La Nouvelle Vague (The French New Wave) By Kevin Krasko

Les Quatre Cents Coups (The 400 Blows)

Why is it important? The French New wave is the most influential movement in cinema ever. Some of Americas’ most influential directors were highly influenced By the French new wave. –Francis Ford Coppila The Godfather Apocalypse Now –Martin Scorsese The Goodfellas –Brian De Plama Scarface Many Directors today are still personally influenced. –Quentin Tarantino Pulp Fiction –Wes Anderson Rushmore The film theory put forth during this time is still used regularly in Hollywood and film classes.

How did it start? It started with a group of critics who formed a film magazine. –Cahiers du Cinéma These critics were very critical of the Films of the times. Many of them started making there own films.

Cahiers du Cinéma It was very critical of the new films of the times. –The Cahiers du Cinéma considered the films to be formulaic and unoriginal. They celebrated certain director who they considered “auteurs.” –Ex. Jean Renoir, Jean Vigo, Alfred Hitchcock, Orson Welles. The Cahiers du Cinéma had two main guidelines for movie making. –Mise en scene –the “Auteur” theory

Guidelines of “Cahiers du Cinéma” Mise en Scène –Literally means "putting on stage." –originally it was a theatre term but it was adapted to film during the French New wave. –Simple it is the degree of control the that the creator has over the object, locations and actors in the scene. Auteur –What would be later called the Auteur theory, was the idea that every film should have one person who controls everything in a movie and also that he would leave his style on his movies. Auteur is French for author. The auteur is usually considered the director.

Key Directors François Truffault Jean-Luc Godard Claude Chabrol Jacques Rivette Eric Romer Agnés Varda Louis Malle –all of these directors started as critic except for Agnés Varda and Louis Malle

Key Characteristics Loose story plots –many of the stories are vague and open end. This give the viewer the feeling that anything can happen. Large amounts of Improvisation in the dialogue. The characters are odd and many times act on a whim. Use of unnatural jump cuts. –A jump cut is cut in the film from one shot to a different shot. An unnatural jump cut could be accomplished by placing two shots next to that have a person in one position and in the next shot have a person in a different position. –The effect of this can be jarring and make the editing extremely noticeable. –The Artistic effect is a jump that can increase tempo and heighten emotion. A good example of the use of this type of jump cut is in the movie “Breathless” by Goddard. A car scene were there is just a dialog between a car thief and girl is heightened by the removal of space between the conversation. Truly good control over the visuals in the movie (mise en scène)

Cliché Characteristics (that aren’t always true, but can be use to simple define French new wave) They speak French Its in black and white a lot of people smoking weird dialog. What appears to be no real plot. If it makes you say WTF!

John Cassavetes

Modern Hollywood (shot length) The length of an average shot in a movie was rather long for today’s standard. –Citizen Kane- ASL (average shot length)10.7 The French new wave use some shorter scenes and faster cuts. Nowadays the shot length of our cuts are even shorter than the French new waves shots. –Matrix ASL- 3.3 seconds The average length of a shot today is 3-4 seconds and getting smaller.

The French New Wave’s impact La Nouvelle Vague created created many other movements in other countries and many new directors emerge using the teachings of French New wave. –This happened because the French new wave films were spread across the globe. In Poland we find the emergence of Roman Polanski –who later left Poland to directed movies in Hollywood. He directed “Chinatown” starring Jack Nicholson –It was rated in the top ten of America's best films of all time by the American Film Institute In Germany in 1962 there was a push to create a new cinema that was highly influenced by La nouvelle vague

Impact (Part Deux) Cinema Nôvo started in 1961–1962 in Brazil with Glauber Rocha, “Barravento (1962),” and Ruy Guerra"Os Cafajestes (1962).” other movements and directors appeared, heavly influenced by the wave, in countries such as Japan, Italy, Czechoslovakia, Finland, and many many more. Now to think that it all start with a small group of like minded critics that started a magazine and as the quote that Madame P. always likes to say...

References –New Wave THE GLOBAL IMPACT OF THE FRENCH NEW WAVE “A history of the French New Wave cinema” By Richard Neupert The french New wave by Stephen Nottingham – htm “Close up: The french New wave and the face” by Iain Morrisson –