The French New Wave is often regarded as one of the most influential movements in the history of cinema, even though it lasted a brief 15 years in the industry. It was popular between 1959-1968 and came to an end in 1973. The movement itself is driven by the rejection of the literary pieces, or the tradition de qualité (the state of the French cinema establishment) being produced in France. The movement was the start of a trail of independent/unique cinematographic cinema, in which directors and cinematographers broke the rules of traditional cinema to create their own. The objective of this essay is to lay out the key context, characteristics, and technical development of the French New Wave through two films— Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless (1960), and Alain Resnais’ Hiroshima, Mon Amour (1959)—and to analyse how the movement and aforementioned films have influenced and have been employed in contemporary films.
In 1951, Cahiers du Cinema, the oldest French-language film magazine in publication was founded and launched by Jacques Doniol-Valcroze, Lo Duca, and André Bazin. Bazin, working as the editor, became the mentor to young critics who would contribute to the magazine every so often, including François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard (under the pseudonym Hans Luca), Claude Chabrol, and Eric Rhomer.
In 1954, an article by Truffaut, “A Certain Tendency of the French Cinema”, attacked La Qualité Française (The French Quality/The Tradition of Quality), and it came about to be one of the important historical landmarks in the growth of auteur criticism.
François Truffaut boldly called out the screenwriters of that time, saying that, “Talent, to be sure, is not a function of fidelity, but I consider an adaptation of value only when written by a man of the cinema. Aurenche and Bost are essentially literary men and I reproach them here for being contemptuous of the cinema by underestimating it (4).”
The entirety of Truffaut’s article was calling out the screenwriters at the time (called scenarists then), and denouncing the traditional way of literary to film adaptation. He accused them of drawing the limit to what can or cannot be shot, and for always trying to please the producer and audience. Truffaut also mentioned that “They are basically men of letters, and my criticism of them here is that they look down on the cinema because they undervalue it (5).”
To summarise, Truffaut feels that they are doing justice to the story being told on screen, and is protesting on the amount of power these screenwriters or scenarists had at that time. He, along with the other Cahier writers, believed that a film should be a conversation between the auteur, towards his or her audiences. They also believed in the emphasis on the realism of the mise-en-scène, which would give the viewers of the French New Wave an objective view of the world.
As said previously, this article played an important part in the growth of auteur criticism—auteur meaning when a film director is so influential in their films that they rank as the author of the film—and the auteur theory came about at the time where the idea of defending a director rather than the writer was, as Jean Douchet puts it, so shocking and farfetched that it was necessary to use tact, and flatter the critical expectations of the time (99).
Because of the given circumstances, Truffaut shocked the industry when he released his article. The release of the article had already been delayed for one year because Bazin and Doniol feared that the Cahiers Du Cinéma will lose readers, and anger the filmmakers mentioned by the article—some of whom were personal friends of theirs. The article was seen as notorious, but his claims did not go unheard. Bazin and Doniol began to take Truffaut seriously, in spite of having held the article back for some time.
Kristin Thompson and David Bordwell stated that in France during the late 1950s, the idealism and political movements of the immediate postwar years gave ways to a more apolitical culture of consumption and leisure (407). It was in this time that the end of the Second World War meant the end of Nazi censorship in France, and previously banned foreign, and French films were allowed back in the French Cinema for public view.
This resulted in the youths immersing themselves in cinema, and broadened their viewpoint as they were able to watch previously banned films. The younger generation dubbed the "New Wave", or Nouvelle Vague, would read film journals like the Cahiers Du Cinéma, and attend screenings a ciné clubs and art et essai (art and experiment) cinemas. They were more open to films that defied the traditional methods of the Cinema of Quality. This led to appreciation to directors like Jean Renoir, Alfred Hitchcock, Howard Hawks, and Orson Welles.
Cahiers Du Cinéma editors, the notorious five—Jean-Luc Godard, Éric Rohmer, François Truffaut, Claude Chabrol, and Jacques Rivette, more well known as the “young Turks”, were among the most influential names in the French New Wave. Apart from the young Turks, another group, the Left Bank directors—Agnès Varda, Alain Resnais, Chris Marker, Henri Colpi, and Jacques Demi, equally contributed in the movement, though less heard of. There was no conflict between the two groups, and the Turks would often praise the Left Bank directors.
Breathless, known as the cinematographic event of the next decade, and Hiroshima, Mon Amour, known as an intellectual renewal, has its parallels on its impact towards the French New Wave, and the cinematic world, as a whole, and yet the two cannot be more different to each other. Similarly, a number of masterpieces emerged from the French New Wave, all paramount in its impact, but with strikingly different emotions, messages, and style that resonates from each of them.
CASE STUDY: BREATHLESS (1960) dir. JEAN-LUC GODARD
With a low budget of 460,000 francs (A third of the average cost of a French film at that time), Jean-Luc Godard directed his debut feature film, Breathless. The film was made in four weeks, without sound, using actual interior and exterior sets in Paris, and Marseilles. The camera was generally handheld, operated mostly by the chief cameraman, and kept hidden in the storage compartment of a delivery bicycle driven by Godard to minimize the effect of camera and crew.
