French New Wave

A detailed Summary of French New Wave

The French New Wave was a movement that lasted between 1959 to 1964. It all started with the Cinematheque Francois, an underground organization that would regularly show older films from around the world. This beget the cine-club, and by the 1954 there were 100,000 members in 200 clubs. From these clubs several magazines were created, the most famous of these were L'Ecran Francois, La Revue du Cinema, Postif, and the world known Cahiers du Cinema.

One of the two most influential people during this time was Alexandre Astruc who declared that, "the cinema is becoming a means of expression like the other arts before it, especially painting and the novel. It is no longer a spectacle, a diversion equivalent to the old boulevard theater...it is becoming, little by little, a visual language, i.e. a medium in which and by which an artist can express his thoughts, be they abstract or whatever, or in which he can communicate his obsessions as accurately as he can today in essay or novel". What Astruc was saying , was that the cinema was now as personal as paintings and literature, instead of just a show.

The second and most influential of the two was Andre Bazin, who like Astruc believed that the cinema was equal to the novel.

Soon after, Francois Truffaut released Les Quatre Cent Coups (The 400 Blows), another landmark in the French New Wave. The film tells a story of the troubled 14 year old boy and his misadventures in Paris, who deals with his uncaring parents, and finally the law. The 400 Blows bears all the marks of Truffaut as auteur, "his obsessions with childhood, education, and the psychology of his characters". Truffaut would visit this character in three more of his movies and a short film. (Antoine et Colette, Stolen Kisses, Bed and Board, Love on the Run.)

The five directors, Godard, Truffaut, Chabrol, Rivette and Rohmer made thirty-two films between 1959 and 1966. The films by these directors represented a radical departure from traditional cinema, and were aimed towards a young intellectual audience. Most of these directors achieved critical and financial success, gaining audience both in France and abroad. The directors diverged in style and developed their own distinct cinematic voices. Francois Truffaut incorporated more traditional elements in his films, while Jean-Luc Godard became increasingly political and radical in his film making during the 60s. After 1964, the experimental elements of the French New Wave were already starting to influence and assimilate into mainstream cinema. The influence of the French New Wave stretched across all of Europe. Poland, Sweden, Denmark, Yugoslavia, the U.S. soon followed by creating film schools. To this day The French New Wave still influences movie-makers who play up the antihero, and experiment with and go against conventional movie making. Most of these films are now part of the "independent scene", a movement not unlike the French New Wave.

One of the first scandals in this wave of thought was an article written by Francois Truffaut in 1954, "A Certain Tendency in the French Cinema." In his essay he criticized "the French postwar films tha

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Approximate Word count = 1292
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: Movies