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 start, 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 impact of the French New Wave continues through modern filmmakers like Tarantino and Scorsese, to name just a few.

Background and Style

For one of the most influential movements in film history, it’s not easy to define! Before we discuss some of the movement’s stylistic contributions to filmmaking, let’s first look at a bit of 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 in cinema history. Also known simply as the “New Wave,” it ushered in a new kind of cinema that was highly self‑aware and radically subversive of mainstream filmmaking. A group of French critics writing for the magazine Cahiers du Cinéma felt that cinema had lost its original magic. They believed that films had become disconnected from people’s real lives.

Many famous French directors took part in this 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 characterized by a rejection of cinematic tradition—but how did they do that?

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‑set recording, often without relighting)

A Brief History of the French New Wave

The French New Wave was born in a postwar, hungry France. French critics and cinephiles were starved for culture and, left with only a mainstream media that felt stale and affected, began to experiment 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 film lovers and critics were suddenly flooded with “new” movies. The work of Hollywood giants like Welles, Hitchcock, and Ford energized French critics—and the rest is history.

Revolutionary Techniques

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

Non‑linear and fragmented editing became another important and exciting contribution. For decades, every shot A logically led to shot B, leaving no gaps in information so as not to confuse the audience. Now, in these French films, logic became secondary.

The video The Image Book highlights the radical choices made by French director Jean‑Luc Godard. His film Breathless became one of the movement’s defining works and launched one of the most exciting and artistically significant directing careers in all of cinema.

Landmark New Wave Films

Bande à part (Band of Outsiders) (1964)

This film follows three young people who plan a robbery together. Of course, things don’t go according to plan, and chaos ensues. For modern audiences, there are few French New Wave films better than Bande à part. That’s not to say it’s better than its contemporaries, but it is more conservative and strikes a near‑perfect commercial balance.

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

Pierrot le fou (1965)

One of Jean‑Luc Godard’s boldest films, this surreal road‑and‑escape movie stars French New Wave icons Anna Karina and Jean‑Paul Belmondo. The film may not entirely match Godard’s very best work, but thanks to its superb cinematography, it is undeniably stunning. It also showcases the unabashed treatment of sex and romance that was only just beginning to blossom in early French New Wave films.

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 is also a great and daring story. Following his debut feature The 400 Blows, François Truffaut was facing an almost impossible task, yet he succeeded brilliantly with the technically innovative Shoot the Piano Player. It became one of the French New Wave films that popularized many Hollywood genre traditions—such as the cold‑blooded American gangster picture.

Les cousins (The Cousins) (1959)

Les cousins is a gripping psychological drama about the clash between two opposites. Charles is naïve and hard‑working, while Paul is an outgoing, naturally gifted performer. The only thing these characters 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 his fragile relationship with his cousin. It is one of famed director Claude Chabrol’s finest French New Wave films.

Lola (1961)

Jacques Demy’s directorial debut Lola tells a twisty 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.

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

Adieu Philippine (1962)

Adieu Philippine perhaps more than any other film of the movement conveys the mischievous, impulsive spirit of youth that has become synonymous with the French New Wave. The film centers on the impact of the Algerian conflict on family life in France, a subject 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 (Jules and Jim) (1962)

François Truffaut’s thrilling wartime love story Jules and Jim is a key film of the French New Wave. It tells of a love triangle between two young men, Jules and Jim, and their infatuation with a beautiful young woman named Catherine. Jules and Jim is a film about everything and nothing at once—there is so much about war, sex, and romance that it almost obscures the simplicity at the heart of the story.

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 this period. It follows three unnamed people (two men and one woman) as they struggle to assert who they are at a fashionable party.

But nothing in Last Year at Marienbad is what it seems; time and space warp in an instant, objectivity is forgotten, and relationships change moment by moment. Writer and critic Mark Polizzotti explores this in his essay “Last Year at Marienbad: Which Year, Which Place?” The film is a foundational work that inspired stylistic choices in The Shining and Memento.

Hiroshima mon amour (Hiroshima My Love) (1959)

Although Hiroshima mon amour was made by Left Bank group member Alain Resnais, in many ways it launched the French New Wave. It marked a huge leap in visual storytelling and film editing. It also showed that French cinema was moving in new technical and narrative directions. With explicit sexuality, unapologetic creativity, and innovative film techniques, Hiroshima mon amour broke free from the stagnation of the French film industry.

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

Paris Belongs to Us is a shocking nightmare of a world at a moral and existential crossroads. The film follows a young woman named Anne who finds herself caught in a series of absurd situations, all somehow 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 for Cold War tensions, while others compare it to a visualization 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 a beautiful and successful singer, Cléo. Though she has the world at her feet, Cléo is more miserable than ever, fearing that she will receive bad news from a cancer test. Cléo from 5 to 7 employs many typical French New Wave techniques, such as jump cuts, montage structures, and long takes. It is a deeply moving yet optimistic portrait of life, love, and empowerment.

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

It’s hard to find a film more bleak than Vivre sa vie. Jean‑Luc Godard’s portrait of a young woman who becomes a prostitute is as dark as narrative cinema gets, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a great film. On the contrary, 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, playing a well‑meaning woman trapped in the cruelty and constant shifts of a hostile society.

Le mépris (Contempt) (1963)

French New Wave filmmakers were deeply inspired by earlier film movements, including German Expressionism, Italian Neorealism, and the Golden Age of Hollywood. Le Mépris combines the best of these three movements: it features Fritz Lang, a famous heir to German Expressionism; it was shot at Cinecittà, Italy’s legendary studio; and it uses Hollywood archetypes in its story. This is one of Jean‑Luc Godard’s most personal films and a symbol of liberated, highly sensual cinema.

À bout de souffle (Breathless) (1960)

Breathless is widely regarded as the quintessential French New Wave film. Ironically, many of the era’s directors, such as Alfred Hitchcock and Orson Welles, were not fully appreciated in the United States until the 1970s, with the arrival of the film‑school generation and the Hollywood New Wave. Breathless is a synthesis of the jump cuts, long takes, and “rough” aesthetic 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 completely transformed the landscape of French cinema, and its popularity helped ignite the New Wave. François Truffaut tells the story of a rebellious boy out of step with a rapidly changing society—a story as relevant today as it was in 1959. The 400 Blows is not only the best French New Wave film; 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.