French New Wave

You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in Polish. (10 2023) Click [show] for important translation instructions. View a machine-translated version of the Polish article. Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Consider adding a topic to this template: there are already 303 articles in the main category, and specifying|topic= will aid in categorization. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing Polish Wikipedia article at [[:pl:Nowa Fala (kino francuskie)]]; see its history for attribution. You may also add the template {{Translated|pl|Nowa Fala (kino francuskie)}} to the talk page. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

French New Wave

"Three by Truffaut" poster for the US re-release of French New Wave films The 400 Blows, Shoot the Piano Player and Jules and Jim.
Years active	1958 to late 1960s
Location	France
Major figures	Jean-Luc Godard, Alain Resnais, Agnès Varda, André Bazin, Jacques Demy, François Truffaut, Éric Rohmer, Claude Chabrol, Jacques Rivette[1]
Influences	Italian neorealism, film noir,[2] classical Hollywood cinema,[2] poetic realism, auteur theory, Parisian cinephile culture, existentialism, Alfred Hitchcock, Art film, New Left, Bertolt Brecht
Influenced	Japanese New Wave, L.A. Rebellion, New Hollywood, New German Cinema, Cinema Novo, Dogme 95, British New Wave, Yugoslav Black Wave, New Sincerity, Mumblecore

The New Wave (French: Nouvelle Vague, French pronunciation: [nuvɛl vaɡ]), also called the French New Wave, is a French art film movement that emerged in the late 1950s. The movement was characterized by its rejection of traditional filmmaking conventions in favor of experimentation and a spirit of iconoclasm. New Wave filmmakers explored new approaches to editing, visual style, and narrative, as well as engagement with the social and political upheavals of the era, often making use of irony or exploring existential themes. The New Wave is often considered one of the most influential movements in the history of cinema.

The term was first used by a group of French film critics and cinephiles associated with the magazine Cahiers du cinéma in the late 1950s and 1960s. These critics rejected the Tradition de qualité ("Tradition of Quality") of mainstream French cinema,^[3] which emphasized craft over innovation and old works over experimentation.^[4] This was apparent in a manifesto-like 1954 essay by François Truffaut, Une certaine tendance du cinéma français, where he denounced the adaptation of safe literary works into unimaginative films.^[5] Along with Truffaut, a number of writers for Cahiers du cinéma became leading New Wave filmmakers, including Jean-Luc Godard, Éric Rohmer, Jacques Rivette, and Claude Chabrol. The associated Left Bank film community included directors such as Alain Resnais, Agnès Varda, Jacques Demy and Chris Marker.

Using portable equipment and requiring little or no set up time, the New Wave way of filmmaking often presented a documentary style. The films exhibited direct sounds on film stock that required less light. Filming techniques included fragmented, discontinuous editing, and long takes. The combination of realism, subjectivity, and authorial commentary created a narrative ambiguity in the sense that questions that arise in a film are not answered in the end.^[6]

Although naturally associated with Francophone countries, the movement has had a continual influence within various other cinephile cultures over the past several decades inside of many other nations. The United Kingdom and the United States, both of them being primarily English-speaking, are of note. "Kitchen sink realism" as an artistic approach intellectually challenging social conventions and traditions in the U.K. is an example, as are some elements of the "new sincerity" subculture within the U.S. that involve deliberately defying certain critical expectations in filmmaking.