What Is the French New Wave? Background and Revolutionary Techniques

The French New Wave forever 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 characteristics of the movement’s earliest pioneering works. As we’ll see, the influence of the French New Wave continues through modern filmmakers like 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 continue on to some of the stylistic contributions the movement made 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 birth to a new kind of film 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 that films had become detached from people’s real lives.

Many famous French film 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 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‑location recording, often without relighting)

A Brief History of the French New Wave

The French New Wave was born in postwar, hungry France. French critics and film lovers, starved for culture and left with only mainstream media that felt stale and mannered, began experimenting with different filmmaking techniques. They drew inspiration from 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, the embargoes were lifted, and these cinephiles and critics were suddenly flooded with a mass of “new” films. All these works by 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 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, bringing new life and energy to film.

Nonlinear and fragmented editing became another major and exciting contribution. For decades, every shot A had to logically lead to shot B, leaving no gaps in information for fear of confusing 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 (À bout de souffle) became one of the most outstanding works of the movement and launched one of the most exciting and artistically significant directing careers in cinema.

Representative New Wave Works

Bande à part (Band of Outsiders, 1964)

This film tells the story of three young people who plan a robbery together. Naturally, things do not go as planned, and chaos ensues. For modern audiences, there are few better entry points into French New Wave cinema than Bande à part. That’s not to say it’s better than its contemporaries, but it is more restrained and strikes a nearly perfect commercial balance.

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 quite rank among Godard’s very best, but thanks to its outstanding cinematography it is undeniably stunning. It also showcases the uninhibited imagination about sex and romance that was just beginning to blossom in early French 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 is also a great and daring story. Following up François Truffaut’s first feature The 400 Blows was almost an impossible task, yet he succeeded brilliantly with the technically innovative Shoot the Piano Player. The film is one of the French New Wave works that helped popularize many Hollywood genre conventions—such as the cold‑blooded American gangster film.

Les cousins (The Cousins, 1959)

Les cousins is a gripping psychological drama about the clash between two opposing personalities. Charles is naïve and hardworking, while Paul is an outgoing performer with natural talent. The only thing they have in common 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 he has with his cousin. It is one of famed 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.

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 better than any other film of the movement conveys the capricious spirit 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 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 France’s finest New Wave films.

Jules et Jim (Jules and Jim, 1962)

François Truffaut’s exhilarating wartime love story Jules et Jim is a key film of the French New Wave. Jules and Jim tells the story of a love triangle between two young men (Jules and Jim) and their obsession 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 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 the period. It follows three nameless individuals (two men and a woman) at a fashionable party as they struggle to be recognized.

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 advanced this view in his essay “Last Year in Marienbad: Which Year? Where?” The film is a foundational work that inspired stylistic choices in films like 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 major leap in visual storytelling and film editing, and showed that French cinema was moving in new directions both technically and narratively. With its explicit sexuality, unrestrained creativity, and innovative filmmaking techniques, Hiroshima mon amour broke free from a stagnant 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 linked to death. After nearly sixty years of debate, the meaning of Paris Belongs to Us is still open to interpretation. Some see the film as an allegory of Cold War tensions, while others compare 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 de 5 à 7 is her signature work. The film follows two hours in the life of Cléo, a beautiful and successful singer. Though the world seems to be 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 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 portrayal 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 as a well‑intentioned woman caught in the cruel, ever‑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 brings together the best aspects of these three movements: it features Fritz Lang, a famous heir to German Expressionism; it was shot at Cinecittà, Italy’s famed 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 era’s key directors, such as Alfred Hitchcock and Orson Welles, were not widely appreciated in the United States until the 1970s, when the film‑school generation—the Hollywood New Wave—arrived. Breathless is the culmination of the jump cuts, long takes, and “roughened” style that were so popular in 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 changed the landscape of French cinema and whose popularity helped spark the New Wave. François Truffaut tells the story of a rebellious boy at odds with a changing society, a story just 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.