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The French New Wave (La Nouvelle Vague) was developed in the late 1950s and carried on through the 1960s. The first major cornerstone of the New Wave was Alexandre Astruc’s article, “The Birth of a New Avant-Garde: The Camera-Stylo[1]”, published in L’Écran in 1948. The magazine Cahiers du cinema continued to develop Astruc’s ideas through the writings of numerous influential film critics, many of whom would later become famed New Wave film directors, including François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, and Éric Rohmer. Another cornerstone of the New Wave was Truffaut’s 1954 article for Cahiers du cinema, “Une Certaine Tendance du Cinéma Français” (“A Certain Trend of French Cinema”) in which he openly criticized the French film industry and called out by name those he did not feel capable of carrying the industry forward.[2]

The New Wave would not have been possible without the auteur theory,[3] developed in the late 1940s. It identified the director as the major creative force in the filmmaking process – a film’s “author.”[4] It encouraged individualism and a break from the traditional practices of the past. This gave permission for the New Wave’s exploration of new techniques and themes. New Wave films were characterized by their frequent use of hand-held cameras, natural lighting, location filming, long takes, and jump cuts[5] and were produced on very limited budgets by small, independent companies, not the established film studios.

The New Wave was in direct opposition to the Tradition de Qualité (“Tradition of Quality”) that had guided French cinema to that point, with its emphasis on technique and traditional storytelling. Still, in that name is the acknowledgement that many admirable works preceded the New Wave, in what we’re calling the Old Wave.[6] Films from this period were directed by G.W. Pabst, Alexander Korda, Jean Cocteau, René Clair, and Luis Buñuel and featured performances from Conrad Veidt, Maurice Chevalier, Jacques Tati, Brigitte Bardot, and  Louis Jourdan.

In his two-volume work aptly titled French Cinema: A Critical Filmography, Colin Crisp provides a list of the best of French cinema from the introduction of sound through to the start of the New Wave (1930–1958). According to Crisp, each of the selected films satisfies at least two of the following criteria:

• The film has survived in a viewable form (a large percentage have not, especially from the early 1930s).
• The film is widely recognized as significant to the development of French cinema, because it was innovative, because of the personnel involved, or because of the popularity of the genre that it represents.
• The film can be seen as representative of certain typical themes, techniques, or procedures common to many other films of the period, or that distinguish it from other films of the period.
• The film has been the subject of debate and contention within the nation or the critical community.

In Crisp’s filmography, these 208 films represent the best of traditional French cinema. They are presented chronologically, rather than ranked, allowing each to be judged on its own merits. Each entry is accompanied by a critical review of the film, its contemporary context, and its ultimate impact on French cinema. And, as always, each is identified within the EIDR Content ID registry with links to third-party sources where more information about the works can be found.

[1] Camera-Stylo = Camera-Pen, the idea that filmmaking is a language written in light using film as the paper and the camera as the pen.

[2] It may be no surprise that Truffaut was the only major French film critic not invited to the 1958 Cannes Film Festival.

[3] Developed in France as La politique des auteurs (“The policy of authors”) by Alexandre Astruc, André Bazin, and Henri Langlois, but re-named the auteur theory by the American film critic Andrew Sarris.

[4] French directors no longer take the “directeur” credit, which now connotes a technician who does not work creatively, preferring instead “réalisateur,” which signifies the director-as-auteur with “both understanding and making that understanding fact.”

[5] The later Dogme 95 movement can trace its roots directly back to the French New Wave.

[6] If it’s the time before the New Wave, then it must be the Old Wave.

The Best of Traditional French Cinema