La Nouvelle Vague: French Filmmaking
The term French New Wave is also known as La Nouvelle Vague. It refers to the work of a group of French film-makers between the years 1958 to 1964. The film directors who formed the core of this group are François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Chabrol, Jacques Rivette and Eric Rohmer. They all where once film critics for the magazine Cahiers du Cinéma. Other French directors, including Agnés Varda and Louis Malle, soon became associated with the French New Wave movement. They momentarily transformed French cinema and had a great impact on filmmakers throughout the world.
During the late 1950s and early 1960s young film-makers in many countries were creating their own "new waves", but the new wave movement in France turned out to be the most influential. The French New Wave directors' background in film theory and criticism was a major factor in this. They changed notions of how a film could be made and were driven by a desire to forge a new cinema.The term ‘New Wave’ was coined by a journalist named Françoise Giroud who, in late 1957, wrote a series of articles on French youth for the weekly news magazine L’Express. The Cahiers du Cinéma critics were highly critical of the glossy, formulaic and studio-bound French cinema of the 1940s and 1950s, but praised the work of 1930s French film-makers Jean Renoir and Jean Vigo and the work of the Italian neo-realists, including Roberto Rossellini and Vittorio De Sica. They also championed certain Hollywood directors, for example, Alfred Hitchcock, Nicholas Ray and Howard Hawks, who they saw as auteurs (authors) of their films, despite the fact that they worked within studio systems making genre pictures. These directors were labelled auteurs because of distinctive themes that could be detected running throughout the body of their work. Through their writings the Cahiers du Cinéma critics paved the way for cinema to become as worthy of academic study as any other art form.
In the late 1950s the Cahiers du
During the late 1950s and early 1960s young film-makers in many countries were creating their own "new waves", but the new wave movement in France turned out to be the most influential. The French New Wave directors' background in film theory and criticism was a major factor in this. They changed notions of how a film could be made and were driven by a desire to forge a new cinema.The term ‘New Wave’ was coined by a journalist named Françoise Giroud who, in late 1957, wrote a series of articles on French youth for the weekly news magazine L’Express. The Cahiers du Cinéma critics were highly critical of the glossy, formulaic and studio-bound French cinema of the 1940s and 1950s, but praised the work of 1930s French film-makers Jean Renoir and Jean Vigo and the work of the Italian neo-realists, including Roberto Rossellini and Vittorio De Sica. They also championed certain Hollywood directors, for example, Alfred Hitchcock, Nicholas Ray and Howard Hawks, who they saw as auteurs (authors) of their films, despite the fact that they worked within studio systems making genre pictures. These directors were labelled auteurs because of distinctive themes that could be detected running throughout the body of their work. Through their writings the Cahiers du Cinéma critics paved the way for cinema to become as worthy of academic study as any other art form.
In the late 1950s the Cahiers du