FRENCH NEW WAVE CINEMA



French New wave cinema

French New wave cinema



Introduction

French cinema in the post war years consisted mainly of genre movies with high production values. It was often studio bound and formulaic. The Gaullist regime came to power in the late 1950s and wanted to promote a home grown industry to compete against the dominance of Hollywood. A film subsidy called the avance sur recettes was put in place which enabled many new directors to get their first films made. Roger Vadim's commercially successful Et Dieu créa la femme (Porter, 2006) had given production companies faith in young directors working with low budgets.

Discussion

"The French New Wave is one of the most significant film movements in the history of the cinema. During the late 1950s and early 1960s, the New Wave rejuvenated France's already prestigious cinema and energized the international art cinema as well as film criticism and theory, reminding many contemporary observers of Italian neorealism's impact right after World War II. The New Wave dramatically changed filmmaking inside and outside France by encouraging new styles, themes, and modes of production throughout the world (Quart, 2004).

Suddenly, there were scores of new, young twenty- and thirty-something directors, such as Louis Malle, François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, and Claude Chabrol, delivering film after film while launching a new generation of stars, including Jeanne Moreau, Jean-Claude Brialy, and Jean-Paul Belmondo. As a result of new production norms and a cluster of young producers anxious to participate in this burst of filmmaking, roughly 120 first-time French directors were able to shoot feature-length motion pictures between the years 1958 and 1964.

A whole new array of options for film aesthetics was born, often combined with tactics from the past that were dusted off and reinvigorated alongside them (Peter, 2005). Thanks in part to a renewed interest in the New Wave in France on its fortieth anniversary, increased attention has recently been directed at this movement from a wide range of critics and historians, including prominent figures in French film scholarship like Michel Marie, Jean Douchet, and Antoine de Baecque. The French film journal Cahiers du cinéma also organized a special issue devoted to the nouvelle vague.

In this regard, a group of new filmmakers began making their own films. Advancements in technology meant that film and sound equipment was cheaper and lighter making it easier to film on location. Many of these new directors did film on the streets of Paris. Their films were often independently financed without support from a major studio. The technical crews were relatively small and the actors were often non professionals. The actors in these films were young and lifelike often indulging in anti-establishment behaviour. These films had a contemporary setting and were distinctly French despite their sometimes foreign influences.

Some of these new filmmakers had been critics for the French film magazine 'Les Cahier du Cinéma' co founded by André Bazin in 1951. Heavily influenced by Hollywood, these filmmakers consisted of François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Chabrol, Eric Rohmer and Jacque ...