French New Wave
Also known as Nouvelle Vague · New Wave cinema
The movement of young French directors around 1958 to 1965, among them Truffaut, Godard and Varda, who shot on the street with light cameras and broke the rules of classic editing.
In practice
The French New Wave, or Nouvelle Vague, was a movement of young French filmmakers who made their first features between about 1958 and 1965. Many of them, including François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Chabrol, Éric Rohmer and Jacques Rivette, had been critics at the magazine Cahiers du cinéma before they became directors.
They rejected the polished studio films of their day. They shot on real streets and in real apartments, with light cameras, small crews and natural light, and they often improvised. Their films broke the rules of continuity editing, most famously with the jump cuts of Godard's Breathless (1960), and spoke directly about cinema, youth and love.
The movement also gave criticism one of its lasting ideas: that the director is the true author of a film, the auteur. Its influence reached New Hollywood films such as Bonnie and Clyde (1967), and it still shapes independent filmmaking wherever directors work cheaply and personally.
A scene written in a New Wave spirit
EXT. PARIS STREET - DAY
CLAIRE (20) and LUC (20) walk fast against the crowd, books under their arms. Traffic, wind, a café radio.
LUC
The exam starts in ten minutes.
CLAIRE
Then we have ten minutes to decide whether to go.
She stops dead. Turns to the camera, as if it had asked her something.
CLAIRE (CONT'D)
We didn't go.
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The scene works the way many New Wave films do: a real street instead of a set, characters in motion, a casual line that carries a big decision, and a moment that admits the camera is there. Breaking the fourth wall and skipping ahead in time were part of the movement's playfulness.
What defined the French New Wave
Location shooting. Lightweight cameras and faster film stock let directors leave the studio and film in streets, cafés and apartments, often without permits.
Freedom with editing. Jump cuts, sudden shifts in time and abrupt endings replaced smooth continuity. The editing drew attention to itself on purpose.
Personal stories. The films followed young people, lovers and outsiders in contemporary France, often drawn from the directors' own lives, as in Truffaut's The 400 Blows.
Films about films. Characters quote movies, speak to the audience and refer to the camera. The directors had learned cinema as critics and made that knowledge part of the work.
French New Wave films to know
The 400 Blows (1959), François Truffaut: a boy drifts away from his family and school in Paris. Its final freeze-frame on his face is one of the most famous endings in film.
Breathless (1960), Jean-Luc Godard: a small-time criminal and an American student in Paris. Its jump cuts, handheld camera and casual style became the movement's signature.
Hiroshima mon amour (1959), Alain Resnais: a French actress and a Japanese architect, and the memories each carries. Its editing mixes past and present.
Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962), Agnès Varda: a singer waits for a medical result, filmed almost in real time as she crosses Paris.
Jules and Jim (1962), François Truffaut: two friends and the woman they both love, across twenty years and a war.
French New Wave vs. classical Hollywood style
Classical Hollywood editing hides itself: cuts follow the action, eyelines match, and time moves smoothly, so the audience forgets the film was made. The New Wave made the audience notice the making, with jump cuts, direct address and scenes that stop for a conversation or a song.
The movement still admired Hollywood. The Cahiers critics championed Alfred Hitchcock and Howard Hawks as auteurs, and Breathless is dedicated to Monogram Pictures, a studio of cheap American crime films.
What screenwriters take from the New Wave
Write for real places. A scene set in a street you know, with its noise and passersby, can be cheaper and more alive than a scene that needs a set.
Let a scene wander. New Wave dialogue often drifts away from the plot and reveals character on the way. A conversation about nothing can carry the film's real subject.
Leave time out. Cut ahead mid-scene when the moment has done its work, and trust the audience to keep up.
Keep the page readable anyway. However loose the film is meant to feel, the script still needs clear scene headings and action. Plot formats them as you write, so the looseness stays in the story, not in the pages.
Common questions
What is the French New Wave?
The French New Wave was a movement of young French directors, active from about 1958 to 1965, who shot on location with light cameras, improvised and broke classic editing rules.
Who are the main French New Wave directors?
François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Chabrol, Éric Rohmer and Jacques Rivette, along with Agnès Varda and Alain Resnais of the related Left Bank group.
What was the first French New Wave film?
Claude Chabrol's Le Beau Serge (1958) is often named first. Truffaut's The 400 Blows (1959) and Godard's Breathless (1960) brought the movement worldwide attention.
What does Nouvelle Vague mean?
Nouvelle Vague is French for "new wave." The phrase was used in the late 1950s for a new generation of young people in France, and critics soon applied it to their films.
Why was the French New Wave important?
It showed that films could be made cheaply, personally and outside the studio system, and its ideas about editing and the director as author shaped independent film worldwide.