Nouvelle Vague
French New Wave
Most of these directors started as critics at Cahiers du cinéma, the magazine founded by André Bazin and others in 1951, where they championed the director as the true author of a film.
When they began shooting their own features, they worked on small budgets, with light cameras, in real streets, and they broke editing rules on purpose. Alongside them, moreover, the Left Bank group (Varda, Resnais, Marker) brought a more literary and political cinema.
- Cahiers du cinéma
- Auteur theory
- Jump cuts
- Handheld, on location
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01
Claude Chabrol 1958
Le Beau Serge
Handsome Serge
A man returns to his home village and finds his old friend lost to drink. It is often called the first New Wave feature.
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02
François Truffaut 1959
Les Quatre Cents Coups
The 400 Blows
Start hereAntoine Doinel, a neglected Paris boy, drifts from school trouble into petty crime. Watch for the ending.
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03
Alain Resnais 1959
Hiroshima mon amour
Hiroshima My Love
A French actress and a Japanese architect, memory and war, from a script by Marguerite Duras.
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04
Jean-Luc Godard 1960
À bout de souffle
Breathless
A small-time crook and an American student in Paris. Its jump cuts changed how films could be edited.
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05
Agnès Varda 1962
Cléo de 5 à 7
Cléo from 5 to 7
A singer crosses Paris while she waits for medical results, told almost in real time.
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06
François Truffaut 1962
Jules et Jim
Jules and Jim
Two friends and the woman they both love, across two decades and the First World War.