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French Cinema: Making Waves
Taught by Maurizio Giammarco, Ph.D., Intellectual Heritage Program, Temple University
One of the most fascinating of all cinematic movements, the French New Wave, refers to the iconoclastic spirit of a group of filmmakers who, between 1958 and 1964, produced a distinctive body of work that departed from the conventions of traditional French cinema in its treatment of narrative, visual style, and editing.
These innovators had influences ranging from Italian neo-realism, to French masters Jean Renoir and Jean Vigo, to such Hollywood directors as Charlie Chaplin, Orson Welles, and Alfred Hitchcock. In their work, nouvelle vague filmmakers like François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Chabrol, Jacques Rivette, and Eric Rohmer paid homage to, as well as subverted, familiar genres to create a new mode of cinematic expression.
Toward this end, they utilized new lightweight cameras which enabled them to shoot in the streets rather than in studios, used long takes as well as rapid changes of scene, scripted looselyconstructed scenarios, and encouraged actors to improvise their lines. These things were done in an effort to explore not only the social and political upheavals of their era, but to remind audiences that they were indeed watching a film.
À bout de souffle (Breathless) (1960)
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