Historical background of French New Wave

The rise of French New Wave (1959-1964) can be studied from the earlier 1940 to 1944 during World War II. In that time, Paris was a dark city, especially during night time, the blackout imposed by the occupying German forces meant that lights had to be turned off, shortage of petrol kept cars off the road while most people off the streets at night due to implementation of curfew. Nevertheless, numerous regulation, censorship and propaganda had made the occupation totally unbearable. However the French citizens still can go to the cinema but choice of movies was limited. American films were banned, and aside from German productions which consisted mainly of imitations of Hollywood musical comedies and melodramatic propaganda movies, they only had access to the 200 odd French films that were produced during these 4 years period. For the generation of cinephiles like Andre Bazin, Alain Resnais and Eric Rohmer who had grown up in rich cinematic culture of the 1920’s and 30’, they already could felt the consequence of the war. Not to talk about the banned American genre films, the experience of loss that represented above has become their central of later work. Therefore, this phenomenon has made the filmmakers who born around 1930 created a new movement or “New Wave”. There are few acknowledgeable films made during the occupation such as Lumiere d’ete (1943) by Jean Gremillon, Les Visiteurs du Soir (1943) by Carne and Prevert, Le Destin Fabuleux de Disiree Clary (1941) by Sacha Guitry, Goupi Mains Rouges (1943) by Jacques Becker, and above all, Le Corbeau (1943) by Henri-Georges Clouzot.

In 1944, the year of liberation, cinema becomes even more popular in France. Several French Films were produced while Italian and British imports were in demand. Meanwhile, Most popular of all were the stockpile of films now streaming in from Hollywood. American films that banned by Nazis were ready to discover and catch up after the 1946 Blum-Byrnes agreement.

Film clubs in other hand highlighted one of the important elements of French New Wave. The first film club opened its doors in 1948 named Henri Langlois’ Cinematheque Française. Langlois believed that Cinematheque was a place for learning but not just watching. They want the audience understand what they were seeing. Therefore, it became his practice to screen films with different style, genre and country of origin. This approach was to make sure audience kept more attention in the technique.

The important and famous film journal appeared in 1951, called La Revue du Cinema which is set up by Jacques Doniol-Valcroze and Andre Bazin. The yellow cover is the first issues of the review featured the best critic’s article toward film. And during mid of 1950s, there are a group of young people that really to make the waves, they are Rohmer, Godard, Rivette, Claude Chabrol and Francois Truffaut and wrote Cahiers du Cinema. Cahiers du Cinema like to critic on the artistic and respected filmmakers during that time, they have critic the tradition filming way which is filming them in the studio which is old fashioned and unimaginative way, this way is wasn’t visual enough and yet filmmakers are too rely on the screenwriter. Although giving so much comment for the filmmakers, those young men also praise on some directors like D.W Griffith, Victor Sjostrom, Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin and Erich von Stroheim, which is those directors in its early years. By inspiring from them, silent movies become an element for the New Wave directors.

The concept of “Auteur” is develop at that time, there are some argument between Andre Bazin and others about a film should reflect the director’s personal vision, but from Truffaut who first talking about this, he mentioned that the best directors have a distinctive style, and it is a individual creative vision that made the director the true author of the film.

Writing criticism can’t satisfied those young men, and finally they start to shoot short film by borrow money from friends and shoot on location. By 1959, Rivette filmed Paris nous appartient (Paris Belongs to Us); Godard made A Bout de soufflé (Breathless); Chabrol made his second feature, Les Cousins; and in April Truffaut’s Les Quatre cent coups (The 400 Blows) won the Grand Prize at the Cannes Festival.

Journalists have nicknamed all the young energetic and high spirit directors la nouvelle vague – the new wave. They have made 32 featured films between 1959-1966, so many films and for sure are all different, but there are also enough similarity to make us recognize the New Wave style and form.

There are a timeline of how French New Wave movement was created and the important incidents happened during the period, please refer to:
http://soma.sbcc.edu/users/davega/FILMST_101/FILMST_101_FILM_MOVEMENTS/FrenchNewWave/TimeLine_FrenchNewWave.pdf