View source for French New Wave

{{Short description|c. 1960s movement in French cinema}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=February 2021}}
{{Redirect|Nouvelle Vague|the music group|Nouvelle Vague (band)|other uses|Nouvelle Vague (disambiguation)}}{{Expand Polish|Nowa Fala (kino francuskie)
| date = 10 2023|topic=cult
}}{{Infobox Film Movement
| name           = French New Wave
| image          = Three by Truffaut poster.jpg
| caption        = "Three by Truffaut" poster for the US re-release of French New Wave films ''[[The 400 Blows]]'', ''[[Shoot the Piano Player]]'' and ''[[Jules and Jim]]''.
| yearsactive    = 1958 to late 1960s
| country        = France
| majorfigures   = [[Jean-Luc Godard]], [[Alain Resnais]], [[Agnès Varda]], [[André Bazin]], [[Jacques Demy]], [[François Truffaut]], [[Éric Rohmer]], [[Claude Chabrol]], [[Jacques Rivette]], [[Chris Marker]]<ref name="empireonline.com">{{Cite web |url=https://www.empireonline.com/movies/features/french-new-wave-movie-era/ |title=Movie movements that defined cinema: the French New Wave |date=8 August 2016 |access-date=27 June 2019 |archive-date=27 June 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190627132255/https://www.empireonline.com/movies/features/french-new-wave-movie-era/ |url-status=live }}</ref>
| influences     = [[Italian neorealism]], [[film noir]],<ref name="Marie, Michel 2002">Marie, Michel. ''The French New Wave : An Artistic School''. Trans. Richard Neupert. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated, 2002.</ref> [[classical Hollywood cinema]],<ref name="Marie, Michel 2002"/> [[poetic realism]], [[auteur theory]], Parisian [[cinephile]] culture, [[existentialism]], [[Alfred Hitchcock]], [[Art film]], [[New Left]], [[Bertolt Brecht]]
| influenced     = [[Japanese New Wave]], [[L.A. Rebellion]], [[New Hollywood]], [[New German Cinema]], [[Cinema Novo]], [[Dogme 95]], [[British New Wave]], [[Yugoslav Black Wave]], [[New Sincerity]], [[Mumblecore]], [[New Wave (science fiction)|New Wave Sci-Fi]]}}

The '''New Wave''' ({{langx|fr|'''Nouvelle Vague'''}}, {{IPA|fr|nuvɛl vaɡ}}), also called the '''French New Wave''', is a French [[European art cinema|art film]] movement that emerged in the late 1950s. The movement was characterized by its rejection of traditional [[filmmaking]] conventions in favor of experimentation and a spirit of [[iconoclasm]]. New Wave filmmakers explored new approaches to [[film editing|editing]], visual style, and narrative, as well as engagement with the social and political upheavals of the era, often making use of irony or exploring [[existential]] themes. The New Wave is often considered one of the most influential movements in the history of [[cinematography|cinema]]. 

The term was first used by a group of French film critics and cinephiles associated with the magazine {{Lang|fr|[[Cahiers du cinéma]]}} in the late 1950s and 1960s. These critics rejected the {{Lang|fr|Tradition de qualité}} ("Tradition of Quality") of mainstream French cinema,{{sfn|Grant|2007|loc=Vol. 4, p. 235}} which emphasized craft over innovation and old works over experimentation.{{sfn|Grant|2007|loc=Vol. 2, p. 259}} This was apparent in a manifesto-like 1954 essay by [[François Truffaut]], {{Lang|fr|Une certaine tendance du cinéma français}}, where he denounced the adaptation of safe literary works into unimaginative films.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://tcf.ua.edu/Classes/Jbutler/T440/TruffautInCahiers31/Truffaut%20A_certain_tendency_translated.pdf|title=Une certaine tendance du cinéma français|last=Truffaut|first=Francois|date=2018-04-16|access-date=16 April 2018|archive-date=6 February 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210206235450/https://tcf.ua.edu/Classes/Jbutler/T440/TruffautInCahiers31/Truffaut%20A_certain_tendency_translated.pdf}}</ref> Along with Truffaut, a number of writers for {{Lang|fr|Cahiers du cinéma}} became leading New Wave filmmakers, including [[Jean-Luc Godard]], [[Éric Rohmer]], [[Jacques Rivette]], and [[Claude Chabrol]]. The associated [[Left Bank Cinema|Left Bank]] film community included directors such as [[Alain Resnais]], [[Agnès Varda]], [[Jacques Demy]] and [[Chris Marker]].

