French New Wave

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, it was said that in the postwar era of reconstruction and rising prosperity, many countries had their new young waves of young cinema groups mostly in revolt against their elders in the industry. A new artistic movement arose in France that had a profound effect on the film industry. They called it the French New Wave.

The New Wave films have its unique characteristics that made them different from other styles.

• Jump cuts are applied.
• Cameras in New Wave moves a lot of panning and tracking.
• Handheld cameras are used to shoot realistically and cheaply.
• Causal connections are loose
• Films in New Wave often lack goal-oriented protagonist
• Casual humor
• Films end ambiguously.

Cahiers du Cinema

In the mid 1950s, a group of French film critics founded an influential French film magazine entitled Cahiers du Cinema that made a habit of attacking respected French filmmakers in that time.

Claude Chabrol

Jean-Luc Godard

Francois Truffaut

“Your camera movements are ugly because your subjects are bad, your casts act badly because your dialogue is worthless: in a word, you don’t know how to create cinema because you no longer even know what it is.” – Jean-Luc Goddard

Auteur Theory

“There are no works, there are only auteurs.” – Jean Luc Godard

Directors are called auteurs when their own strong  personality are used as control over their works. There are many auteurs not only in France but also on other countries, Some of the "auteurs" in America are Nicholas Ray, Alfred Hitchcock, Robert Aldritch, Fritz Lang, etc.

The French New wave, just like the other movements contributed a lot in making the film industry of the world better. This allows creativity in filmmaking. They have their own techniques of fiiming, editing and sound. Making their movies have greater sense of flexibility. 

We learned that by 1964, New Wave directors were absorbed by mainstream studios. Nevertheless, their styles were imitated by a lot of filmmakers, making this style useful and memorable in a lot of films.

Reference:

Bordwell, D., Thompson, K. (1979). Film Art: An Introduction (8^th ed.).  McGraw-Hill