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, 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 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 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 film history. Also known simply as the “New Wave,” it gave rise to a new kind of cinema that was highly self‑conscious 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 charm. They felt these films had become detached from people’s actual lives.

Many renowned French film directors were involved 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 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, usually without relighting)

A Brief History of the French New Wave

The French New Wave was born in postwar, culturally starved France. French critics and cinephiles, hungry for culture and surrounded only by mainstream media that felt stale and contrived, 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 into the country. After the war, these embargoes were lifted, and these film buffs and critics were suddenly flooded with a vast number of “new” movies. 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 standards and “rules” for how to make movies. The French filmmakers knew those rules… and then threw them out the window. Smaller, lighter cameras were often “freed” from tripods and used handheld, giving films new life and energy.

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

The video essay The Image You Missed 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 exciting and artistically significant directing careers in cinema.

Landmark New Wave Films

Bande à part (Band of Outsiders, 1964)

This film tells the story of three young people planning a robbery together. Naturally, things don’t go according to plan, and chaos ensues. For modern audiences, few French New Wave films are more accessible than Bande à part. That’s not to say it’s better than its contemporaries, only that it’s more conservative, with a perfectly judged balance of commercial appeal.

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

Pierrot le fou (1965)

This surreal runaway story is one of Jean‑Luc Godard’s boldest films, starring French New Wave icons Anna Karina and Jean‑Paul Belmondo. It may not entirely measure up to Godard’s very best work, but thanks to its outstanding cinematography, it’s certainly a stunning achievement. It also showcases the unabashed, imaginative treatment of sex and romance that was 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’s also a great and daring story. Following up François Truffaut’s debut The 400 Blows was an almost impossible task, yet he succeeded spectacularly with the technically innovative Shoot the Piano Player. The film is one of the French New Wave works that popularized many Hollywood genre types, such as the cold‑blooded American gangster film.

Les cousins (The Cousins, 1959)

The Cousins is a gripping psychological drama about two opposing personalities in conflict. Charles is innocent and hardworking, while Paul is an outgoing, 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 them. It is one of renowned director Claude Chabrol’s finest 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 yearning 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)

More than perhaps any other film of the movement, Adieu Philippine conveys the whimsical, youthful energy that has become synonymous with the French New Wave. The film revolves around the impact of the Algerian War on family life in France, a theme that recurs in many New Wave films.

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

Jules et Jim (Jules and Jim, 1962)

François Truffaut’s exhilarating wartime love story Jules and Jim is a key French New Wave film. It follows 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—war, sex, and romance in such abundance that they almost obscure 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 tells the story of three nameless people (two men and one woman) struggling to assert their identities at a fashionable party.

But nothing in Last Year at Marienbad is as it seems; time and space twist in an instant, objectivity is forgotten, and relationships change from moment to moment. Writer and critic Mark Polizzotti argues this in his essay “Last Year at Marienbad: Which Year, Which Place?” The film is a foundational work that inspired stylistic choices in films like 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 forward in visual storytelling and film editing. It also showed that French cinema was moving in a new direction, both technically and narratively. With its frank sexuality, unapologetic creativity, and innovative filmmaking, 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 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 which are connected 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, 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 covers two hours in the life of Cléo, a beautiful and successful singer. Although the world seems to be 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 uses many hallmark French New Wave techniques, such as jump cuts, montage, 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 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 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 flux of a dangerous society.

Le mépris (Contempt, 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 movements: it features Fritz Lang, a famed heir to German Expressionism; it was shot at Cinecittà, Italy’s legendary studio; and it uses Hollywood archetypes in its story. It is one of Jean‑Luc Godard’s most personal works and a symbol of liberated, sensual cinema.

À bout de souffle (Breathless, 1960)

Breathless is widely regarded as the quintessential French New Wave film. Ironically, many of the directors admired in this era—like Alfred Hitchcock and Orson Welles—didn’t receive widespread appreciation in the United States until the 1970s, with the arrival of the film‑school generation and the Hollywood New Wave. Breathless is the work that brought together the New Wave’s popular jump cuts, long takes, and “roughened” style into a single film.

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 film completely changed the landscape of French cinema, and its popularity helped spark the New Wave. François Truffaut tells the story of a rebellious boy out of step with a changing society, a story 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.