The La Nouvelle Vague is the French translation of The French New Wave. The New Wave was a film movement which began in 1958 and lasted until 1964. To truly examine what elements comprise the movement many factors need to considered. This essay will first focus on French Cinema in the years before the New Wave, before going on to discuss important people behind the movement. François Truffaut's Les Quatre Cents Coups (1959) and Jean-Luc Godard’s A Bout De Souffle (1960) will be the analysed to highlight the unique style of the New Wave. The end of the movement and its legacy will also be discussed. The movement was made up of a group of directors who began as critics for the film journal Cahiers Du Cinéma. Their films were built on strong ideals and a passion for cinema.
The French New Wave came to existence due to disenchantment with the films being produced and broadcasted in France at the time. During the Second World War Hollywood films were banned and the home grown films being produced had heavy Nazi censorship. Once the war finished French cinema reverted back to showing ‘Tradition De Qualité (Cinema of quality) which the New Wave directors disliked. They considered the films being shown to be out dated and labelled them Cinéma De Papa (Dad’s Cinema). Originally the New Wave directors made films in partnership with a studio but funding by the Gaullist Government granted them full control over their films.
There were many directors within the movement including François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Chabol, Jacques Rivette, Louis Malle and Eric Rohmer. The New Wave directors writing for the Cahiers Du Cinéma were heavily critical of French cinema at the time. They wrote highly of Poetic Realism films from the 1930s, ...
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...faut. France: Les Films du Carrosse, Sédif Productions.
Paris Nous Appartient (1960) directed by Jacques Rivette. France: Ajym Films, Les Films du Carrosse.
The Maltese Falcon (1941) directed by John Huston. U.S.A:Warner Bros.
Vivre Sa Vie (1962) directed by Jean-Luc Godard. France: Les Films de la Pléilade, Pathé Consortium Cinéma.
Zazie Dans Le Métro (1960) directed by Louis Malle. France/Italy: Nouvelles Éditions de Films (NEF)
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Nosferatu , Directed by F.W. Murnau 1922, Youtube Video, 1:32 , Accessed May, 14, 2014 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBKI5Zb9v14
Greene, Naomi(1999) Landscapes of loss: The national Past of Postwar French cinema (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press)
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From the silent era, I chose the movie, The Great Train Robbery, which was directed by Edwin S. Porter. It is a great example of a film that introduced new camera techniques, composite editing, and on-location shooting. As for the sound era, the movie I chose is Á bout de soufflé, also titled Breathless, which was directed by Jean-Luc Godard and was known for its visual style using its jump cuts. It also was the earliest and most influential examples of French New Wave
BIBLIOGRAPHY An Introduction to Film Studies Jill Nelmes (ed.) Routledge 1996 Anatomy of Film Bernard H. Dick St. Martins Press 1998 Key Concepts in Cinema Studies Susan Hayward Routledge 1996 Teach Yourself Film Studies Warren Buckland Hodder & Stoughton 1998 Interpreting the Moving Image Noel Carroll Cambridge University Press 1998 The Cinema Book Pam Cook (ed.) BFI 1985 FILMOGRAPHY All That Heaven Allows Dir. Douglas Sirk Universal 1955 Being There Dir. Hal Ashby 1979
Classic film noir originated after World War II. This is the time where post World War II pessimism, anxiety, and suspicion was taking the world by storm. Many films that were released in the U.S. Between 1939s and 1940s were considered propaganda films that were designed for entertainment during the Depression and World War II. During the 1930s many German and Europeans immigrated to the U.S. and helped the American film industry with powerf...
Small, Pauline. (2005) New Cinemas: journal of Contemporary Film Volume 3, Queen Mary, University of London
From the beginning of cinema as an art form to cinema today, film has evolved and developed drastically. Each era of film from the Silent Film to the French New Wave was influenced by prior film generations and influenced those films that came after it. The era of Silent Film was very basic as it emerged when motion pictures had only begun. Across the sea, the age of German Expressionism, a film genre with features of the Silent Film era which conveyed the German people's struggle after World War I had started. Afterwards, the Studio Era surfaced and portrayed larger than life heroes in narratives with the gloss of a storybook. During the Studio Era, films like these were produced quickly because of success and began to appear mass produced
During the course of this essay it is my intention to discuss the differences between Classical Hollywood and post-Classical Hollywood. Although these terms refer to theoretical movements of which they are not definitive it is my goal to show that they are applicable in a broad way to a cinema tradition that dominated Hollywood production between 1916 and 1960 and which also pervaded Western Mainstream Cinema (Classical Hollywood or Classic Narrative Cinema) and to the movement and changes that came about following this time period (Post-Classical or New Hollywood). I intend to do this by first analysing and defining aspects of Classical Hollywood and having done that, examining post classical at which time the relationship between them will become evident. It is my intention to reference films from both movements and also published texts relative to the subject matter. In order to illustrate the structures involved I will be writing about the subjects of genre and genre transformation, the representation of gender, postmodernism and the relationship between style, form and content.
Christie, Ian (1 August 2012). "The Top 50 Greatest Films of All Time". Sight & Sound. British Film Institute. Retrieved 12 May 2014
Gunning, Tom 2000, “The Cinema of Attraction: Early film, its spectator, and the avant-garde.” Film and theory: An anthology, Robert Stam & Toby Miller, Blackwell, pp 229-235.
The ‘New Hollywood Cinema’ era came about from around the 1960’s when cinema and film making began to change. Big film studios were going out of their comfort zone to produce different, creative and artistic movies. At the time, it was all the public wanted to see. People were astonished at the way these films were put together, the narration, the editing, the shots, and everything in between. No more were the films in similar arrangement and structure. The ‘New Hollywood era’ took the classic Hollywood period and turned it around so that rules were broken and people left stunned.
The aim of this report is to discuss Italian Neorealism (Neorealismo); looking at how the movement played a significant element in European cinema during and after the times of Benito Mussolini’s fascist regime. The report not only looks at how but why Neorealism became a growing phenomenon for filmmakers during its debatable 10 year period, and what implication of messages these Neorealist directors were trying to send out through their films. Backed up by several reliable book sources, the evidence for this report will also highlight the influences Neo-realism has created in modern filmmaking today.
Hill, Rodney. "The New Wave Meets the Tradition of Quality: Jacques Demy’s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg." Cinema Journal 48.1 (2008): 27-50. Project MUSE. Web. 21 Jan. 2011. .