As the French New Wave started to shake off traditional rules, people shifted to art and film as a fresh medium. Artists are looking for different perspectives amid all this massive change. Nowadays, the internet is where we explore all sorts of views. When film schools become a place for recognition, we can create art in written or visual forms.
Platforms like YouTube, WordPress, Instagram, and Facebook have become new media spaces for all kinds of arts and crafts. However, has this kind of change happened before? When discussing new mediums and movements, we only sometimes think of the French New Wave or La Nouvelle Vague, which started in the late 1950s as a response to traditional cinema.
The French New Wave took a fresh approach with modern tweaks in editing, visuals, style, storytelling, and concepts. Without hands or strict policies, it used satire, meta-narratives, and existential refrains while abandoning the ways of history. It sometimes turned from a particular framework of openings, disputes, and resolves.
Multiple separate films today are charmed by this action. Quentin Tarantino and Martin Scorsese are two filmmakers that the New Wave controlled. From an arthouse’s point of view, this approach has affected the constitution anecdotes, the aspect ratio utilized in films, and, invariantly, the mumblecore genre. The New Wave’s priority has immensely moved the independent film topography on ingenuity, the conversion of definitive works into one-of-a-kind possibilities, and the divagation from orthodox call instruments.
The French New Wave was started by a group of young filmmakers who felt that their rejection of traditional methods was a response to the film industry’s industriousness of the time. They were excited about a new future, mediums, and contemporary art. The New Wave formed underneath and revolutionized the French film background, precisely though France evolved as the hub of this cinematic course.
The mark of these immature filmmakers extended outside France to additional facets of Europe. Fads like the Japanese New Wave, Iranian New Wave, Dogme 95, American New Wave, and Paradox Cinema have all been obeyed. This modification taught a fresh narrative type with rare actors and common finances and instantly earned favor. Tarantino often says you do not need to go to film school; just grab a camera and start making movies.
Though the French New Wave is often described as raw, illogical, and full of contrasts, it truly represents a regeneration of all mediums. It is not just about experimenting with expression and production; it is a refresh of the art world. This generational shift in French cinema took off after the war.
From a political and economic standpoint, young filmmakers like Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut have indirectly stolen opportunities. They hold onto old traditions while embracing cinema as a universal art form.
In August 1957, L’Express magazine ran a nationwide survey about audience characteristics. Using the national census data of over eight million people in France, they gathered opinions on everyday culture. Most respondents admitted they were bored by the massive government promotions. The government painted a flat, raw, and irregular picture of French society that seemed to idolize the past.
This iconoclasm sparked a contemporary culture, leading to much writing about cultural change and appreciation.
What, then, are they testing to unfasten? The French New Wave was strenuously coaxed by the post-war habitat and the regime’s comeback to the position quo. Tangled in pattern, people divined the French film, unlike interchanges. As a result, there were periodic cases for resurgence, mainly for refreshed, visionary mouthpieces. They often had to start as senior assistants to break into the film world. The more “subordinate” they were, the more influence they had on the final product.
Nevertheless, young people seldom even “debate” over anything. Their thoughts are negative, foolish, and fighting, often raising the industry’s and producers’ draw in older filmmakers. The auteur picture—where directors have whole dominion over their films—is the lodestar of this relation. However, this constraint might give their creation a lax and individualized personality. The hypothesis of auteurism provoked an avoidance of ancestral creative forms.
For instance, François Truffaut, an everyday filmmaker, obtained economic backing from his in-laws. He made a short film called The Mischief Makers in 1957. After it received positive reviews at the Cannes Film Festival, Truffaut gained the confidence to make The 400 Blows, drawing from his life experiences. This film reflects his unhappy childhood.
Truffaut poured many details from his childhood into the script, and he collaborated long-term with an amateur actor named Jean-Pierre Léaud, much like Godard and Karina or Scorsese and De Niro. Like everyday vlogs, this film unfolds on the streets of Paris, where people watch the crew with curious stares.
Even though the French film industry was starting to lose dominance as the new wave took off, it is fair to say that these films had their unique vibe. The three-act structure of traditional theater was still there but modified to create something new. Many classical literary references were woven in. Godard’s Pierrot le Fou even inspired Shinichirō Watanabe.
Similarly, the ratio shifts in Xavier Dolan’s Mommy were inspired by Truffaut’s Jules and Jim. This new wave flooded the French film industry and Hollywood, where Orson Welles framed characters in a way that simultaneously built subplots and intertextuality.
Whether people call Elvis Presley the father of rock ‘n’ roll or James Dean and Clark Gable the gods of cinema, we can’t forget about Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg as icons of the older New Wave generation. Even though they are considered old, they have passed the torch to a new generation of icons. This shift became noticeable in the 1960s, during the heyday of classic Hollywood, often called the Golden Age of Hollywood.
These young filmmakers started their film education by watching hundreds of movies and jotting down their thoughts. While discussing the formation of this new movement, they inadvertently sparked debates about films and literature. They questioned whether movies could be considered pure literary works, like those of Victor Hugo or Shakespeare. While they focused on creating a vision rooted in the idea of auteurism—taking inspiration from the word “author”—they consistently produced films with a similar visual style and themes.
Remarkably, their originality seems timeless. They unintentionally stirred the Cannes Film Festival and further film festivals.
The French New Wave merged literature and art to construct untried opportunities for the film corporation by forsaking confirmed techniques. Shakespeare is a notable academic person like Jean-Luc Godard to the New Wave. But Godard’s usage of the film was wider than dramatizing his own affairs. Rather, he used oral and optical components better akin to an article to share his reflections. To place it another way, he was the model of “show it; do not tell.”
In addition to picking favored beats, publicity, and films, Godard’s visions are meshed with pop culture and millions of allusions. Decoying particularly from Truffaut’s beliefs, he sketches the tale of a criminal risking to dodge the police in Breathless. Godard invariably bore an explicit procedure without driving his senses straightforwardly. Alongside his comrades, he produced images from the accounts of myriad highbrows, uniting spontaneity and formalization.
He would hit the streets and write briefly about what was happening in his films. It would not be wrong to say that Godard loved storytelling and breaking the fourth wall. He enjoyed improvisation and preferred to dive straight into the action rather than think about it too much beforehand. By the time he submitted proposals to producers for funding, Godard’s films were among the cheapest to make within French cinema in the 1950s.
As graduates of Cahiers du Cinéma have materialized as contemporary French film legends, youthful filmmakers have tempted curiosity from onlookers worldwide. They withstood routine and exemplified that movies could be more than sheer joy. This phenomenal act removed the media’s awareness of the action. While the debates about the new waves have ebbed and flowed alongside the changes, they have never fully disappeared.
Modern films are shaking up culture in a way that creates a paradox between what a movie is and its role in introducing artistic ideas. This phenomenon impacts all fields. Directors should not feel restricted by market or producer demands when expressing themselves. This wave of change opens up new possibilities in terms of space and time. Just like literature, cinema offers a universal perspective from the creator’s point of view.
References
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- Sarris, A. (1962). Notes on the Auteur Theory in 1962. Film Quarterly, 16(1), 5-8.
- Thompson, K. (2013). Storytelling in the New Wave: The Aesthetics of the French New Wave. In Film Theory: An Introduction through the Senses (pp. 171-196). Routledge.
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