Major Film Movement & The Auteurs

Module 17
The Rise of Nouvelle Vague

Academic script

The Rise of Nouvelle Vague

The French Nouvelle Vague or French New Wave was one

of the two most influential film movements which took
place in post-War Europe, the other being the Italian
Neorealism. If the Italian movement was inherently a
political movement - born out of anti-fascist resistance
movements - which gave birth to a definite aesthetic
paradigm, French New Wave was an aesthetic paradigm
shift with ambivalent political connotations.

The apparent features of both the movement was largely

similar - low-budget filmmaking was explored, shooting
in real locations instead of studio floors, shooting in
natural light conditions using faster stocks, strategies of
narration markedly different from the conventional and
established were features which can be found in both the
movements. Both the movements had a passionate
engagement with the contemporary and tried to present
a distinct national image on the screen; but while the
Italian movement located it in the socio-historical, French
New Wave was more interested in the cultural and the
discursive. While in Neorealism the poor, the proletariat
and the lower-class was given primacy, Parisian youth
got the centrestage in French New Wave.

If we continue with the differences between the Italian

Neorealism and French New Wave, a significant
difference should be the way directorial functions are
imagined in the movement. In neorealism, the style of
the director (and also his world-view) should be
subsumed largely under the umbrella paradigm of the
movement. In other words, if the style and world-view of
a particular director starts to be distinct from that of his
fellow directors, that would definitely begin the end of the
movement. The director’s strategies of non-intervention
into the reality demanded an effacement of the persona,
neorealism demanded acute and systematic observation
of the social reality.

The case is just the obverse in French New Wave. To be

precise, the French movement should not have a broader
umbrella aesthetics because the movement was about
liberating and articulating distinct style, signature and
world-views of individual directors. Therefore, to
understand the French New Wave, it is necessary to
understand the reimagination of the role of the director
as an individuated artist in post-War France.

The term “nouvelle vague” was primarily coined by

Francoise Giroud in the magazine L’Express to describe a
certain youth culture in later 1950s. Later it got
associated with the new cinematic movement.

It was in 1947, Alexandre Astruc wrote an essay titled ‘La

Camera Stylo: Birth of a new Avant-Garde’ where he
spoke of a new artistic tendency emerging in cinema
after the wars - that of considering the cinematic as a
language capable of expressing the individual artist’s
ideas, thoughts and obsessions. The most important
figure of speech in the essay was the metaphor used in
the title - that the camera was equated with the pen
(stylo) had many implications. Firstly, the pen is wielded
by an ‘individual artist’, not by a collective (like in
theater); secondly, the pen is a medium through which
the artist deals with language; thirdly, the pen in writer’s
hand is not restricted to any form (she might write a
poem, a journal entry, a novel, an essay); lastly, the pen
also signifies a relative inexpensive tool.

Each of this implications had significant possibilities which

will be fully explored during the French New Wave. While
the movement will stress on low-budget filmmaking to
lighten commercial baggages to hinder the director’s
expression; the movement will also try to expand the
horizons of feature filmmaking to go beyond character-
centric, plot-driven narratives. But most important was
the concept of the director as the sole expressive artist
‘authoring’ the film through a highly self-conscious,
modernist use of film-language.

That the essay was being correctly speculative of the

future would be vindicated by an influential journal within
a decade. Cahiers du Cinema, spearheaded by the
legendary film-theorist Andre Bazin, became the platform
where a relatively younger group of film-critics
consistently practiced a throughly designed ‘policy’ of
film-viewing which they named ‘politique des auteur’.

This policy - not a ‘theory’ as it will be shortly

misunderstood by Anglophone film critics - maintained
that if a film is a medium of art, then its artistic validity
should be judged through a singular yardstick: if it is
capable of expressing the artist behind it and if it is being
successfully helmed to attribute the artist a distinctive
personality. Thus, their ‘method’ of reading films was -
by default - transformed into an endeavor of ‘reading the
artistic personality’ behind the film-facade.

The policy faced severe criticism from more seasoned

and pragmatic film critics - they were not sure if cinema
can be considered equivalent to more expressive
mediums like literature, painting, music etc. They also
argued that cinema - in its fifth decade of existence - has
been thoroughly defined as a industrial, technology-
intensive medium which is dominantly collective in
nature; therefore, the notion of director as an expressive
individuated artist is too Utopian, according to these
critics. Lastly, the role of the director in this industrial
team is very throughly defined and it is not easy to
conclude that he is the single ‘authoritative’ figure in this
hierarchy, therefore assigning him the only agency is
hugely problematic.

The Cahiers group - comprising names like Francois

Truffaut, Jean-luc Godard, Eric Rohmer, Claude Chabrol,
Jacques Rivette - who will be in the forefront of Nouvelle
Vague movement within years responded to this criticism
in a more ambitious way, they decided to prove that the
director is the author within an industrial structure which
is the most rigorously hierarchical and therefore can
easily turn to be the most difficult terrain to prove their
policy, in Hollywood.