Using portable equipment and requiring little or no set up time, the New Wave way of filmmaking often presented a documentary style. The films exhibited direct sounds on film stock that required less light. Filming techniques included fragmented, discontinuous editing, and long takes. The combination of realism, subjectivity, and authorial commentary created a narrative ambiguity in the sense that questions that arise in a film are not answered in the end.<ref>Thompson, Kristin. Bordwell, David. ''Film History: An Introduction'', Third Edition. McGraw Hill. 2010, p.407–408.</ref>

Although naturally associated with [[Francophone]] countries, the movement has had a continual influence within various other cinephile cultures over the past several decades inside of many other nations. The [[United Kingdom]] and the [[United States]], both of them being primarily [[English language|English-speaking]], are of note. "[[Kitchen sink realism]]" as an artistic approach intellectually challenging [[Culture of the United Kingdom|social conventions and traditions in the U.K.]] is an example, as are some elements of the "[[new sincerity]]" subculture within the U.S. that involve deliberately defying certain critical expectations in filmmaking.

== Origins of the movement ==
[[File:Franse regisseur Francois Truffaut voor bioscoop Cinétol, waar zijn film draait , Bestanddeelnr 917-5420.jpg|thumb|[[François Truffaut]] in 1965]]
[[Alexandre Astruc]]'s manifesto "The Birth of a New Avant-Garde: The Camera-Stylo", published in ''L'Écran'' on 30 March 1948, outlined some of the ideas that were later expanded upon by [[François Truffaut]] and the {{Lang|fr|[[Cahiers du cinéma]]}}.<ref>{{cite web|date=30 March 1948|title=La Camera Stylo – Alexandre Astruc|url=http://www.newwavefilm.com/about/camera-stylo-astruc.shtml|url-status=live|access-date=13 June 2017|work=from "The French New Wave", edited by [[Ginette Vincendeau]] and [[Peter Graham (writer)|Peter Graham]]|archive-date=13 June 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170613230620/http://www.newwavefilm.com/about/camera-stylo-astruc.shtml}}</ref> It argues that "cinema was in the process of becoming a new means of expression on the same level as painting and the novel ... a form in which and by which an artist can express his thoughts, however abstract they may be, or translate his obsessions exactly as he does in the contemporary essay or novel. This is why I would like to call this new age of cinema the age of the ''caméra-stylo.''"<ref>{{cite book|last=Marie |first=Michel |title=The French New Wave: An Artistic School |page=31 |publisher=John Wiley & Sons |year=2008 |isbn= 978-0-470-77695-7 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=LUWijfZ_QkMC&pg=PA31}}</ref>

Some of the most prominent pioneers among the group, including [[François Truffaut]], [[Jean-Luc Godard]], [[Éric Rohmer]], [[Claude Chabrol]], and [[Jacques Rivette]], began as critics for the famous film magazine {{Lang|fr|Cahiers du cinéma}}. ''Cahiers'' co-founder and theorist [[André Bazin]] was a prominent source of influence for the movement. By means of criticism and editorialization, they laid the groundwork for a set of concepts, revolutionary at the time, which the American film critic Andrew Sarris called ''[[auteur theory]]''. (The original French {{Lang|fr|La politique des auteurs}}, translated literally as "The policy of authors".) Bazin and [[Henri Langlois]], founder and curator of the {{Lang|fr|[[Cinémathèque Française]]|italic=no}}, were the dual father figures of the movement. These men of cinema valued the expression of the director's personal vision in both the film's style and script.<ref>[[Thompson, Kristin]]. [[Bordwell, David]]. ''Film History: An Introduction'', Third Edition. McGraw Hill. 2010, p.407</ref>

