The group of film critics who became filmmakers around 1959 and created the French New Wave, including Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, Eric Rohmer, and Claude Chabrol, were driven by two complementary impulses: a desire to capture the bustle and vitality of modern urban life with documentary-like immediacy, and a desire to revitalize cinema as a form of idiosyncratic personal expression. Thanks to countless hours of watching movies at the Cinémathèque Française in the postwar 1940s and the 1950s, they were steeped in the riches of film history. Yet they felt that recent cinema had grown stale, tamely mimicking more established art forms like theater and literature.    

When they started making films, they forged a distinctly modern, cinematically inventive style. Making films that were both deeply personal and aesthetically rebellious, they created a cinematic revolution that was perfectly in synch with the times, helping to spawn numerous other "new waves" throughout the 1960s including Brazil's Cinema Novo and the Czech Rebellion.

As fresh and timely as the French New Wave films were, many have also stood the test of time to become enduring classics. This series includes sixteen key works, in celebration of the New Wave's unofficial 50th anniversary. While 1959 is generally regarded as the watershed year for the French New Wave, the year of Truffaut's The 400 Blows and Godard's Breathless, there were important precursors, including Jean-Pierre Melville's Bob Le Flambeur and Roger Vadim's And God Created Woman... which are included in this series, as well as key works by Agnes Varda, who has recently been getting the recognition she deserves as one of the key directors of the movement.

All films are shown in 35mm prints, many in recently restored versions. Presented at the Museum of Arts and Design, Manhattan. Organized by David Schwartz, Chief Curator, Museum of the Moving Image.

Featured Works:

And God Created Woman (Roger Vadim, 1956); Bob le flambeur (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1956); The 400 Blows (François Truffaut, 1959); Breathless (Jean-Luc Godard, 1960); Les Bonnes femmes (Claude Chabrol, 1960); A Woman is a Woman (Jean-Luc Godard, 1961); Last Year at Marienbad (Alain Resnais, 1961); Cleo From 5 to 7 (Agnès Varda, 1962); Jules and Jim (François Truffaut, 1962); Vivre sa vie (Jean-Luc Godard, 1962); The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (Jacques Demy, 1964); Alphaville (Jean-Luc Godard, 1965); Le Bonheur (Agnès Varda, 1965); Pierrot le fou (Jean-Luc Godard, 1965, pictured); La Collectionneuse (Éric Rohmer, 1967); My Night at Maud's (Éric Rohmer, 1969)  

Program information:

French New Wave Essentials