It revolves around Michel Poiccard, played by Jean-Paul Belmondo, a petty car thief who kills a policeman who is chasing after him. In Paris, he meets his American friend Patricia Franchini, and the two become lovers. He convinced her to go to Italy with him, but his identity has been discovered and revealed, and the police are on the hunt for him. Patricia then betrays Michel, who is then shot by the police.
Louis Séguin mentions that it is one of the most artificial, most manipulative films around, and its structure is among the most banal. Godard has his hero say one thing one moment and its opposite a moment later, and presents this paradox as life’s ultimate ambiguity (1960).
As S Hitchman puts it, “By deliberately appearing amateurish Godard drew attention to the conventions of classic cinema, revealing them for what they were, merely conventions
( http://www.newwavefilm.com/french-new-wave-encyclopedia/breathless.shtml ).”
Godard wanted to play around basic film language, was rough and experimental with the editing and structure. All the general characteristics of the New Wave film can be found in Breathless. Handheld cameras, non-professional actors, natural, impromptu dialogue, natural lighting, and on location shooting. The jump cuts, and the breaking of the fourth wall.
The film itself was released within one year after François Truffaut’s 400 Blows (1959), and four months after Alain Resnais’s Hiroshima, Mon Amour (1959), and the three are widely regarded as the beginning of the French New Wave. Other French New Wave films came out at this time too, but the three are the ones considered most successful, influential, and unique.
Godard was given the chance to direct Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde (1967) but declined. Arthur Penn went on to direct it as an homage to Godard’s debut, Breathless, which, in turn, was inspired by Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil (1958).
CASE STUDY: HIROSHIMA, MON AMOUR (1960) dir. ALAIN RESNAIS
Also his debut feature film, Alain Resnais directed Hiroshima, Mon Amour. It would go on to be one of the most influential films of all time. It was intended to be a documentary at first, but after a conversation with filmmaker Marguerite Duras, Resnais realised that it could be possible to blend reality and imagination—a cinematic product which alternated the use of archive footage with fictional scenes.
It is chilling, macabre, and melancholic. Kristin Thompson and David Bordwell mention that “Its an ambiguous mixture of documentary realism, subjective evocation, and authorial commentary (414).” The way it is told is unique. In the beginning, it is narrated by a woman, who recounts her memories of what happened right after the bomb. She relays her accounts to a man, who, without missing a beat, replies that she was not there in Hiroshima. There is a tug-of-war in the conversation, and soon we are revealed who the man and woman are. The woman, a French actress (Emmanuelle Riva) is referred to as Her, and the man, a Japanese architect (Eji Okada), is referred to like Him. They spend a night together, and in total, a little more than 24 hours before she returns to France. In this short timeframe, they managed to build a something that transcends far beyond anything a one-night stand offers, in terms of emotional connection and trust. Layer by layer, they tell each other’s stories, and soon it revolves around her.
She had a traumatic past. She had a German soldier as a lover, who was shot to death, and she grieved by his body for days until people found her, and publicly shamed her for loving a German. She was put in solitary confinement, until her mother told her to escape her hometown, Nevers, France.
In the end, she still left Hiroshima, but to him, she will be named Nevers, France, and to her, he will be named Hiroshima, Japan. They part ways, leaving the audience with strong feelings of melancholy and a certain degree of perplexity.
Kristin Thompson and David Bordwell state that, “The film closes with the couple’s apparent reconciliation, suggesting that the difficulty of fully knowing any historical truth resembles that of understanding another human being (413).”
Released just 14 years after the Hiroshima bombing, Hiroshima, Mon Amour remains, as Joanne Leow puts it, “One of cinema’s most profound meditations on the horror of war, suffering and forgetting (http://sensesofcinema.com/2013/cteq/hiroshima-mon-amour/).”
Which is where it’s impact mostly lies. It told the horrifying consequences of the nuclear bomb, yet was intertwined so tragically beautifully, with love story, upon love story. The loss that Hiroshima felt from the nuclear bomb was so devastating, and hard to comprehend, but it was in some ways, tied to losing a lover. Both Hiroshima and Her are casualties of war, and her experiences encapsulated the story, enabling or at least, aiding the audience to bear the hard-to-swallow pill.
Kent Jones mentions that it’s difficult to quantify the breadth of Hiroshima's impact. It remains one of the most influential films in the short history of the medium, first of all, because it liberated moviemakers from linear construction. Without Hiroshima, many films thereafter would have been unthinkable, from I fidanzati to The Pawnbroker to Point Blank to Petulia to Don’t Look Now (and almost every other Nicolas Roeg movie) to Out of Sight and The Limey (https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/291-hiroshima-mon-amour-time-indefinite).
CONCLUSION
Lindsay Parnell states that this is quintessentially what the French New Wave is about—invigorating cinematic narrative, and rejecting traditional linear tropes of storytelling and creating a new language of film (https://theculturetrip.com/europe/france/articles/the-french-new-wave-revolutionising-cinema/).
Which is why even with all the different styles these very different auteurs had, they were able to equally contribute in the movement. They were each stripping down the laws and traditions of cinema, and was not afraid to do what they wanted, how, when, where, and why.
As Joe Queenan puts it, the most amazing thing about the new wave is how little the directors had in common – artistically, philosophically, politically. What united them was a shared determination to breathe life into the corpse of French postwar cinema (https://www.theguardian.com/film/2009/mar/27/french-new-wave-cinema).
Vive la France!