Discover great cinema and the connections that made it possible.
Film Movement
1958–1973
French New Wave
European Cinema
Jump cuts, handheld cameras, and characters who break the fourth wall. Made outside the studio system on tiny budgets, treating cinema as literature — personal, digressive, alive to ideas. Godard, Truffaut, Varda, Chabrol, Rohmer.
The New Wave, also called the French New Wave, is a French art film movement that emerged in the late 1950s. The movement was characterized by its rejection of traditional filmmaking conventions, favoring experimentation and a spirit of iconoclasm. New Wave filmmakers explored new approaches to editing, visual style, and narrative, often engaging with the social and political upheavals of the era through the use of irony or the exploration of existential themes. The New Wave is often considered one of the most influential movements in the history of cinema.
Key Directors
No. 06 · France · Paris
The French crime poet. His films are about men reinventing themselves through violence and will. A Prophet is one of the great prison films — among the finest French films ever made.
Jean-Luc Godard (UK: GOD-ar, US: goh-DAR; French: [ʒɑ̃ lyk ɡɔdaʁ]; 3 December 1930 – 13 September 2022) was a French and Swiss film director, screenwriter, and film critic. He rose to prominence as a pioneer of the French New Wave film movement of the 1960s, alongside such filmmakers as François Truffaut, Agnès Varda, Éric Rohmer and Jacques Demy. He was arguably the most influential French filmmaker of the post-war era.
France
b. Christian François Bouche-Villeneuve (1)
France
b. June 24, 1930, Paris, France. d. September 12, 2010, Paris, France
Related Movements in European Cinema