French New Wave Cinema: Origins, Style, and Global Impact

Introduction: French Cinema and the American Challenge

French cinema, by the time the Second World War ended, was faced with a crisis fittingly summarized by posters advertising Mundus-Film, distributors for First National, Goldwyn, and Selig. These posters implied that the cannon operated by America's infantrymen launched film after film targeted at the French. La Cinématographie française (soon to become the leading French trade journal) claimed that every week 25,000 meters of film imported mainly from America were presented in France for each 5,000 meters of locally made French films. French-made films often constituted as little as 10% of the films screened in Parisian cinemas. Henri Diamant-Berger, publisher of the French magazine Le Film, bluntly stated that France could be in jeopardy of turning into a "cinematographic colony" of America (Nowell-Smith).

The French New Wave is one of the film movements that shaped the history of French cinema. Rejuvenating the prestigious French cinema, the New Wave that emerged in the late 1950s to early 1960s invigorated international cinema, film theory, and criticism. This reminds contemporary viewers of the impact of Italian neo-realism immediately following the Second World War. The New Wave caused a dramatic change in filmmaking, both inside France and outside it, encouraging new themes, modes, and styles of production all over the world. All of a sudden, scores of young new directors in their twenties and thirties—such as Claude Chabrol, François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, and Louis Malle—began producing films and launching new movie stars like Jean-Claude Brialy, Jean-Paul Belmondo, and Jeanne Moreau.

Because of the introduction of new production norms, in addition to a group of new, young producers eager to participate in this burst of filmmaking, approximately 120 first-time directors began to shoot feature-length motion pictures from 1958 to 1964. Furthermore, several young directors produced multiple films in those years; for instance, Jean-Luc Godard made eight feature films in just four years. Thus, the total output of films created by the New Wave was staggering. An entire generation could experiment with storytelling rules and rethink traditional production norms and film budgets. A whole new range of options was born for movie aesthetics, often combining past techniques, which were restored and reinvigorated for the modern age (Neupert).

Partly owing to a revived interest in France's New Wave on the occasion of its 40th anniversary, the movement garnered increased attention from several historians and critics, including leading French cinema scholars such as Antoine de Baecque, Michel Marie, and Jean Douchet. The French cinema journal Cahiers du cinéma published a special nouvelle vague issue. However, given the New Wave's significance, variety, and depth, many aspects of this movement have not been fully examined. Large survey texts essentially condense the era and its main figures into simple summaries. Works such as French Cinema by Roy Armes, Republic of Images by Alan Williams, and The New Wave by James Monaco, devoted particularly to the New Wave or to French cinema in general, show different perspectives with respect to the movement. Often they focus on those directors who began as Cahiers du cinéma critics before shooting their first features.

For James Monaco, the New Wave really comes down to Claude Chabrol, François Truffaut, Éric Rohmer, Jacques Rivette, and Jean-Luc Godard; he is not concerned with describing the broader historic movement or its precise dates. Armes divides the New Wave era of France into different renewal clusters, drawn from various new directors. However, for Armes, these directors have their roots in criticism; thus, he too considers only those filmmakers originating from Cahiers du cinéma as "pure" members. Armes avoids describing the movement in critical or historical terms. Williams' survey history is large and comprehensive, establishing major influences and grouping the most prominent directors as "reformists." Williams includes Chabrol, Truffaut, and Malle as distinct from radical directors such as Godard, or more marginal ones like Rohmer (Neupert).

Development of the New Wave

Paris-born Jean-Luc Godard, who belonged to a Franco-Swiss upper-middle-class family, grew up in Switzerland. He was a student of ethnology at the Sorbonne in Paris, and his growing attraction to films drew him away from his studies. Initially supported by his family, when he turned 21 they stopped funding him. Refusing to take up a profession more suited to his middle-class standing, Godard pursued his interest in film, though circumstances sometimes arose where he had to resort to stealing money and food to survive.

For much of the 1970s, Godard was part of a revolutionary filmmaking collective, the Dziga Vertov Group, named in honor of the great Soviet documentary filmmaker. This group discarded the auteur filmmaking idea and instead began making movies in a politically engaged New Wave style. They claimed that it symbolized their group's political will; since then, however, Godard has reverted to fictional features in the auteur style. Godard has increasingly blended fiction and documentary film, pushing storytelling toward real-life exposure. In the 2004 film Notre Musique, for instance, Godard places news footage regarding several wars of the previous century alongside feature war footage and the story of a young Israeli female journalist despairing over her country's incessant warfare (Nochimson).

