The French New Wave was a film movement that emerged in the late 1950s as a rejection of the prevailing mode of literary adaptations and Hollywood emulation in French cinema. Young film critics at Cahiers du Cinema, like Truffaut, Godard, and Chabrol, revered the long take and rejected montage. In 1959, seminal New Wave films like Resnais' Hiroshima Mon Amour, Godard's Breathless, and Truffaut's The 400 Blows were released. The New Wave films used techniques like location shooting, available lighting, handheld cameras, and jump cuts that broke conventions and gave the films a casual, improvised feel.

1. French New Wave

2. Postwar French Cinema
• The prevailing mode in
cinema was literary
adaptation
– Caused films to become
increasingly verbal and
theatrical
– Stagnation also resulted from
Hollywood emulation
• Result of studio system and
working on big budget
international co-productions
– Truffaut referred to it as “the
tradition of quality” in “A
certain tendency in French
cinema”

3. Cahiers du Cinéma
• Younger generation of film
critics reacted in late 1950s
– Growth of French cinema
studies and film journals
– Cahiers du Cinéma – André
Bazin 1951
• Revered the long take (e.g.
poetic realism)
• Rejection of montage
– Group of young cinephile
critics– Truffaut, Godard,
Chabrol,
– Disciples of the Henri Langlois’
cinematheque Francaise
– respects, as it critiques,
Hollywood tradition

4. 1959
• Seminal year in
French Cinema
– Resnais, Hiroshima mon
amour
– Godard, Breathless
– Truffaut, The 400 Blows
• Truffaut “uninvited” from
Cannes, then wins best
director at Cannes

5. Italian neorealism
• Influence of Italian
neorealism
– Post war – decimation
of European studio
systems
– In Italy, huge flm studio,
Cinecittà (“movie city)”
used as Displaced
Persons camp
– Stories set amongst
working class
– Location shooting
– Non-professional actors

6. New Wave Techniques
• Working outside the studio system of
production “Lock all those people in the
studio and let's go shoot in the streets. We
don't need a soundstage because the
whole world is a soundstage.”
• Startling shifts in tone; not goal oriented;
ambiguity in closure
• Casual outlook and look – not only in
playful humor and homage, but also
visuals - not polished; on location;
available lighting; handheld; Improvised
plot and dialogue
• Direct sound recording on portable tape
machines
• Most important, the jagged, discontinuous,
elliptical style of editing
– Employed jump cut
• Self reflexive - Remind us that we are
watching a film
– calls attention to the process of film’s
own making

7. Auteur theory
– Filmmakers have the
status of authors (auteur
theory)
– The politique des
auteurs – director as
author with personality,
controlling obsessions
and recurring themes
throughout, film oeuvre;
director as the central
force
– Alexandre Astruc:
Caméra-stylo – camera
as pen, a means of
expression like that of
written language

8. 400 Blows – 1959
– 400 Blows translation: “Live wild life,”
“raise hell” French idiom
– semi-biographical vision of childhood
– sensitive, humorous, poignant,
respectful to children
– role of child in society made for adults
• Truffaut
– “making films with children is a great
temptation before, something of a
panic during, but a great satisfaction
after. Even when everything seems to
be coming adrift, there’s always
something worth saving, and the child
is always the best thing on the screen.
A child’s truth is something I think I
feel absolutely.”
• As you are watching the film, look for
ways that the film conveys the values
and mood of the younger generation
through its formal qualities—through
cinematography, sound, editing, etc.