Truffaut also credits the American film ''[[Little Fugitive (1953 film)|Little Fugitive]]'' (1953) by [[Ruth Orkin]], [[Ray Ashley]] and [[Morris Engel]] with helping to start the French New Wave, when he said: "Our New Wave would never have come into being, if it hadn't been for the young American Morris Engel who showed us the way to independent production with [this] fine movie."<ref name="TCMarticle">{{cite web|url=https://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/82085/lovers-and-lollipops#articles-reviews?articleId=220887|title=Lovers and Lollipops |access-date=26 December 2023 |last=Sterritt |first=David |author-link= David Sterritt |work=Turner Classic Movies |publisher=[[Turner Classic Movies]]}}</ref>

The auteur theory holds that the director is the "author" of their movies, with a personal signature visible from film to film.  They praised movies by [[Jean Renoir]] and [[Jean Vigo]], and made then-radical cases for the artistic distinction and greatness of Hollywood studio directors such as [[Orson Welles]], [[John Ford]], [[Alfred Hitchcock]] and [[Nicholas Ray]].  The beginning of the New Wave was to some extent an exercise by the ''Cahiers'' writers in applying this philosophy to the world by directing movies themselves.

Apart from the role that films by [[Jean Rouch]] have played in the movement, Chabrol's ''[[Le Beau Serge]]'' (1958) is traditionally (but debatably) credited as the first New Wave feature. [[Agnès Varda]]'s  ''[[La Pointe Courte]]'' (1955) was chronologically the first, but did not have a commercial release until 2008. Truffaut, with ''[[The 400 Blows]]'' (1959), and Godard, with ''[[Breathless (1960 film)|Breathless]]'' (1960) had unexpected international successes, both critical and financial, that turned the world's attention to the activities of the New Wave and enabled the movement to flourish. Part of their technique was to portray characters not readily labeled as protagonists in the classic sense of audience identification.

The auteurs of this era owe their popularity to the support they received from their youthful audience. Most of these directors were born in the 1930s and grew up in Paris, relating to how their viewers might be experiencing life. With a high concentration on fashion, urban professional life, and all-night parties, the life of France's youth was exquisitely captured.<ref>Thompson, Kristin. Bordwell, David. ''Film History: An Introduction'', Third Edition. McGraw Hill. 2010, p.409</ref>

The French New Wave was popular roughly between 1958 and 1962.<ref>{{Cite book|title=French cinema|last=Armes, Roy.|date=1985|publisher=Oxford University Press|location=New York|oclc=456494962}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |title=Dictionnaire du cinéma |editor1=Passek, Jean Loup |editor2=Ciment, Michel |editor3=Cluny, Claude Michel |editor4=Frouard, Jean-Pierre |date=1986 |publisher=Larousse |isbn=2-03-512303-8 |oclc=438564932}}</ref> The [[socio-economic]] forces at play shortly after [[World War II]] strongly influenced the movement. Politically and financially drained, France tended to fall back on the old popular pre-war traditions. One such tradition was straight narrative cinema, specifically classical French film. The movement has its roots in rebellion against the reliance on past forms (often adapted from traditional novelistic structures), criticizing, in particular, the way these forms could force the [[audience]] to submit to a dictatorial [[Plot (narrative)|plot-line]]. They were especially against the French "cinema of quality", the type of high-minded, literary period films held in esteem at French film festivals, often regarded as "untouchable" by criticism.

