Film Reader:
French New Wave

Sociological term “New Wave” was first used in France in the late 1950s to define the generation born during World War II or shortly after. The original meaning of the phrase was soon abandoned and remained only for the incoming generation of filmmakers. French New Wave is included in all history textbooks. What made this cinematic movement so exceptional? Did it really drive audiences out of cinemas as it was long believed? Why did Jean-Luc Godard start as a documentarist? And was Jean-Paul Belmondo meant to be an exclusive protagonist of intellectual authorial quirks? The section will introduce famous movies, such as The 400 Blows or Breathless, as well as a wide range of shorts and debuts by Truffaut, Varda, Rivette, or Rohmer, and present works of Alexandre Astruc or some lesser-known key film personalities of that time (Rozier, Gilles, Doniol-Valcroze).