History & Development of French New Wave

French New Wave is one of the most major film movements during the late 1950s and early 1960s. It changed filmmaking throughout the world by encouraging the new styles, themes, and also modes of production. French New Wave films are considered as independent films as most of them are produced in the real location instead of the settings made in studio, which also makes the whole productions’ cost becomes low compared to films produced in the studio. As a result, approximately 120 first-time French directors were able to shoot feature-length films between the years of French New Wave. Young directors such as Louis Malle, Francois Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, and Claude Chabrol, are famous directors of French New Wave. Chabrol's Le Beau Serge (1958) is credited as the first French New Wave film, followed by Truffaut’s The 400 Blows (1959) and Godard’s Breathless (1960) which had created the world's attention to the New Wave and lead the movement to thrive.

French New Wave aroused attention from many critics. Cahiers du cinema which is a French film magazine founded by Andre Bazin and Jacques Donial Valcroze. They organized a special topic for the New Wave. Claude Chabrol, Jacques Rivette, Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard are part of writers of Cahiers du cinema before they became filmmakers. This group of writers will watch many formerly unreleased movies at the Cinematheque Francaise, which is a film archive and public theater in Paris, and then make critics on the movies. With Autuer Theory, they argued that films should reflect the directors’ personal vision through mise-en-scene.

According to Bordwell(2010), the movement has come to the end in year 1969 and the last French New Wave film is Weekend by Gordard. This is because the form of cinema has merged into the mainstream cinema. Besides that, the directors came out with their own style of making films and also their own production companies, which lead them to make mainstream films for profit.

Reference:

• Bordwell, D., & Thompson, K. M. (2009). Film art: An introduction (9th ed.). New York, N.Y: McGraw-Hill.
• Neupert, R. J. (2002). A history of the French new wave cinema. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.