What is a New Wave?

1. What is a New Wave? • The term ‘New Wave’ exists across different a range of forms. There are new waves in painting, music, fashion, literature and theatre as well as film • New waves are cyclical; often becoming conventional and part of the mainstream, so eventually in turn challenged by a new style

2. New waves, which appear at different times and places and in different artistic contexts, are always about criticising what has gone before and trying to create a new form to replace it • Therefore these movements tend to be associated with youth, experimentation and the rejection of the values of a previous era which is often perceived as boring and conventional • It is for this reason that new waves are often controversial, as they are (or are perceived to be) an attack on traditional forms and values

3. The French New Wave • The filmmakers of the French New Wave have influenced cinema in two ways: - as critics of the film journal Cahiers du Cinema they developed the auteur theory - as film directors they challenged the established conventions of filmmaking in form, content and institutional practice

4. The French New Wave • The filmmakers of the French New Wave have influenced cinema in two ways: - as critics of the film journal Cahiers du Cinema they developed the auteur theory - as film directors they challenged the established conventions of filmmaking in form, content and institutional practice

5. Authorship Theory • The key directors of the French New Wave - Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, Claude Chabrol, Eric Rohmer - had been film critics for the French cinema magazine Cahiers du Cinema • This was the first film journal to treat cinema as an art form and to discuss it in an academic way

6. In the early 1950s, this group of critics developed an argument through a long series of articles which became known as ‘la politique des auteurs’ (auteur policy) • Taken up by American critics in the 1960s these ideas became known as the auteur theory or authorship theory

7. This is problematic, as it suggests that the Cahiers critics were putting forward a theory which would explain the way existing cinema should be interpreted - and this is often how it is used now • Auteur theory was originally developed as a policy - a statement of intent - in this attack on the French cinema of the time, but more importantly a statement of intent about what film should be like

8. POLEMIC: • A polemic is a subjective, passionate and strongly worded argument usually against an individual, a group or an idea • It is often very controversial and political, challenging established conventions • It is useful to think of ‘la politque desauteurs’ as a polemical argument specifically about the present and future of French cinema which was translated into a theory about cinema in general

9. In their writings the critics argued that film was primarily a visual medium rather than a literary one and that the director was the author of a film in the same way as a writer is the author of a novel • In one influential essay ‘Le Camera Stylo’ (‘The Camera Writers’) (1945), Alexander Astruc argued that the film director ‘writes’ a film with the camera as if he was an artist with a paintbrush

10. Rather than film language being used for the adaptation of a script, it should be the visual language which is most important • Therefore, the director is the true auteur of a film because the visual language is the language of the cinema; the script is the literary, a different language entirely

11. New Waves and Oppositions • An influential way of defining any New Wave cinema has been in terms of oppositions • This is similar type of categorisation to that found in narrative theory, based on the assumption that new waves are in opposition to the mainstream form against which they are defined

12. French New Wave as Oppositional Form • The French New Wave is defined as such because of its attack on the previous generation of filmmakers who dominated French cinema • One of the most influential directors of the New Wave, Jean-Luc Godard, is quoted addressing a group of writers and directors of the French cinema in the 1950s: “Your camera movements are bad … you no longer know what cinema is.”

13. There is a declaration about what cinema should be in the future and how it will be different from the present and the past • In this case, the ‘old’ cinema was referred to by the New Wave filmmakers as the ‘tradition of quality’ or the ‘CinemaduPapa’

14. Characteristics of the French New Wave • Films shot on location, rather than studio-based • Natural lighting • Handheld camera • Experimentation with sound • Linking devices • Uneven tone • Limited emphasis on cause and effect

15. Before looking in detail at the effects of discontinuities of narrative (limited cause and effect) and editing, it is useful to remind ourselves of what is meant by continuity in narrative and editing.

16. In studying any New Wave or mainstream cinema, it is important t remember that narrative structure and editing are very closely linked.Narrative may be defined as the recounting of a series of fictional events which are linked in time and space.

17. Features of classic narrative • Events are organised in a cause-and-effect relationship and progress towards an inevitable conclusion • There is emphasis on identification with character • There is a high degree of closure (resolution) In narrative films it is by linking together shots and scenes through editing that the moving forward of narrative takes place

18. Continuity editing • Cutting breaks a scene into fragments; continuity editing creates unity of time and space from those fragments • Editing imitates the space of Renaissance painting, creating an illusion of depth on a flat screen • Continuity editing aims to create coherence and orientate the viewer - it always positions the spectator on the same side of the action (known - from the theatre - as the fourth wall) • Continuity editing also creates dramatic focus, tempo and mood

19. The French New Wave is self-reflexive cinema - films about the process of filmmaking more than about a particular story.As far as New Wave filmmakers were concerned, mainstream cinema’s reliance on unobtrusive techniques led to a denial of film itself; the audience forgot that they were watching a film.

20. New Wave Cinema and New Technology Some of the aspects of film form derided by the French New Wave in the Cinema duPapa were a product of the limitations of the existing technology: sound cameras were heavy and difficult to move; studio shooting needed artificial lighting, which often looked unrealistic and lifeless

21. In the late 1950s the handheld camera was developed, which allowed filmmakers a greater freedom to film outside of the studio; to take cinema to the streets.

22. This development changed not only the look of films but also the institutional structure; films could be made independently, outside of the studios and for much less money, helping to make filmmaking a little more democratic.