What Is the French New Wave? Background and Revolutionary Techniques

The French New Wave permanently changed the way films were made and influenced some of the greatest directors of our time. But what is the French New Wave? How and why did it begin? 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 such as 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 get into 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 movements 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 film production. A group of French critics writing for the magazine Cahiers du cinéma believed that movies had lost their original charm. They felt these films were disconnected from people’s real lives.

A number of 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, which were often improvised

• Jump cuts instead of continuity editing

• Location shooting

• Handheld cameras

• Long takes

• Direct sound and available light (on‑location recording, often with no lighting adjustments)

A Brief History of the French New Wave

The French New Wave was born in postwar, hungry France. French critics and movie lovers were starved for culture and, left only with mainstream media that felt stale and pretentious, began experimenting with different filmmaking techniques. Their influences included Italian neorealism and American film noir of the 1940s and 1950s.

During World War II, foreign films stopped being imported into France. After the war, these embargoes were lifted, and these cinephiles and critics were suddenly flooded with “new” films. All the works of Hollywood titans like Welles, Hitchcock, and Ford energized the French critics, and the rest is history.

Revolutionary Techniques

For decades, mainstream filmmaking—especially Hollywood—had set the standards and “rules” for how to make movies. 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 would 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 became one of the most outstanding works of the movement and launched one of the most exciting and artistically rich careers of any filmmaker.

Representative Films of the New Wave

Bande à part (Band of Outsiders) (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 follows. For modern audiences, few French New Wave films are better entry points than Bande à part. That’s not to say it’s better than its contemporaries, but it’s more restrained and perfectly balanced commercially.

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 Godard’s boldest films, this surreal, on‑the‑run story stars French New Wave icons Anna Karina and Jean‑Paul Belmondo. It may not fully match Godard’s very best work, but thanks to its superb cinematography it is absolutely stunning, and it showcases the unvarnished, imaginative treatment of sex and romance that was just beginning to blossom in early 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 up François Truffaut’s first feature The 400 Blows was an almost impossible task, yet he achieved huge success with the technically innovative Shoot the Piano Player. It’s one of the French New Wave films that popularized many Hollywood genre conventions—for example, the cold‑blooded American gangster film.

Les cousins (The Cousins) (1959)

The Cousins is a gripping psychological drama about two opposing personalities at odds with each other. Charles is innocent and hardworking, while Paul is outgoing and gifted as a performer. The only thing these characters 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 relationship with his cousin. It is one of renowned director Claude Chabrol’s best French New Wave films.

Lola (1961)

Jacques Demy’s directorial debut Lola tells a twist‑filled love story set on the French coast. The film stars Anouk Aimée as a cabaret performer longing to find 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 absolutely one of the essential French New Wave films.

Adieu Philippine (Goodbye Philippine) (1962)

Adieu Philippine perhaps more than any other film of the movement conveys the capricious, youthful spirit that has become synonymous with the French New Wave. The film revolves around the impact of the Algerian conflict on family life in France, a theme common to many New Wave films.

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 (Jules and Jim) (1962)

François Truffaut’s exhilarating wartime love story Jules and 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 infatuation with a beautiful young woman named Catherine. Jules and Jim is a film about everything and nothing—war, sex, and romance are present in such abundance that they 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 this period. It tells the story of three nameless people (two men and one woman) at a fashionable party, struggling to get others to recognize them.

But nothing in Last Year at Marienbad is what it seems; time and space warp in an instant, objectivity is forgotten, and relationships change from moment to moment. Writer and critic Mark Polizzotti develops this idea in his essay “Last Year at Marienbad: Which Year, What Place?” 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 huge leap in visual storytelling and film editing, and showed that French cinema was moving in a new direction both technically and narratively. With its frank sexuality, unapologetic creativity, and novel filmmaking 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 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 is still open to interpretation. Some see the film as an allegory of Cold War tensions, while others compare it to a visual version 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 follows two hours in the life of Cléo, a beautiful and successful singer. Though the world is at her fingertips, Cléo is more miserable than ever as she awaits possible bad news from a cancer test. Cléo from 5 to 7 employs many hallmark French New Wave techniques, such as jump cuts, montage structures, and long takes. It is a deeply moving and ultimately 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 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. 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‑intentioned woman trapped in the dangers of a cruel, ever‑changing society.

Le mépris (Contempt) (1963)

French New Wave filmmakers were heavily inspired by earlier 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 famous heir to German Expressionism; it was shot at Italy’s legendary Cinecittà studios; and it uses Hollywood archetypes in its story. This is one of Godard’s most personal works and an emblem of free and sensuous cinema.

À bout de souffle (Breathless) (1960)

Breathless is widely considered the quintessential French New Wave film. Ironically, many of the era’s directors, such as Alfred Hitchcock and Orson Welles, were not widely appreciated in the United States until the 1970s with the arrival of the film‑school generation—the New Hollywood. Breathless is the work that brought together the jump cuts, long takes, and “roughened” aesthetic 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 a film that completely transformed the landscape of French cinema, and its popularity helped spark the New Wave. François Truffaut tells the story of a rebellious boy at odds 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 character Antoine Doinel, a semi‑autobiographical stand‑in for Truffaut himself.