Nouvelle
Vague or "the New Wave"
Article
from Baseline's Encyclopedia of Film
What
we now call la Nouvelle Vague or "the New Wave" is certainly the most
significant development in cinema since neorealism and arguably one of the few
true watersheds in film history. The term has come to describe a variety of
interrelated phenomena, including: (1) a new critical approach to film; (2) a
specific group of critics (later directors) and their circle; and (3) the
dominant trend in post-1959 French film production.
The
new critical approach to film can be traced to French critic Alexandre Astruc,
who in 1948 celebrated film as an "art of our age" and announced the
era of the caméra-stylo (camera-pen). In Astruc's metaphor, the filmmaker
writes with the camera, just as the artist writes with the pen. Astruc's ideas
were further elaborated in 1954, when the magazine Cahiers du Cinéma, edited by
André Bazin, published an article titled "A Certain Tendency of French
Cinema." Its author, François Truffaut, strongly attacked the French
cinema for its "tradition of quality," disapproving not only of its
basis in conventionally literate screenplays, but also of directors who failed
to use the medium in a personal way. Truffaut called for a cinematic revolution:
a freer kind of filmmaking that meant more location shooting; fewer restrictions
imposed by studios, producers, or screenwriters; a looser approach to acting;
and, most importantly, directors who would choose their own material and create
their films as "films," always conscious of the specific nature of the
cinematic medium.
The
"auteur" theory—the idea of the director as author —was the pillar
of the Nouvelle Vague movement. Truffaut and his colleagues—particularly
Claude Chabrol, Jacques Rivette, Jean-Luc Godard, and Eric Rohmer—continued to
write criticism for Cahiers du Cinéma throughout the 1950s, but they became
increasingly interested in becoming director's—auteurs—themselves. In 1957,
a young director named Roger Vadim created an international sensation with
…AND GOD CREATED WOMAN, starring his then-wife Brigitte Bardot; the following
year, Louis Malle broke through with ELEVATOR TO THE GALLOWS, an
American-inspired thriller starring Jeanne Moreau. As production money became
available for other young directors, the Cahiers critics moved behind the camera
themselves. Chabrol debuted with LE BEAU SERGE (1958), Truffaut with THE FOUR
HUNDRED BLOWS (1959), and Godard with BREATHLESS (1959).
Although
each film expressed the personal concerns of its auteur, each also reflected the
basic tenets of the Cahiers critics. In 1959, Truffaut (as critic) was
officially banned from the Cannes film festival because of his vitriolic
writings, but his film THE FOUR HUNDRED BLOWS (Best Director), along with Marcel
Camus's BLACK ORPHEUS (Grand Prix) and Alain Resnais's HIROSHIMA, MON AMOUR
(International Critics Prize) gave the French a sweep of the three major prizes
at the festival.
In
the ensuing several years, the French film industry was transformed by this
infusion of new directors, actors, and ideas. Truffaut, Godard, Chabrol, Rivette,
and Rohmer were of course at the center of the movement, but dozens of other
young French directors profited from their ground-breaking work. The success of
the New Wave in