French New Wave Essays

The French New Wave was a film movement in the 1950’ and 60’s that consisted of an explosion of new film techniques, values, and styles that became a defining moment of cinematic innovation that’s impact is still present in the modern film industry. An influx of new, young directors sought to narratively, ideologically and stylistically veer off from the dominant, traditional mainstream cinema production standards and redefine the French film industry. The movement didn’t happen overnight and its

7.0 ANALYSIS OF TWO FRENCH NEW WAVE FILMS 7.1 A BOUT DE SOUFFLÉ - 1960 This classic film was directed by famous French New Wave filmmaker, Jean-Luc Godard in 1960, this is one of the film which most impudent debuts in film record. The storyline is regarding a young criminal Michel who steals a car in Marseille and murdered a policeman rashly. He has been wanted by the authorities, but he mats a hip American journalist student in the capital. The girl agrees to help to hide him after he tried to persuade

France saw the birth a new and unique form of moviemaking. This movement was famously known as the French New Wave and was developed by many different directors, critics and film students. Films found in the New Wave many communities that tie them together. Although a very famous New Wave film that came out near the end of the cycle, La Jetee (1962), broke away from many of the common tropes. The 400 Blows (1959) on the other hand was one of the first examples of a New Wave film, meaning that it followed

Auteur Filmmaker The French New Wave, a sensational shift that marked the history of cinema in the late 1950s and early 1960s, has engendered an array of film theories as well as criticism. Despite its ambiguity as a coherent movement, the New Wave films “share connections, a common essence which is nothing less than their notion of mise-en-scène, or a filmic écriture, based on share principles…One recognizes a nouvelle vague film by its style.” In a nutshell, the New Wave films are characterized

Director François Truffaut outdid himself in his debut film The 400 Blows. Receiving numerous nominations and awards, The 400 Blows tells the story of young boy, Antoine Doinel, and his escapades in the city of Paris. Living in a home with unsupportive parents, Antoine tries to avoid the tense household by being adventurous with his best friend René. Throughout the movie, Antoine is filmed rebelling against his parents and trying to cope with his apparent neglect from his parents. Truffaut channels

can be agitating and chaotic, jump cuts helped to amplify the uncertainty of these scenes more effectively than any other technique would have been able. The jump cut started during the late 1950s to the early 1960s — during the time of the French New Wave. According to Looking at Movies, the jump cut “presents an

The 400 Blows is a famous French New Wave Style film directed by François Truffaut in 1959. Inspired by his own childhood experience, Truffaut depicts a misunderstood and troubled adolescent, Antoine Doinel, who shares the same childhood experience with Truffaut and is viewed as a troublemaker by his parents and teachers. Antoine is always bullied and oppressed by authorities(parents, teachers, and state officials). Being an unwanted child in his home and unpopular student in school, he is unhappy

Montage is deemed to be a French transliteration of montage. It was originated from a French architectural term, and after being borrowed to apply on the clips and combination of films. In brief, montage is according to the content of the film wants to convey, and the audience 's psychological order, shoot a film respectively to be many clips, and then combine the clips in accordance with the original conception. The rise of the Soviet montage originated in 1924. In the Soviet Union in the 20th

In this essay I aim to analyse Ingmar Bergman’s ‘Persona’ (1966) which tells the story of a star who stopped speaking, her nurse and identity to examine how form, how the film is put together and meaning, are integral to the film. Reflexivity in film is distinguished as a film that is self-aware. A film that is aware of the process that has been taken to produce a film, the illusion that is usually created in main stream cinema is not present instead the audience are made aware that the film is

Wong Lok Yi 14206900 Auteur Theory and Wong Kar-Wai’s Films Auteur theory emerged in France in the late 1940s from the theory suggested by two French film critics, who are André Bazin and Alexandre Astruc. After that, it was advocated by a film director called Francois Truffaut in 1954. 1 He suggests that a good director exert a unique style or promotes such a consonant film theme that his or her influence is unmistakable in the body of his or her work. In 1962, Andrew Sarris, an American film

originated from French after Andre Bazin wrote an article in a French magazine called “Cashier du Cinema” (Cinema Notes), article entitled “On the Auteur Theory” (A Nose of Film, 2012). According to that article, the term auteur is means the director who can convey life through their film and that represented what they see and their personality (A Nose of Film, 2012). Then in 1954, Francois Truffaut wrote an article titled “Une Certain Tendance du Cinema Francais” (A Certain Tendency of French Cinema)

Aristotle once said, “The worst form of inequality, is trying to make unequal things equal.” A major example of this concept of inequality displays itself through humans. Although people may seem similar and equal, each personality and talent differs from one another. Now one might wonder what it would be like if every single person were truly equal. This theme is developed in the short story “Harrison Bergeron” by Kurt Vonnegut, and also in the film 2081 directed by Chandler Tuttle. Tuttle’s film

useful as historical evidence. The cultural and political changes of the 1960s brought the United States closer to social revolution than at any other time in the twentieth century. Simultaneously, the American cinema went through a radical change. A new ratings system replaced the Production code and the studios system fell, giving rise to runaway

In the New Deal era, the attitude of many New York modernist intellectuals toward Hollywood was certainly ambiguous and largely unscathed by what Andreas Huyssen has called the contemporary “anxiety of contamination” between “high and low,” mass culture and

Les 400 Coups by François Truffaut displays personal cinema by sharing his own thoughts through the eyes of Antoine. As stated in the lecture video, cinema was a way for Truffaut to escape from his unhappy home life. His unfortunate home life is shown through the perspective of Antoine to display how Truffaut may have felt when he was a child. François Truffaut makes the audience feel sympathy and a sense of understanding for Antoine's predicament through the use of realistic and noteworthy sets

“Mise-en-scene” is a French expression that was originally a theatrical term that refers to “staging” (Thompson & Bordwell 1999). When this term was transferred to film production, its practices involved the framing of the shots (Hayward 2000). According to Karam (2001), Mise-en-scene involves a choreographed set of visual elements that correspond to a set of ideas. Mise-en-scene involves the use of multiple elements that are used in a scene to create a certain mood or to influence the audience’s

“If I made Cinderella, the audience would immediately be looking for a body in the coach.(Hitchcock).” An Auteur has full control over the movie and puts some of themselves into each movie they make. Francois Truffaut and Alfred Hitchcock were masters of this. Truffaut with his 400 Blows and Hitchcock with his Psycho. There is one very famous scene in 400 Blows that Truffaut made that was very different for his time. It is the last sequence of the movie. Jean escapes juvenile hall and we are led

Cinematographic thinking starts at the iconic stage, but is by no means the totality or the fullness of it all. Pearce’s categorization of signs defined the iconic stage as that of perceived resemblance. Though Bazin would go to extremes to qualify cinema as a medium in which there is perfect and exact corellation between what is represented and its representation in film, it is important to note that every medium is characterized by some level of abstraction. Cinematrographic specificity should

Cassavetes’s first film, Shadow, will be compared to his fourth film, Faces, to see development in Cassavetes’s approach in performance of character. Shadow is a film about interracial relations between African-American and white Americans in 1950’s New York, starring Ben Carruthers as Ben, Lelia Goldoni as Lelia and Hugh Hurd as Hugh, the only dark-skinned among three siblings. The film directed by John Cassavetes

provide the audience with initial information they need to understand the rest of the story. Without this prologue the audience would spend majority of the film trying to fill in the missing pieces of the story. In Romeo and Juliet the prologue is the news presenter’s presentation followed by a montage of events of