New Wave critics and directors studied the work of Western classics and applied new avant-garde stylistic direction. The [[low-budget film|low-budget]] approach helped filmmakers get at the essential art form and find what was, to them, a much more comfortable and contemporary form of production. [[Charlie Chaplin]], Alfred Hitchcock, Orson Welles, [[Howard Hawks]], John Ford, [[Sam Fuller]] and [[Don Siegel]]<ref name="empireonline.com"/> were held up in admiration. French New Wave is influenced by [[Italian Neorealism]]<ref name="Marie, Michel 2002"/> and [[classical Hollywood cinema]].<ref name="Marie, Michel 2002"/>

In a 1961 interview, Truffaut said that "the 'New Wave' is neither a movement, nor a school, nor a group, it's a ''quality''" and in December 1962 published a list of 162 film directors who had made their feature film debut since 1959. Many of these directors, such as Edmond Agabra and Henri Zaphiratos, were not as successful or enduring as the well-known members of the New Wave and today would not be considered part of it. Shortly after Truffaut's published list appeared, Godard publicly declared that the New Wave was more exclusive and included only Truffaut, Chabrol, Rivette, Rohmer, and himself, stating that "''Cahiers'' was the nucleus" of the movement. Godard also acknowledged filmmakers such as Resnais, Astruc, Varda, and Demy as esteemed contemporaries, but said that they represented "their own fund of culture" and were separate from the New Wave.<ref>{{cite book |last=Brody |first=Richard |title=Everything is Cinema: The Working Life of Jean-Luc Godard |publisher=Metropolitan Books |location=New York, NY |date=2008 |isbn=978-0-8050-8015-5 |pages=122–123}}</ref>

Many of the directors associated with the New Wave continued to make films into the 21st century.<ref>{{cite news |first=A. O. |last=Scott |title=Living for Cinema, and Through It |work=The New York Times |date=25 June 2009 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/28/movies/28scot.html |access-date=24 February 2017 |archive-date=10 August 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170810032812/http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/28/movies/28scot.html |url-status=live }}</ref>

== Film techniques==
[[File:Jean–Luc Godard.jpg|thumb|[[Jean-Luc Godard]] in 1968]]
The movies featured unprecedented methods of expression, such as long [[tracking shot]]s (like the famous traffic jam sequence in Godard's 1967 film ''[[Weekend (1967 film)|Weekend]]''). Also, these movies featured [[existentialism|existential]] themes, often stressing the individual and the acceptance of the [[absurdity]] of human existence. Filled with irony and sarcasm, the films also tend to reference other films.  

Many of the French New Wave films were produced on tight budgets, often shot in a friend's apartment or yard, using the director's friends as the cast and crew.  Directors were also forced to improvise with equipment (for example, using a shopping cart for tracking shots.<ref>[[Champs-Élysées]] street scene in Godard's [[Breathless (1960 film)|Breathless]]. {{cite web |url=https://bonjourparis.com/history/behind-scene-champs-elysees-breathless-and-beyond/ |title=Back to the Scene: The Champs Elysees in Breathless and Beyond |last1=Girdner |first1=Ashlee |date=11 March 2013 |website=Bonjour Paris |access-date=2 April 2016 |quote=The solution for this was to hide Coutard inside of a three-wheeled mail cart, which was fitted with a hole just big enough for the camera lens to stick out, and he then would be pushed alongside the chatting stars. |archive-date=25 August 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170825020414/https://bonjourparis.com/history/behind-scene-champs-elysees-breathless-and-beyond/ |url-status=live }}</ref>) The cost of film was also a major concern; thus, efforts to save film turned into stylistic innovations.  For example, in [[Jean-Luc Godard]]'s ''[[Breathless (1960 film)|Breathless]]'' ({{Lang|fr|À bout de souffle}}), after being told the film was too long and he must cut it down to one hour and a half he decided (on the suggestion of [[Jean-Pierre Melville]]) to remove several scenes from the feature using [[jump cut]]s, as they were filmed in one long take. Parts that did not work were simply cut from the middle of the take, a practical decision, and also a purposeful stylistic one.<ref>{{cite web|title=Breathless (1960)|url=https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053472/trivia|via=www.imdb.com|access-date=21 July 2018|archive-date=5 September 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170905130134/http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053472/trivia|url-status=live}}</ref>

The cinematic stylings of the French New Wave brought a fresh look to the cinema with improvised dialogue, rapid changes of scene, and shots that broke the common [[180-degree rule|180° axis of camera movement]]. In many films of the French New Wave, the camera was used not to mesmerize the audience with elaborate narrative and illusory images, but rather to play with audience expectations. Godard was arguably the movement's most influential figure; his method of filmmaking, often used to shock and awe audiences out of passivity, was abnormally bold and direct.