What can be discerned as their method had implications

in the film movement they will spearhead. They located
the specificity of the medium in its mise-en-scene, they
way a scene is put together; logically, the person who is
responsible for designing the mise-en-scene, i.e. the
director, becomes the cinematic artist. In their reading of
a director’s films, the Cahiers group would then identify
devices used in the designing of mise-en-scenes by a
director which seem unique to him, e.g. tracking shots in
Hitchcock; then they would read how these devices (or
motifs in contents) would recur in the oeuvre of the
filmmaker, what would it mean. In this way, they would
determine the signature, the unique style and the world-
view of the director.

When these critics would turn filmmakers within few

years there craft would follow similar traits, only this time
more self-conscious than implicit. They would hone their
craft to develop unique and idiosyncratic styles and also
use cinema to convey their ideas and world-view.

The Nouvelle Vague also involves a particular relationship

to and awareness of the history of cinema.

This was born out of a peculiar historical situation -

during and before the Second World War, when France
was occupied by German fascists, there was an embargo
on American films. After the liberation and end of the
Vichy era the embargo was lifted and not only current
American films but also those films which were not
released for a decade flooded the Parisian halls. This
simultaneity of a decade or more of American films gave
the French cinephiles a unique insight into history of
American films.

This was also boosted by a major institution - the

Cinematheque Francais or the French national archive
curated by Henri Langlois - whose classification and
opening of the archive to cinephiles gave similar insight
regarding world cinema.

When the critic-turned-filmmakers made their films, they

would constantly refer to the films with an awareness of
the historicity of the cinematic language. Thus, each
filmmaker would - through their quotations and
references - build a personalized canon of films which
would give them an unique identity.
Therefore, the French New Wave filmmakers would
function like advanced critics and readers of cinema
giving birth - after five decades of history of cinema - to
the films of a cinephile generation.

Theoretically, this peculiar way of making films through

references and quotations would give birth to an
intertextual cinema where one text would act like a portal
to a network of other films. Naturally, these engaged
filmmakers would demand a similarly engaged and
cinephilic way of viewing films.

Thus, not only a single film might act as recalling of other

films or genres; even a singular device, e.g. a close-up or
an iris-in, might also consciously recall histories of the
particular devices. In this way, cinematic language
ceased to be a transparent window to reality and turned
into a materiality with its own history. Thus, in French
New Wave films we often have a double-take - a film
would be looking simultaneously looking at both the
social real and the artifice of texts.

Thus, often a director can be identified with his personal

canons of films and filmmakers (identified through their
quotations and references). The Cahiers group -
notorious for their irreverence to senior filmmakers - had
their personal pantheon of respected paternal filmmakers
like Jean Renoir, Jean Rouch, Roberto Rossellini, Robert
Bresson, Jacques Tati, Jean Vigo, Jean-Pierre Mieville,
Ingmar Bergman etc. Thus, in Godard’s films often
cameos by senior filmmakers like Mieville (in Breathless),
Fritz Lang (as himself in Contempt) and Samuel Fuller (as
himself in Pierrot Le Fou) would act as respectful tributes.
The Cahiers group was respectful to many Classical
Hollywood filmmakers, but one can particularly mention
their immense respect and fondness for Orson Welles and
Alfred Hitchcock (with whom Truffaut had a memorable
conversation which was later published as a book).

Another key essay which might be considered as an

prologue to the French New Wave is Francois Truffaut’s
polemical essay titled ‘A Certain Tendency in French
Cinema’. Truffaut was known to be a passionate and
infamously dismissive critic of French cinema (leading to
the barring of his entry to the Cannes Film Festival the
year before he won over the same venue with his first
film). This essay can now be read as a sort of manifesto
to the movement which will follow. It is not directly a
manifesto because it does not envision a possible cinema,
rather it delineates the essayist’s impatience regarding
contemporary French cinema.

These films were often pejoratively called ‘Cinema du

Papa’ (Daddies’ Cinema) or ‘Tradition of Quality’ films by
the cinephiles. Since after the war - among other
infrastructures - the film industries were severely
damaged in Europe, there developed a system of co-
productions among industries of many European
countries. Only thus a certain quality of production could
have been ensured which will generate revenue in more
than one countries. This resulted in a cross-national pool
of technicians but in the cost of national specificities of
films, because often these films would get itself
constricted to lavishly built aristocratic-bourgeois
interiors which might look familiar to audiences of
different nationalities. Truffaut’s critique of these films
can be summarized as the following - keeping in mind
that they desired a cinema where the expressive director
would be supreme

These films are technicians’ films. The films tried to

achieve a set yardstick of cinematography, set-designing,
lighting which were unanimously considered to be
beautiful. Described as ‘glacis de la lumierre’ (cold light),
these look appeared lifeless and inexpressive to the new
cinephiles.

