Exploring the French New Wave Movement

French New Wave is a period in cinema history that I recently heard about and I am really interested to learn more about. So far I have watched a couple of video essays (below) talking about the themes, techniques and concepts behind the movement which are really interesting.

In summary, the French New Wave movement was influenced by Italian Neorealism during and post WW2. Following this Nazi censorship of cinema ceased in 1946 which then led to a boom of film culture and many journals on film were founded.

In 1948, a french filmmaker and critic, Alexandre Astruc, wrote an essay that was originally printed in ‘L’Écran Francais’, entitled ‘The Birth of a New Avant-Garde: Le Caméra-Stylo’. The concept suggests that directors can use the camera as a pen to tell stories and therefore make films.

Following this, film-critic and theorist, André Bazin founded the journal Cahiers du Cinema. The writers for this journal soon became the leaders of La Nouvelle Vague; known as The Young Turks, François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Éric Rohmer, Jacques Rivette and Claude Chebrol. 

Les 400 Coups by François Truffaut (1959) was the first film made by the Young Turks is known to have been the catalyst to start the movement. I am really looking forward to watching it because it is said to reveal and display the main aesthetic and technical elements of the French New Wave.

The videos talk about some of the characteristics of French New Wave cinema such as editing, realism and the filming techniques which I would really like to research further and possibly use them to inform my practise and to develop my specialist skills of filmmaking and editing.

These videos have given me an insight into the history and techniques of the movement and I think I would like to focus my research on French New Wave cinema for now. I think I would also like to look at this topic for my dissertation which I think will be beneficial to pair with my Creative Research Project as it is interesting to learn about from an academic perspective for my dissertation, but also be able to react to what I am learning through my creative outlets in this project.