The French New Wave

We were told of a very known influence that apparently was inspired by Classic Italian Neo-Realism, it was called the French New Wave. In class we took down the following notes:

• French New-Wave:

• Break away from convention

• Apparition of Italian Neo-Realism:

➢ Realist movement
➢ Shot on location
➢ Usage of real people
➢ Response to propaganda films

Needing to expand our knowledge on the fact, i researched a few things; the French New Wave was an artistic movement whose influence on film has been as profound and enduring as that of surrealism or cubism on painting. The French New Wave made its first splashes as a movement shot through with youthful exuberance and a brisk reinvigoration of the filmmaking process. It was popular roughly between 1958 and 1964, although New Wave work existed as late as 1973. The socio-economic forces at play shortly after World War II strongly influenced the movement. A politically and financially drained France tended to fall back to the old popular traditions before the war. One such tradition was straight narrative cinema, specifically classical French film. The movement has its roots in rebellion against the reliance on past forms, often adapted from traditional novellic structures, criticizing in particular the way these forms could force the audience to submit to a dictatorial plot-line. They were especially against the French "cinema of quality", the type of high-minded, literary period films held in esteem at French film festivals, often regarded as "untouchable" to criticism.

New Wave critics and directors studied the work of western classics and applied new avant garde stylistic direction. The low-budget approach helped filmmakers get at the essential art form and find what, to them, was a much more comfortable and honest form of production. Charlie Chaplin, Alfred Hitchcock, Orson Welles, Howard Hawks, John Ford, and many other forward-thinking film directors were held up in admiration while standard Hollywood films bound by traditional narrative flow were strongly criticized.

http://www.greencine.com/static/primers/fnwave1.jsp