Godard's stylistic approach can be seen as a desperate struggle against the mainstream cinema of the time, or a degrading attack on the viewer's supposed naivety. Either way, the challenging awareness represented by this movement remains in cinema today. Effects that now seem either trite or commonplace, such as [[Fourth wall|a character stepping out of their role in order to address the audience directly]], were radically innovative at the time.

Classic French cinema adhered to the principles of strong narrative, creating what Godard described as an oppressive and deterministic aesthetic of plot.  In contrast, New Wave filmmakers made no attempts to suspend the viewer's disbelief; in fact, they took steps to constantly remind the viewer that a film is just a sequence of moving images, no matter how clever the use of light and shadow. The result is a set of oddly disjointed scenes without an attempt at unity; or an actor whose character changes from one scene to the next; or sets in which onlookers accidentally make their way onto camera along with extras, who in fact were hired to do just the same.

At the heart of New Wave technique is the issue of money and production value. In the context of social and economic troubles of a post-World War II France, filmmakers sought low-budget alternatives to the usual production methods, and were inspired by the generation of [[Italian neorealism|Italian Neorealists]] before them.  Half necessity and half vision, New Wave directors used all that they had available to channel their artistic visions directly to the theatre.

Finally, the French New Wave, as the [[European art cinema|European modern Cinema]], is focused on the technique as style itself. A French New Wave film-maker is first of all an author who shows in its film their own eye on the world.<ref>{{cite book
 |url          = https://books.google.com/books?id=v0-pPQAACAAJ
 |title        = Heretical empiricism
 |last         = Pasolini
 |first        = Pier Paolo
 |date         = 1988–2005
 |publisher    = New Academia Publishing
 |isbn         = 978-0-9767042-2-5
 |page         = 187 of the Italian Edition published by Garzanti in 1972
 |access-date  = 7 November 2015
 |archive-date = 31 March 2023
 |archive-url  = https://web.archive.org/web/20230331162823/https://books.google.com/books?id=v0-pPQAACAAJ
 |url-status   = live
}}</ref> On the other hand, the film as the object of knowledge challenges the usual transitivity on which all the other cinema was based, "undoing its cornerstones: space and time continuity, narrative and grammatical logics, the self-evidence of the represented worlds." In this way the film-maker passes "the essay attitude, thinking – in a novelist way – on his own way to do essays."<ref>{{cite book 
 | title      = Supporto, soggetto, oggetto: forme di costruzione del sapere dal cinema ai nuovi media, in Costruzione e appropriazione del sapere nei nuovi scenari tecnologici
 | last       = Sainati	
 | first      = Augusto
 | year       = 1998
 | publisher  = CUEN
 | location   = Napoli
 | language   = it
 | pages      = 154–155
}}</ref>

== Left Bank ==
[[File: Agnès Varda, Venice Film Festival 1962,Italie.jpg|thumb|[[Agnès Varda]] at the [[Venice Film Festival]], 1962]]
The corresponding "right bank" group is constituted of the more famous and financially successful New Wave directors associated with {{Lang|fr|[[Cahiers du cinéma]]}} ([[Claude Chabrol]], [[François Truffaut]], and [[Jean-Luc Godard]]). Unlike the ''Cahiers'' group, Left Bank directors were older and less movie-crazed. They tended to see cinema akin to other arts, such as literature. However, they were similar to the New Wave directors in that they practiced [[modernist film|cinematic modernism]]. Their emergence also came in the 1950s and they also benefited from the youthful audience.<ref name="Thompson, Kristin 2010, p.412">Thompson, Kristin. Bordwell, David. ''Film History: An Introduction'', Third Edition. McGraw Hill. 2010, p.412</ref> The two groups, however, were not in opposition; {{Lang|fr|Cahiers du cinéma}} advocated for Left Bank cinema.<ref name=nelmes/>

