Wave
Cahiers du Cinema Directors
- Claude Chabrol
- Jean-Luc Godard
- Jacques Rivette
- Éric Rohmer
- François Truffaut [10]
Left Bank Directors
- Henri Colpi
- Jacques Demy
- Chris Marker
- Alain Resnais
- Agnès Varda
Other Directors associated with the movement
- Alexandre Astruc
- Jacques Doniol-Valcroze
- Marguerite Duras
- Jean Eustache
- Georges Franju
- Philippe Garrel
- Pierre Kast
- Claude Lelouch
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- Louis Malle
- Jean-Pierre Melville
- Luc Moullet
- Alain Robbe-Grillet
- Jean Rouch
- Jacques Rozier
- Straub-Huillet
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Other Contributers
- Raoul Coutard - cinematographer
- Henri Decaë - cinematographer
- Georges Delerue - composer
- Michel Legrand - composer
Actors & Actresses
- Stéphane Audran
- Brigitte Bardot
- Jean Paul Belmondo
- Gerard Blain
- Jean-Claude Brialy
- Alain Delon
- Catherine Deneuve
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- Anna Karina
- Bernadette Lafont
- Jean-Pierre Léaud
- Jeanne Moreau
- Maurice Ronet
- Jean Seberg
- Jean-Louis Trintignant
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Theoretical influences
- Alexandre Astruc
- André Bazin
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See also
- Japanese New Wave (Nuberu bagu)
- Australian New Wave
- British New Wave
- Cinema Novo (Brazilian New Wave)
- Novo Cinema (Portuguese New Wave)
- Czechoslovak New Wave
- Film noir
- Hong Kong New Wave
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- New French Extremity
- New Hollywood (American New Wave)
- True Cinema movement
- No Wave Cinema
- Parallel Cinema (Indian New Wave)
- Remodernist Film
- Taiwan New Wave
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Notes and references
- Marie, Michel. ''The French New Wave : An Artistic School''. Trans. Richard Neupert. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated, 2002.
- http://www.brynmawrfilm.org/08_French_Cinema_NEW.html
- A. O. Scott, "Living for Cinema, and Through It," New York Times, June 25, 2009, [1] Access date: June 30, 2009.
- Desser, David, ''Eros Plus Massacre: An Introduction To Japanese New Wave Cinema'', Indiana Univ. Press, 1988
- Oshima, Nagisa & Annette Michelson, ''Cinema, Censorship And The State: The Writings Of Nagisa Oshima'', M.I.T. Press, 1993
- John Pavlus, "Forget Me Not: ''Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind'', shot by Ellen Kuras, ASC, explores a man's fight to retain his romantic memories", ''American Cinematographer'', April 2004
- "The Left Bank Revisited: Marker, Resnais, Varda", ''Harvard Film Archive'', [1] Access date: August 16, 2008.
- Jill Nelmes, ''An Introduction to Film Studies'', p. 44. Routledge.
- Donato Totaro, ''Offscreen'', ''Hiroshima Mon Amour'' review, August 31, 2003. [1] Access date: August 16, 2008.
- New Wave Film.com, "Where to Start Guide", section outlining directors. Accessed 30 Apr 2009.