What Is the French New Wave? Background and Revolutionary Techniques

The French New Wave permanently changed how films are made and influenced some of the greatest directors of our time. But what is the French New Wave? How did it begin, and why? This article will give you a definition, a brief historical background, and highlight some key characteristics of the movement’s earliest pioneers. As we’ll see, the influence of the French New Wave continues through modern filmmakers like Tarantino and Scorsese, to name just two.

Background and Style

For one of the most influential movements in film history, it’s not easy to define! Before we move on to discuss some of the movement’s stylistic contributions to filmmaking, let’s look at some background.

What Is the French New Wave?

The French New Wave was a film movement of the 1950s and 1960s, and one of the most influential movements in cinema history. Also known simply as the “New Wave,” it gave rise to a new kind of cinema: highly self‑aware, and radically subversive of mainstream filmmaking. A group of French critics writing for the magazine Cahiers du cinéma believed that cinema had lost its original magic. They felt that these films were disconnected from people’s real lives.

Many celebrated French directors were involved in the movement, including François Truffaut, Jean‑Luc Godard, Claude Chabrol, Éric Rohmer, Jacques Rivette, Louis Malle, Alain Resnais, Agnès Varda, and Jacques Demy. Their films were defined by a rejection of cinematic tradition—but how did they do this?

Characteristics of the French New Wave:

• Little emphasis on plot and dialogue, often improvised
• Jump cuts instead of continuity editing
• Location shooting
• Handheld cameras
• Long takes
• Direct sound and available light (on‑site recording with little or no lighting adjustment)

A Brief History of the French New Wave

The French New Wave was born in postwar, hunger‑stricken France. French critics and film lovers were ravenous for culture, and with only a stale, affected mainstream media to consume, they began experimenting with different filmmaking techniques. Their influences included Italian Neorealism and American film noir of the 1940s and 1950s.

During World War II, films from outside France stopped being imported. After the war, these embargoes were lifted, and these cinephiles and critics were suddenly overwhelmed by a flood of “new” films. The works of Hollywood giants like Welles, Hitchcock, and Ford reinvigorated French critics—and the rest is history.

Revolutionary Techniques

For decades, mainstream filmmaking, especially in Hollywood, had set the standards and “rules” for how to make movies. French filmmakers understood those rules—and then threw them out the window. Smaller, lighter cameras were often “liberated” from tripods and used handheld, giving films a new sense of life and energy.

Nonlinear, fragmented editing became another major and exciting contribution. For decades, every shot A was supposed to lead logically into shot B, leaving no gaps in the information for fear of confusing the audience. Now, in these French films, logic became secondary.

The video essay The Image You Missed (or literally “The Abandoned Image”) highlights some of the radical choices made by French director Jean‑Luc Godard. His film Breathless (À bout de souffle) became one of the movement’s defining works and launched one of the most exciting and artistically daring directing careers in all of cinema.

Representative New Wave Films

Bande à part (Band of Outsiders) (1964)

This film follows three young people who plan a robbery together. Naturally, things don’t go according to plan, and chaos ensues. For modern audiences, there are few films that better represent the French New Wave than Bande à part. That’s not to say it’s “better” than its contemporaries, but it is more restrained, with a perfectly calibrated commercial balance.

In a nutshell, Bande à part is a fun heist movie, but relatively conservative, clearly not as bold as most of Godard’s films.

Pierrot le fou (1965)

One of Jean‑Luc Godard’s boldest films, this surreal on‑the‑run story stars French New Wave icons Anna Karina and Jean‑Paul Belmondo. It may not quite match Godard’s very best work, but thanks to its superb cinematography, it’s an undeniably stunning film. It also showcases the unabashedly imaginative treatment of sex and romance that had only just begun to emerge in early New Wave works.

Tirez sur le pianiste (Shoot the Piano Player) (1960)

Shoot the Piano Player is perhaps most notable for its use of widescreen cinematography, but it’s also a great and daring story. Following up François Truffaut’s debut The 400 Blows was almost an impossible task, but he achieved great success with the technically innovative Shoot the Piano Player. The film is one of the New Wave works that popularized many Hollywood genre conventions in France—for example, the hard‑boiled American gangster picture.

Les cousins (The Cousins) (1959)

Les cousins is a gripping psychological drama about the clash between two opposites. Charles is naive and hardworking, while Paul is an extroverted, naturally gifted performer. The only thing they have in common is that they’re cousins. But when Charles falls in love with a woman with a promiscuous past, he threatens to destroy the fragile bond between himself and his cousin. This is one of renowned director Claude Chabrol’s best French New Wave films.

Lola (1961)

Jacques Demy’s directorial debut Lola tells a twisting love story set on the French coast. The film stars Anouk Aimée as a cabaret performer longing for the man who abandoned her seventeen years earlier.

