7 French New Wave Films You Need To Check Out
From approximately 1959–1968, la nouvelle vague or the French New Wave was an artistic movement that democratized approaches to film production and those who could become filmmakers as well. A new wave of filmmakers, whom were inspired through film journals, ciné clubs, and French and Hollywood auteurs such as Jean Renoir and Alfred Hitchcock, desired a more personal, realistic, and artistic approach to filmmaking. In his essay “A Certain Tendency in French Cinema”, Francois Truffaut criticized the French studio system, also known as the Tradition of Quality, for its dependence on literary adaptations, detachment from reality, and false, impersonal films with an artificial and perfect studio look. The French New Wave featured three groups of filmmakers: the Young Turks (Francois Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Eric Rohmer, Claude Chabrol, & Jacques Rivette), the Left Bank (Alain Resnais, Chris Marker, & Agnes Varda), and satellite directors (Jacques Demy, Louis Malle, Jacques Rozier, and Jean-Daniel Pallet) whom mutually shared similar aspirations and motives to challenge the conventional styles of French filmmaking. The Young Turks were film-critics and-writers-turned-directors that became the center of the French New Wave whom were crazed about film, and developed the much-studied Auteur Theory that merits the director as the visionary artist responsible for a film. While the Left Bank and satellite figures, already equipped with filmmaking experience with documentary, were more enthused about making films that were politically driven rather than for entertainment. Greatly influenced by the Italian-neorealists, but also due to economic costs, the new wave filmmakers resorted to location shooting, natural lighting, using unknown actors naturally gifted with improvisation, and mobile cameras in order to capture reality itself. The filmmakers of the French New Wave would not only produce some of the most beautiful and best films in French cinema, but classics within cinematic history. Here are some you should definitely check out.
7. La Boulangerie de Monceau (The Bakery Girl of Monceau, 1962)
La Boulangerie de Monceau, although not always the first recommendation from Eric Rohmer’s work, is the first film of his Contes Moraux or “Moral Tales” series. La Boulangerie focuses on a law student who becomes infatuated with a beautiful woman named Sylvie he’s seen multiple times in his neighborhood. Soon, he musters up the courage to ask her out on a date to get coffee, and she agrees. However, upon the day of their date, Sylvie is nowhere to be seen. Out of frustration, the protagonist busies himself to a local bakery by satisfying his appetite with pastries. Smitten with the bakery girl, Jacqueline, he continues to walk his routine around his neighborhood and buying pastries from Jacqueline until he asks her on a date as well. Soon, the law student is caught in a triangle between Jacqueline and Sylvie. La Boulangerie established Rohmer’s style of incorporating voice-over narration with little dialogue, natural lightning and having the camera follow its subjects like an invisible reporter. Through time, place, and human interaction, Rohmer’s Moral Tales explores the truth of human ethics and the more-or-less admirable choices and actions humans make.
6. Lola (1961)
Jacques Demy, director and husband of Agnes Varda, made his feature film debut at 30 with Lola. The film opens with Roland (Marc Michel) a young man with neither a sense of purpose nor direction in life, until he crosses paths with a woman named Cécile (Anouk Aimée) whom he knew during his teenage years. Under the stage name Lola as a cabaret dancer, Cécile is a single mother with a young son whose husband left her while she was pregnant, yet continues to hope for his return. Roland, rapidly falling in love with Lola and finding a new purpose of life, desires to be with Lola. But, does Lola reflect a similar affection for him? Lola’s display of bleach white, overexposed backgrounds gives the film a dreamy fairytale-like atmosphere rather than the harsh realities of relationships, love and social realism. Lola is not love story, but rather a story that resists the promises of relationships and conventional happy endings.
5. Les Bonnes Femmes (Good Girls, 1960)
Although director Claude Chabrol is most notably known for his similar aesthetics of Alfred Hitchcock, Les Bonnes Femmes brings a more subjective approach to Chabrol’s love for the thriller genre. Les Bonnes Femmes focuses on four working class girls who work at a small appliance store, and rather than treating them as characters in a story, Chabrol treats the girls as social subjects. Each girl is desperately seeking a path out of their boring and routine situations, whether it is through sex, marriage, a different career, etc. The film acts more as a critic of the audience instead of its subjects. The film’s pessimistic tone criticizes viewers for their reactions of how desperate the girls are to find a romantic partner out of a group of men that are all ideally terrible romantic choices. In a Darwinian world, romance is a game between men and women who use intellect, humor, coolness, money or one’s occupation to attract the opposite sex. The banality of searching for excitement and romance in the girls’ lives builds up for a thriller ending that is sure to leave viewers speechless.
4. Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962)
Agnes Varda, Left Bank director and wife of director Jacques Demy, is not only hailed as the God Mother of the French New Wave, but is also praised for her landmark film Cléo from 5 to 7. The film revolves around a beautiful Parisian singer named Cléo (Corinne Marchand) who is anxiously waiting for her medical results to see if she has tested positive for cancer. The film aims to tackle female identity to articulate how women see themselves and how they are seen by the world around them. As Cléo wanders the city of Paris encountering numerous ordinary civilians, she is most concerned about her image. This is underscored by a plethora of mirrors she comes across reflecting not only Cléo’s beauty, but also her anxiety to retain it. The use of time stamps throughout the film gives Cléo from 5 to 7 a documentary aesthetic as viewers are watching a young woman experiencing an existential crisis that questions both vanity and morality.
3. Tirez sur la pianiste (Shoot The Piano Player, 1960)
Many would be quick to recommend The 400 Blows (1959) as Francois Truffaut’s paramount film of the French New Wave, however, Tirez sur la pianiste is Truffaut’s spirited homage to cinema that all cinephiles will come to enjoy. Adapted from a crime novel by David Goodis, the story focuses on a washed-up piano player named Charlie Kohler (Charles Aznavour) who gets caught up in a sticky situation involving some gangsters and his family. For an auteur approach, Truffaut does not allow Tirez to be restricted to the conventions of any specific genre. Although the film initially begins as a film noir, Tirez weaves through other genres such as the musical, western, silent comedy, romance, and many others. Truffaut shatters genre; when Tirez goes in one direction, Truffaut disrupts it and changes course by launching the film into another direction. With a restless change in tone, Truffaut does not allow audiences the liberty to settle with the plot.
2. A bout de souffle (Breathless, 1960)
Breathless is Jean-Luc Godard’s ode to the gangster genre. The film overall has a fairly simple plot: a young Frenchman named Michel (Jean-Paul Belmondo) hides out in Paris with his American girlfriend Patricia (Jean Seberg) while being pursued by law enforcement for stealing a car and murdering a police officer. While the story may be simple, Godard made huge waves with his first feature film by completely disregarding conventional styles of filmmaking that were shared by both the Tradition of Quality and Classical Hollywood. Breathless was mostly shot silently on hand-held cameras with dialogue and soundtrack added in post-production, filmed on the streets of Paris with natural lighting rather than in a studio, and edited with erratic jump cuts and disbelief of continuity. Breathless is a postmodern pastiche that recognizes its disruptions and ironies to remind viewers they are watching a movie.
- Hiroshima mon amour (Hiroshima, My Love 1959)
Hiroshima mon amour is not only Alain Resnais’s first feature film, but it is also widely considered the vanguard of the French New Wave. Set during the aftermath of World War II in Hiroshima, the story revolves around a Japanese architect and a French actress (both of whom remain nameless throughout the film) who have an affair, and whose relationship soon develops into a deep conversation about previous romances and personal trauma. Resnais, an already accomplished documentary filmmaker come the French New Wave, was asked to create a documentary on the atomic bomb. However, in order to avoid aesthetic similarities of traditional documentary filmmaking, Resnais aimed for a more poetic means of expression. With the collaboration of novelist Marguerite Duras, Resnais blends both documentary and fiction within Hiroshima mon amour. In Hiroshima mon amour, Resnais focuses on time & memory, fragmentation of narrative, and manipulation of form. For instance, within the opening sequence of the film, Resnais juxtaposes documented footage of mutilated bodies from the atomic blast and the distorted bodies between the French woman and the Japanese man making love. By interweaving between two different time sequences between the historical and fictional, Resnais is able to dismantle the conventional order of narrative. Resnais is able to explore both collective trauma from the atomic blast Hiroshima through the Japanese architect and the experiences of personal grief through the French actress’s memories of losing her former lover.