Left Bank directors include [[Chris Marker]], [[Alain Resnais]], and [[Agnès Varda]]. Varda's husband, [[Jacques Demy]], is sometimes grouped with the Left Bank filmmakers. Roud described a distinctive "fondness for a kind of [[Bohemianism|Bohemian]] life and an impatience with the conformity of the Right Bank, a high degree of involvement in literature and the [[plastic arts]], and a consequent interest in [[experimental film]]making", as well as an identification with the political [[left wing|left]]. The filmmakers tended to collaborate with one another.<ref name=nelmes>Jill Nelmes, ''An Introduction to Film Studies'', p. 44. Routledge.</ref> [[Jean-Pierre Melville]], [[Alain Robbe-Grillet]], and [[Marguerite Duras]] are also associated with the group.<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://offscreen.com/view/hiroshima?/new_offscreen/hiroshima.html |title=Donato Totaro, ''Offscreen'', ''Hiroshima Mon Amour'' review, 31 August 2003. Access date: 16 August 2008. |access-date=21 September 2008 |archive-date=4 December 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131204234637/http://www.horschamp.qc.ca/new_offscreen/hiroshima.html |url-status=live }}</ref> The [[nouveau roman]] movement in literature was also a strong element of the Left Bank style, with authors contributing to many of the films.<ref name="Thompson, Kristin 2010, p.412"/>

Left Bank films include ''[[La Pointe Courte]]'', ''[[Hiroshima mon amour]]'', ''[[La jetée]]'', ''[[Last Year at Marienbad]]'', and ''[[Trans-Europ-Express (film)|Trans-Europ-Express]]''.

==Criticism==
Some early 21st-century critics have argued that the movement has sexist tendencies.<ref>{{cite web| title=Sexism in the French New Wave| url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/fq.2009.62.3.16| journal=[[University of California Press]]| author=Jonathan Rosenbaum| date=Spring 2009}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Jean-Luc Godard: The Auteur's Legacy Reassessed| url=https://www.indiependent.co.uk/jean-luc-godard-legacy-reassessed/| date=30 May 2021}}</ref>

== Influential names in the New Wave ==

=== ''Cahiers du cinéma'' directors ===

Source:<ref name="new wave directors">[http://www.newwavefilm.com/new-wave-cinema-guide/nouvelle-vague-where-to-start.shtml New Wave Film.com] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120113132259/http://www.newwavefilm.com/new-wave-cinema-guide/nouvelle-vague-where-to-start.shtml|date=13 January 2012}}, "Where to Start Guide", section outlining directors. Accessed 30 April 2009.</ref>

*[[Jean-Luc Godard]]
*[[Éric Rohmer]]
*[[François Truffaut]]
*[[Claude Chabrol]]
* [[Jacques Rivette]]

=== Left Bank directors ===
*[[Agnès Varda]]
*[[Alain Resnais]]
*[[Chris Marker]]
* [[Jacques Demy]]

=== Other directors associated with the movement ===
{{col-begin}}
{{col-break}}
* [[Alexandre Astruc]]
* [[Jacques Doniol-Valcroze]]
* [[Jean Douchet]]
* [[Marguerite Duras]]
* [[Jean Eustache]]
* [[Georges Franju]]
* [[Philippe Garrel]]
* [[Pierre Kast]]
* [[William Klein (photographer)|William Klein]]
{{col-break}}
* [[Louis Malle]]
* [[Jean-Pierre Melville]]
* [[Luc Moullet]]
* [[Alain Robbe-Grillet]]
* [[Jean Rouch]]
* [[Jacques Rozier]]
* [[Straub-Huillet]]
* [[Roger Vadim]]<ref name="new wave directors" />
{{col-end}}