Lola has largely been overshadowed by Demy’s later films The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and The Young Girls of Rochefort, which is a shame, because it is undeniably one of the essential French New Wave films.

Adieu Philippine (1962)

Adieu Philippine perhaps better than any other film of the movement conveys the mischievous sense of youth that has become synonymous with the French New Wave. The film revolves around the impact of the Algerian conflict on French family life, a theme common to many New Wave films.

Adieu Philippine is director Jacques Rozier’s masterpiece about the trials and pains of growing up, and one of the finest French New Wave films.

Jules et Jim (1962)

François Truffaut’s exhilarating wartime love story Jules et Jim is a major film of the French New Wave. It tells the tale of two young men, Jules and Jim, and their love triangle with a beautiful young woman named Catherine. Jules et Jim is a film about everything and nothing—war, sex, and romance in such abundance that they almost obscure the simplicity at the story’s core.

L’année dernière à Marienbad (Last Year at Marienbad) (1961)

Alain Resnais’s surreal Last Year at Marienbad is one of the most visually unforgettable films of the period. It follows three unnamed individuals (two men and one woman) at a fashionable party, struggling to assert who they are.

But nothing in Last Year at Marienbad is what it seems: time and space warp from moment to moment, objectivity is forgotten, and relationships change constantly. Writer and critic Mark Polizzotti explores this in his essay “Last Year at Marienbad: Which Year, Where?” The film is a foundational work whose stylistic choices inspired films like The Shining and Memento.

Hiroshima mon amour (1959)

Although Hiroshima mon amour was made by Left Bank director Alain Resnais, in many ways it ushered in the French New Wave. It marked a tremendous leap in visual storytelling and film editing. It also signaled that French cinema was moving in new directions, both technically and narratively. With its explicit sexuality, unrestrained creativity, and novel filmmaking techniques, Hiroshima mon amour shook off the stagnation of the French film industry.

Paris nous appartient (Paris Belongs to Us) (1961)

Paris nous appartient is a shocking nightmare of a world standing at a moral and existential crossroads. The film follows a young woman named Anne as she finds herself caught in a series of absurd situations, all of which are linked to death. After nearly sixty years of debate, the meaning of Paris Belongs to Us remains open to interpretation. Some see it as an allegory of Cold War tensions; others liken it to a visual rendering of a Kantian thought experiment.

Cléo de 5 à 7 (Cléo from 5 to 7) (1962)

Agnès Varda is one of the most important figures in French cinema, and Cléo from 5 to 7 is her signature work. The film depicts two hours in the life of Cléo, a beautiful and successful singer. Though the world is seemingly at her feet, Cléo is more distressed than ever, fearing bad news from a cancer test. Cléo from 5 to 7 employs many typical New Wave techniques, such as jump cuts, montage structures, and long takes. It’s a deeply moving yet optimistic portrait of life, love, and empowerment.

Vivre sa vie: Film en douze tableaux (My Life to Live) (1962)

Few films are more depressing than Vivre sa vie. Jean‑Luc Godard’s portrait of a young woman who becomes a prostitute is as bleak as narrative cinema gets—but that doesn’t mean it isn’t great. Quite the opposite: Vivre sa vie is one of the director’s greatest works and a bold step forward for the French New Wave. Anna Karina also steals the show here as a well‑meaning woman caught in the cruelty and shifting dangers of society.

Le mépris (Contempt) (1963)

French New Wave filmmakers were deeply inspired by earlier cinematic movements, including German Expressionism, Italian Neorealism, and the Hollywood Golden Age. Le Mépris combines the best elements of all three: it features Fritz Lang, a famous heir to the Expressionist tradition; it was shot at Italy’s famous Cinecittà studios; and it uses Hollywood story archetypes. It is one of Jean‑Luc Godard’s most personal works and a symbol of free and sensual cinema.

À bout de souffle (Breathless) (1960)

À bout de souffle is widely regarded as the quintessential French New Wave film. Ironically, many of the era’s directors, such as Alfred Hitchcock and Orson Welles, weren’t broadly celebrated in the United States until the 1970s, with the arrival of the film‑school generation and the Hollywood New Wave. Breathless is the culmination of the jump cuts, long takes, and “roughened” style that defined the French New Wave.

Les quatre cents coups (The 400 Blows) (1959)

What is left to say about The 400 Blows? It is astonishing, beautiful, heartbreaking, despairing, hopeful, and liberating. The 400 Blows is the film that radically altered the landscape of French cinema, and its popularity helped ignite the New Wave. François Truffaut tells the story of a rebellious boy at odds with a changing society; it is as relevant today as it was in 1959. The 400 Blows is not only the best film of the French New Wave, it is quite possibly the greatest French‑language film ever made. It is the first of four features about the fictional Antoine Doinel, a semi‑autobiographical stand‑in for Truffaut himself.