- There were periods of ‘new waves’ coming from Britain and France.
- Paris being the most influential area
Significant group of French filmmakers
• Jean-Luc Goddard
• François Truffaut
• Claude Chabrol
• Jacques Rivette
• Eric Rohmer
- All were once film critics with a background in film theory.
- The film La Pointe Courte (1954) by Agnes Varda began new wave.
- Particularly significant as the film was directed by a woman.
- Themes such as infatuation, romanticism and boredom were often revisited
French new wave post-1960
Breathless by Jean-Luc Godard
- reinvented film from the ground up
- based on American gangster films, however everything is deglamorised
- used natural light and handheld cameras
- violated continuity editing rules
- use of digressions and suspension
- try to make realistic films
- character, ending ambiguity
- influenced by American actors, particularly Humphrey Bogart
French new wave in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s
- Against the ‘cinema of quality’, they would often work with cheap cameras and equipment rather than the industry-quality equipment that would normally be used.
- influenced by American genre films, particularly film noire as they reflected urban life
- They had cinematic rather than literary values and realised the importance of personal expression
- Often spontaneous and digressed from norms of current cinema
French new wave – existentialism
Philosopher Jean Paul Sartre stressed the:
- individual
- experience of free choice in cinema
- absence of any rational understanding of the universe
- sense of absurdity of human life
Existentialists seek to:
- act authentically
- use free will
- take responsibility for their actions
- avoid playing out roles pre-ordained by society
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