New Wave Crime Thriller

Among the major anti-heroes belonging to the New Wave, Michel Poiccard (played by Jean-Paul Belmondo) is seen as a liar, thief, and murderer—a protagonist whose behavior runs opposite to established social norms. In one particular sequence, just before ducking into his friend's room, Michel casually and with a free-floating, strange amorality murders a motorcycle police officer who had been chasing him for speeding away in a stolen vehicle. The situation hardly provides Michel with a clear motivation to kill; the murder is made possible by mere chance—the discovery of a pistol in the car's glove compartment. Michel is portrayed as a live-in-the-moment individual: heedless of consequences, free-spirited, and adventurous. The initial impression made by Michel's reckless life is how genuinely dangerous it is. New Wave films, just like those from Hollywood, seem fascinated by the freedom accorded by modern culture. Unlike Hollywood, however, New Wave auteurs do not permit the viewer to be lured into uncritical acceptance of the characters' wild lives, despite their charm (Nochimson).

Because improvising and working with a camera on Parisian streets—where considerably less control can be achieved compared with studio shooting—were central to New Wave filmmaking, chance was also typically a central theme in the films' events and stories. Godard has clearly not been interested in conventional narrative comfort. Though narrating Breathless by employing a tightly structured Hollywood formula would have proved easier, Godard places both his characters and his film-viewers in a radically uncertain state. The camerawork also mimics Patricia's and Michel's casual glances—the natural eye motion that André Bazin believed to be indicative of the finest cinema—as distinct from Hollywood's careful framing and shot-editing, which highlights only what is deemed important for the story (Nochimson).

Conclusion

The filmmakers connected with the New Wave that was sparked in the early 1960s might be assumed to be figures of purely historical interest, with their chief cinematic achievements belonging to the past. However, the reality is far from this assumption. Excepting François Truffaut, who passed away in 1984 at the age of 52, others—including Chabrol, Godard, Rivette, and Rohmer from Cahiers du cinéma's original circle, and Marker, Resnais, and Varda from the "Left Bank" group—continued making films well into later decades. All these filmmakers, by then in their seventies and eighties, released movies as perpetually alive to cinema's challenges and possibilities as the work they made in their youth. Chabrol, Rohmer, and Rivette remained faithful to conventional narrative cinema, while Marker, Varda, and Godard continually proved receptive to new styles. Assessing them jointly as filmmakers of the twenty-first century means taking stock of numerous remarkable achievements.

Another noteworthy development is that a recent generation of American and British critics began working seriously on these filmmakers, as evidenced by publications such as Catherine Lupton's research on Chris Marker (the first career-length English-language survey), Emma Wilson's work on Alain Resnais, and a book on Jean-Luc Godard by Douglas Morrey. The last two works form part of Manchester University Press's series French Film Directors. Highly useful material can also be found in the journal Studies in French Cinema (Darke).

A few of the main components of France's legendary New Wave can be summarized as follows: a cluster of rebel directors stood up to the established practices of the industry, triumphing momentarily. Aside from the insistently Oedipal war waged against the so-called le cinéma de papa (or "Daddy's cinema"), the French New Wave has been a ceaseless inspiration to independent film directors worldwide. In France, it has been institutionalized into a system of support, education, and subsidy. The role of filmmaking technology in this movement is vital, and acknowledging that the filmmakers' equipment helped achieve those distinctive filmmaking styles is not an exaggeration. However, other influences beyond sound equipment and lightweight cameras were also present. A culture of rational inquiry into the nature of the cinematic medium was equally important—a permanent aspect of French film culture since its inception. As summarized above, this French tendency could be expressed, in the postwar era, through the cinephilia of filmmakers, film clubs, and critics (Darke).

Bibliography

Darke, Chris. "The French New Wave." n.d. Routledge.

Neupert, Richard. A History of the French New Wave Cinema. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2007.

Nochimson, Martha P. World on Film: An Introduction. New York City: John Wiley & Sons, 2011.

Nowell-Smith, Geoffrey. The Oxford History of World Cinema. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.

Sellier, Geneviève. Masculine Singular: French New Wave Cinema. Durham: Duke University Press, 2008.