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, brief historical background, and highlight some key features of the movement’s earliest pioneers. As we’ll see, the influence of the French New Wave continues to be felt through modern filmmakers such as Tarantino and Scorsese, to name just a couple.

Background and Style

For one of the most influential movements in film history, it’s not easy to define! Before we move on to 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 movements in cinema history. Also known simply as the “New Wave,” it gave rise to a new kind of film: 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 these films were disconnected from people’s real lives.

Many famous French directors took part 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 marked 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‑site recording, usually without relighting)

A Brief History of the French New Wave

The French New Wave was born in postwar, hungry France. Eager French critics and film lovers, starved for culture and left only with mainstream media that felt stale and affected, 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 inundated with a flood of “new” films. All the works of Hollywood giants like Welles, Hitchcock, and Ford energized the French critics—and the rest is history.

Revolutionary Techniques

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

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

The channel The Discarded Image has a video that highlights the radical choices made by French director Jean‑Luc Godard. His film Breathless became one of the most outstanding works of the movement and launched one of the most thrilling and artistically rich careers of any filmmaker.

Representative New Wave Works

Bande à part (1964)

This film tells the story of 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 French New Wave films better 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 sensibility.

In a nutshell, Bande à part is a fun heist movie, but relatively conservative and 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. The film may not fully match Godard’s very best work, but thanks to its superb cinematography it is undeniably stunning. It also showcases the uninhibited imagination about sex and romance that was just beginning to emerge in the early French New Wave.

Tirez sur le pianiste (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 The 400 Blows, François Truffaut faced an almost impossible task—but he achieved tremendous success with the technically innovative Shoot the Piano Player. It is one of the French New Wave films that popularized many Hollywood genre conventions, such as the ruthless American gangster film.

Les cousins (1959)

Les cousins is a gripping psychological drama about two opposing personalities who clash. Charles is naive and hard‑working, while Paul is an outgoing, naturally gifted performer. The only thing the two characters share is that they are 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. It is often considered Claude Chabrol’s best French New Wave film.

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 who longs to find the man who abandoned her seventeen years earlier.

Lola has been largely 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 better than any other film of the movement conveys the capricious sense of youth that has become synonymous with the French New Wave. The film centers on the impact of the Algerian conflict on French family life, a theme that recurs in many New Wave works.

Adieu Philippine is director Jacques Rozier’s masterpiece about the trials and pains of coming of age, 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 key film of the French New Wave. It tells the story of a love triangle between two young men, Jules and Jim, and their fascination with a beautiful young woman named Catherine. Jules et Jim is a film about everything and nothing at once—so saturated with war, sex, and romance that it almost obscures the simplicity at its core.

L’année dernière à Marienbad (1961)

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

But nothing in Last Year at Marienbad is what it seems. Time and space warp in an instant, objectivity is forgotten, and relationships shift from moment to moment. Writer and critic Mark Polizzotti makes this point in his essay “Last Year at Marienbad: Which Year, Where?” The film is a foundational work that inspired stylistic choices in The Shining and Memento.

Hiroshima mon amour (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, and showed that French cinema was moving in new directions both technically and narratively. With explicit sexuality, unabashed creativity, and novel filmmaking techniques, Hiroshima mon amour broke free from the constraints of a stagnant French film industry.

Paris nous appartient (1961)

Paris Belongs to Us is a shocking nightmare about a world at a moral and existential crossroads. The film follows a young woman named Anne who finds herself caught up in a series of absurd situations, all of them 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 compare it to a visualization of a Kantian thought experiment.

Cléo de 5 à 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 portrays two hours in the life of Cléo, a beautiful and successful singer. Though the world seems to be at her feet, Cléo is more miserable than ever, fearing bad news from a cancer test. Cléo from 5 to 7 employs many typical French New Wave techniques such as jump cuts, montage, and long takes. It is a profoundly moving yet optimistic portrait of life, love, and empowerment.

Vivre sa vie: Film en douze tableaux (1962)

It’s hard to find a film more depressing than Vivre sa vie. Jean‑Luc Godard’s depiction of a young woman who becomes a prostitute is as bleak as narrative cinema gets—but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a great film. 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 as a well‑meaning woman trapped in the treacherous currents of a cruel, ever‑changing society.

Le mépris (1963)

French New Wave filmmakers were deeply inspired by earlier film movements, including German Expressionism, Italian Neorealism, and the Hollywood Golden Age. Le Mépris combines the best aspects of these three: it features Fritz Lang, a famous heir to German Expressionism; it was shot at Italy’s legendary Cinecittà studios; and it uses Hollywood archetypes in its story. It is one of Jean‑Luc Godard’s most personal works and an emblem of cinematic freedom and sensuality.

À bout de souffle (1960)

Breathless is widely regarded as the most representative French New Wave film. Ironically, many of the era’s directors, such as Alfred Hitchcock and Orson Welles, did not receive broad recognition in the United States until the 1970s with the arrival of the film‑school‑trained “New Hollywood” generation. Breathless is the film that brought together the jump cuts, long takes, and rough‑edged style that defined the French New Wave.

Les quatre cents coups (1959)

What is left to say about The 400 Blows? It is astonishing, beautiful, heartbreaking, despairing, hopeful, and liberating. This film 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 changing society—a tale as relevant today as it was in 1959. The 400 Blows is not only the finest film of the French New Wave, but 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.