La Nouvelle Vague
The death of Jean-Luc Godard last month set off une vague d’hommages* for the revolutionary French film maker, often referred to as the godfather of New Wave cinema.
Godard, along with a clutch of other directors, turned cinema on its head in the 60s. A famous quote by Godard encapsulates their approach:
"Toute histoire doit avoir un début, un milieu et une fin mais pas forcément dans cet ordre-là."
“Every story must have a beginning, a middle and an end, though not necessarily in that order.”
So what is La Nouvelle Vague* anyway? Read on…
La Nouvelle Vague is a cinematic movement of the late 1950s and early 1960s which sought to casser les règles* of traditional film-making.
Frustrated with the constraints of la Tradition de qualité* style, which they felt was designed to ‘impress rather than express’, a small group including Godard, François Truffaut, Agnès Varda, Éric Rohmer, Jacques Demy and Claude Chabrol set about revolutionising the art form.
These Parisian writers and critics, possibly the original film geeks, put their money where their mouths were by directing their own films in the style they championed.
La Nouvelle Vague attempted to allow directors to express their ideas and emotions as freely as other artists, such as a painters or writers. Rather than the sanitised version of reality presented by traditional studio films, New Wave films showed the grit and realism of the streets of Paris and allowed their directors to examine social and political issues in ground-breaking ways.
*a wave of tributes | *New Wave | *break the rules | *Tradition of quality
La Nouvelle Vague was the birthplace of modern day independent cinema, and many of today’s directors such as Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Quentin Tarantino and Wes Anderson owe much to its style. As Scorsese said “The French New Wave has influenced all filmmakers who have worked since, whether they saw the films or not. It submerged cinema like a tidal wave”.
New Wave classics include:
Les Quatre Cent Coups (François Truffaut)
Lola (Jacques Démy)
À Bout de Souffle (Jean-Luc Godard)
Cléo de 5 à 7 (Agnès Varda)
Le genou de Claire (Éric Rohmer)
Jules et Jim (François Truffaut)
Le Mépris (Jean-Luc Godard)
Definitely worth checking out.
