French New Wave Film Era

French New Wave

The French New Wave, La Nouvelle Vague in French was a blanket term that was created by critics for a group of French filmmakers of the late 1950s and 1960s. Some of the major influences to this movement included Italian Neorealism and classical Hollywood Cinema. The French New Wave was never an actual formally organized movement but their self-conscious rejection of classical cinematic form and their spirit of youthful iconoclasm linked the filmmakers of this movement. Many used social and political confusion in their work. The people most involved in this movement were François Truffant, Jean-Luc Godard, Éric Rohmer, Claude Chabrol, and Jacques Rivette. The French New Wave was mainly popular around the time of 1958 until 1964. The socio-economic forces following World War II had an immense impact on the movement. New Wave critics and directors studied the work of western classics and applied new avant garde stylistic direction. Many French New Wave films had a very low budget. Part of this is because many of the filmmakers used to be critics. These critics-turned-filmmakers did not know much about film production and worked on a low budget. Jump cuts, shooting on location, natural lighting, improvisation, direct sound recording, and long takes were all consistently used in the majority of films during this period. Many of these films had loose story plots. The viewer was able to interpret the movie as they wanted and it made the audience really think about the movie. Also, with much of the films being improvised, actors could add their own twist to the movie. A jump cut is a cut in the film from one shot and beginning with a new shot with a very slight difference. An unnatural jump cut could be accomplished by placing two shots next to that have a person in one position and in the next shot have a person in a different position. No one is completely certain what the first film of the French New Wave was but most of the first were short films. For example, Jaques Rivette’s Le coup du berger and Franois Traffaut’s Les Mistons. The French New Wave had a major impact on film from there on out. Even today, many films have been influenced from this period. It created many other new waves and directors to emerge and become well known. The French New Wave was a world known idea. One of the most famous directors that commonly uses New French Wave influences in his movies today is Quentin Tarantino. He dedicated one of his movies, Reservoir Dogs, to Jean-Luc Godard and named his company after him too. 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. Left Bank directors include Chris Marker, Alain Resnais, and Agnès Varda. The corresponding "right bank" group is constituted of the 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.