=== Actors and actresses ===
{{Div col|colwidth=18em}}
* [[Anna Karina]]
* [[Anne Wiazemsky]]
* [[Anouk Aimée]]
* [[Brigitte Bardot]]
* [[Charles Aznavour]]
* [[Emmanuelle Riva]]
* [[Jean-Paul Belmondo]]
* [[Gerard Blain]]
* [[Jean-Claude Brialy]]
* [[Françoise Dorléac]]
* [[Stéphane Audran]]
* [[Bernadette Lafont]]
* [[Jean-Pierre Léaud]]
* [[Claude Jade]]
* [[Jeanne Moreau]]
* [[Maurice Ronet]]
* [[Jean Seberg]]
* [[Delphine Seyrig]]
* [[Jean-Louis Trintignant]]
* [[Sami Frey]]
* [[Catherine Deneuve]]
* [[Jane Birkin]]
* [[Marie-France Pisier]]
{{div col end}}

=== Other collaborators ===
* [[Raoul Coutard]] – cinematographer
* [[Henri Decaë]] – cinematographer
* [[Georges Delerue]] – composer
* [[Paul Gégauff]] – screenwriter
* [[Michel Legrand]] – composer
* [[Marilù Parolini]] – photographer, screenwriter
* [[Suzanne Schiffman]] – screenwriter

=== Theoretical influences ===
* [[Alexandre Astruc]]
* [[André Bazin]]
* [[Robert Bresson]]
* [[Henri Langlois]]
* [[Roger Leenhardt]]

=== Theoretical followers ===
*[[Jonathan Rosenbaum]]
*[[Andrew Sarris]]

== See also ==
{{Portal|France|Film}}
{{Div col}}
* [[Iranian New Wave]] (Mowje Now)
* [[Japanese New Wave]] (Nūberu bāgu)
* [[Australian New Wave]]
* [[British New Wave]]
* [[Philippine New Wave]] (Contemporary Philippine Cinema)
* [[Cinema Novo]] (Brazilian New Wave)
* [[Cinema of Portugal#1960s.E2.80.931970s|Novo Cinema]] (Portuguese New Wave)
* [[Czechoslovak New Wave]]
* [[Film noir]]
* [[Hong Kong New Wave]]
* [[Kitchen sink realism]]
* [[L.A. Rebellion]]
* [[National cinema]]
* [[New French Extremity]]
* [[New German Cinema]] (German New Wave)
* [[New Hollywood]] (American New Wave)
* [[No Wave Cinema]]
* [[Nuevo Cine Mexicano]]
* [[Parallel Cinema]] (Indian New Wave)
* [[Romanian New Wave]]
* [[Remodernist Film]]
* [[Cinema of Taiwan#New Taiwanese Cinema, 1982–1990|Taiwan New Wave]]
* [[Third World Cinema]]
* [[Dogme 95]]
* [[Yugoslav Black Wave]] (Jugoslovenski crni talas)
* [[Vulgar auteurism]]
* [[Extreme cinema]]
* [[Slow cinema]]
* [[Film gris]]
* [[B movie]]
* [[Cinephilia]]
* [[Postmodernist film]]
* [[Pauline Kael]] – film critic in opposition of the auteur theory popularized by Sarris
* [[Independent film]]
* [[Experimental film]]
* [[John Cassavetes]] – American independent filmmaker in the same vein as the French New Wave
* [[Arthouse action film]]
{{Div col end}}

== Notes and references ==
{{Reflist}}

===Works cited===
* {{cite book |editor-last=Grant |editor-first=Barry Keith |title=Schirmer Encyclopedia of Film |year=2007 |publisher=Schirmer Reference |location=Detroit |isbn=978-0-02-865791-2 }}

== External links ==
* [http://www.newwavefilm.com French New Wave encyclopedia & film guide]
* [http://theculturetrip.com/europe/france/articles/the-french-new-wave-revolutionising-cinema/ The French New Wave: Revolutionising Cinema]
* [https://www.empireonline.com/movies/features/french-new-wave-movie-era/ Movie movements that defined cinema: the French New Wave on EMPIRE]

{{French New Wave}}
{{New Wave in cinema |state=collapsed}}
{{Cinema of France}}
{{Film genres}}
{{Modernism}}
{{Authority control}}

[[Category:French New Wave| ]]
[[Category:Movements in French cinema|New Wave]]
[[Category:Jacques Rivette]]
[[Category:New Wave in cinema]]
[[Category:1950s in film]]
[[Category:1960s in film]]