These films were screenwriter’s films. Often, the films

were adapted from recognized literary classics or
bestsellers where the screenwriters only goal is to match
the literary standards of the source materials. Thus, the
artistic goal seemed to be a sort of pre-given and the
purpose of adaptation or interpretation non-existent. The
director merely acts as a translator of the literary
classics. To Truffaut, the literary form of the screenplay
cannot attain the artistic heights of cinematic art, neither
can the literary source claim the quality of the cinematic
product.

On hindsight, one can describe the essay as a strategic

step to delineate a certain vacuum in the contemporary
French scene, that of an expressive personal cinema
where the directorial style and expression would be hold
paramount.

Therefore, when these critics turned into filmmakers

within a few years, there was a deluge of idiosyncratic
and often eccentric films. Francois Truffaut’s first full-
length feature film would therefore dare to attempt
something hitherto not attempted in cinema - an
autobiographical account of the director’s childhood which
also refers to Jean Vigo’s Zero du Conduit. Truffaut’s 400
Blows almost announced the onset of French New Wave,
though historians have traced beginnings to earlier films
by other directors.

Similarly, Jean-luc Godard’s first film was eccentric in an

extreme way, bringing a directorial vision of cinema
almost unseen after the advent of sound cinema.
Breathless was many things simultaneously - a genre film
made in shoestring budget, an essay on cinema which is
also exploring shooting in real locations with available
lighting, a vehicle of the director’s ideas and
contemplations on a number of issues, a tribute to
Hollywood B-movies.

Apart from the critics turned filmmakers of the Cahiers

group, there were also a distinct group of directors -
namely Alain Resnais, Agnes Varda, Jacques Demy, Chris
Marker etc - who were more experienced and
intellectually inclined. The ‘Left Bank’ group, the name
they were often clubbed under, also announced itself
through Resnais’s collaboration with novelist-screenplay
writer Margarit Duras in Hiroshima mon Amour, which
presented a completely different model of
correspondence with literature and cinematic
contemplation.

The French New Wave tacitly exploited the subsidies and

advances issued by the French government for new
filmmakers and presented a mode of production which
was relatively non-conventional. Thus, one filmmaker
might be an actor, writer or assistant to another maker’s
production. Therefore, though the artistic vision would be
firmly ascribed to a single person, the overall making
would present a largely collaborative endeavor. Instead
of hiring studio floors, often a friend’s apartment would
be used. Films would often refer to films made by other
comrade filmmakers, even in the extreme case of
Truffaut referring to Paris nous Appartient, which was still
under production, in his first film.

The French New Wave also rejuvenated cinema by

drawing inspirations from newer sources. When Godard
collaborated with cinematographer Raoul Coutard, the
primary reason was that Coutard was a wartime newsreel
cinematographer, thus having the reflexes and
experience of filming non-fiction quickly under stressful
condition with meager means - a condition which the
filmmaker wished to be in in his first film.

Godard’s infamous myth of shooting without scripts and

New Wave’s legendary methods of improvisation hints at
two different tendencies; while the former attests the
directors zeal towards absolute control - the crew-
members having minimum idea of what is to be shot in
any given schedule, the latter tries to eschew the
rigorous industrial scheduling and planning and not only
emphasizing on spontaneity and liveliness but also a
ready state of mind of the collaborators. There were also
an attempt to stretch the limits of decisiveness and
creativity beyond the production phase, as evident in the
famous use of ‘jump cuts’ in Breathless during the editing
to impart a more suitable rhythm and desperation to the
film.

The term ‘nouvelle vague’ was coined not to describe the

cinematic in particular but to describe an overall new
post-war youth culture in Paris. French New Wave
therefore presented not only a new battalion of
aggressive filmmakers, but also a brand new set of actors
and stars - like Anna Karina, Jeanne Moreau, Jean-Paul
Belmondo, Jean-Pierre Leaud - who brought forth a new
style of cinematic acting and star personas and became
cultural icons of a certain era. But definitely the most
important stars of the movement was the directors,
whose thoroughly personal visions rejuvenated Art
Cinema as the cinema of the ‘Auteurs’ for decades to
come.

While the Italian Neorealism had provided the template

of cinema exploring and re-exploring social realities
hitherto unrepresented or reified, the French New Wave
had been a constant source of inspiration and provider of
methods wherever and whenever an industry has turned
moribund, lacking in ideas and imagination and mired in
rigorous production structures. The New Wave reminds
that cinema must have the ability to articulate concerns
of newer generations of filmmakers while also recalling
forgotten moments in the past when cinema was jubilant
in ideas and executions. Thus, almost all new cinemas till
date has been bearing the legacies of these two
movements in one way or the other.

While French New Wave refreshed cinematic modernism

after the silent avant-gardes of 1920s in its reflexive self-
consciousness and repertoire of devices, critics also finds
postmodernist tendencies in its deliberate mixing of high
and low art, in its simultaneous enthusiasm regarding
pop art on one hand and novelistic contemplation on the
other. But the main achievement of French New Wave is
its ability to expand the scope and devices of cinema
beyond the culturally decided at any moment along with
keeping its means cheaper and meager.