The French New Wave

Critics from the Cahiers du cinéma, who had never shot a film, went behind the camera at the end of the fifties and did what the studios forbade: shooting in the street with a handheld camera, direct sound, unknown actors, tiny budgets, deliberately jarring cuts. Truffaut films a runaway adolescent loose in a winter Paris, Godard lets a small-time crook speak to the camera, Varda follows a singer for ninety minutes that last exactly the length of the film. Freedom of production made the style.

works 8

• CinemaElevator to the GallowsAscenseur pour l'échafaudLouis Malle · 1958A perfect murder goes awry when its perpetrator is stuck for a whole night in a lift.Cinema
• CinemaLe Beau SergeClaude Chabrol · 1958A young man who has returned to the village tries to wrest the companion of his youth from alcohol.Cinema
• CinemaThe 400 BlowsLes Quatre Cents CoupsFrançois Truffaut · 1959A boy from Paris, unloved at home and punished at school, gradually sinks into lying.Cinema
• CinemaHiroshima mon amourAlain Resnais · 1959A Frenchwoman and a Japanese man love each other for the space of one night, and the city awakens a buried memory.Cinema
• CinemaBreathlessÀ bout de souffleJean-Luc Godard · 1960A small-time crook on the run and an American student, a few days in Paris.Cinema
• CinemaParis Belongs to UsParis nous appartientJacques Rivette · 1961A Parisian student investigates a suspicious death and a conspiracy of which no one knows whether it exists.Cinema
• CinemaCléo from 5 to 7Cléo de 5 à 7Agnès Varda · 1962A singer wanders through Paris while waiting for the result of a medical examination.Cinema
• CinemaMy Night at Maud'sMa nuit chez MaudÉric Rohmer · 1969A night of conversation, under the snow, between a Catholic engineer and a divorced woman.Cinema