There was cinema before the French New Wave, and there was cinema after. The explosion of creative innovation that emanated from France in the late 1950s and early ’60s forever altered the course of film history by opening up new avenues of stylistic experimentation and trumpeting the concept of the “auteur” director, whose aesthetic vision and thematic obsessions took center stage. Led by a coterie of passionate film critics and cinephiles who took up cameras—including the radical Jean-Luc Godard (BREATHLESS, PIERROT LE FOU), the romantic François Truffaut (THE 400 BLOWS, JULES AND JIM), the restless Agnès Varda (CLÉO FROM 5 TO 7, LE BONHEUR), the experimental Jacques Rivette (PARIS BELONGS TO US, CELINE AND JULIE GO BOATING), the modernist Alain Resnais (HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR), and the classicist Eric Rohmer (MY NIGHT AT MAUD’S, CLAIRE’S KNEE)—the French New Wave inspired filmmakers around the world by liberating cinema from commercial demands and reclaiming it in the name of unfettered personal expression.
In this program created in 2021 from archival interviews, directors Jean-Pierre Melville, Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, Louis Malle, Claude Chabrol, Jacques Demy, and Agnès Varda discuss their work.
Directed by Agnès Varda • 1955 • France
Starring Silvia Monfort, Philippe Noiret
The great Agnès Varda’s film career began with this graceful, penetrating study of a marriage on the rocks, set against the backdrop of a small Mediterranean fishing village. Both a stylized depiction of the complic...
Directed by Louis Malle • 1958 • France
Starring Jeanne Moreau, Maurice Ronet, Georges Poujouly
For his feature debut, twenty-four-year-old Louis Malle brought together a mesmerizing performance by Jeanne Moreau, evocative cinematography by Henri Decaë, and a now legendary jazz score by Miles Da...
Directed by Claude Chabrol • 1958 • France
Starring Jean‑Claude Brialy, Gérard Blain
Of the hallowed group of “Cahiers du cinéma” critics turned filmmakers who transformed French film history, Claude Chabrol was the first to direct his own feature. His absorbing landmark debut, LE BEAU SERGE (“H...
Directed by Louis Malle • 1958 • France
Starring Jeanne Moreau, Jean-Marc Bory
Louis Malle unveiled the natural beauty of Jeanne Moreau in his breakthrough, ELEVATOR TO THE GALLOWS. With his follow-up, the scandalous smash THE LOVERS (LES AMANTS), he made her a star once and for all. A deeply fe...
Directed by François Truffaut • 1959 • France
Starring Jean-Pierre Léaud, Claire Maurier, Albert Rémy
François Truffaut’s first feature is also his most personal. Told through the eyes of Truffaut’s cinematic counterpart, Antoine Doinel (Jean-Pierre Léaud), THE 400 BLOWS sensitively re-creates t...
Directed by Alain Resnais • 1959 • France, Japan
Starring Emmanuelle Riva, Eiji Okada
A cornerstone of the French New Wave, the first feature from Alain Resnais is one of the most influential films of all time. A French actress (Emmanuelle Riva) and a Japanese architect (Eiji Okada) engage in a ...
Directed by Claude Chabrol • 1959 • France
Starring Jean-Claude Brialy, Gérard Blain
In LES COUSINS (“The Cousins”), Claude Chabrol crafts a sly moral fable about a provincial boy who comes to live with his sophisticated bohemian cousin in Paris. Through these seeming opposites, Chabrol conjures...
Directed by Jean-Luc Godard • France • 1960
Starring Jean-Paul Belmondo, Jean Seberg, Daniel Boulanger
There was before BREATHLESS, and there was after BREATHLESS. Jean-Luc Godard burst onto the film scene in 1960 with this jazzy, free-form, and sexy homage to the American film genres that inspi...
Directed by François Truffaut • 1960 • France
Starring Charles Aznavour, Marie Dubois, Nicole Berger
François Truffaut is drunk on the possibilities of cinema in this, his most playful film. Part thriller, part comedy, part tragedy, SHOOT THE PIANO PLAYER relates the adventures of mild-mannered ...
Directed by Louis Malle • 1960 • France
Starring Catherine Demongeot, Philippe Noiret
A brash and precocious ten-year-old (Catherine Demongeot) comes to Paris for a whirlwind weekend with her rakish uncle (Philippe Noiret); he and the viewer get more than they bargained for, however, in this ana...
Directed by Jacques Demy • 1961 • France, Italy
Starring Anouk Aimée, Marc Michel
Jacques Demy’s crystalline debut gave birth to the fictional universe in which so many of his characters would live, play, and love. It’s among his most profoundly felt films, a tale of crisscrossing lives in Nante...
Directed by Jean Rouch and Edgar Morin • 1961 • France
Few films can claim as much influence on the course of cinema history as CHRONICLE OF A SUMMER. The fascinating result of a collaboration between filmmaker-anthropologist Jean Rouch and sociologist Edgar Morin, this vanguard work of what Mor...
Directed by Jacques Rivette • 1961 • France
Starring Betty Schneider, François Maistre, Giani Esposito
One of the original critics turned filmmakers who helped jump-start the French New Wave, Jacques Rivette began shooting his debut feature in 1958, well before that cinema revolution officially ...
Directed by Agnès Varda • 1962 • France
Starring Corinne Marchand, Antoine Bourseiller, Dominique Davray
Agnès Varda eloquently captures Paris in the sixties with this real-time portrait of a singer (Corinne Marchand) set adrift in the city as she awaits test results of a biopsy. A chronicle of ...
Directed by François Truffaut • 1962 • France
Starring Jeanne Moreau, Oskar Werner, Henri Serre
Hailed as one of the finest films ever made, JULES AND JIM charts, over twenty-five years, the relationship between two friends and the object of their mutual obsession. The legendary François Truffau...
Directed by Jean-Luc Godard • 1962 • France
Starring Anna Karina, Sady Rebbot, André Labarthe
VIVRE SA VIE (a.k.a. MY LIFE TO LIVE) was a turning point for Jean-Luc Godard and remains one of his most dynamic films, combining brilliant visual design with a tragic character study. The lovely Anna ...
Directed by Louis Malle • 1963 • France
Starring Maurice Ronet, Léna Skerla, Jeanne Moreau
After garnering international acclaim for such seminal crowd-pleasers as THE LOVERS and ZAZIE DANS LE MÉTRO, Louis Malle gave his fans a shock with THE FIRE WITHIN (LE FEU FOLLET), a penetrating study of i...
Directed by Alain Resnais • 1963 • France
Starring Delphine Seyrig, Jean-Pierre Kérien, Nita Klein
Alain Resnais's MURIEL, OR THE TIME OF RETURN, the director's follow-up to LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD, is as radical a reflection on the nature of time and memory as its predecessor. The always luminou...
Directed by Jacques Demy • 1963 • France
Starring Jeanne Moreau, Claude Mann
This precisely wrought, emotionally penetrating romantic drama from Jacques Demy, set largely in the casinos of Nice, is a visually lovely but darkly realistic investigation into love and obsession. A bottle-blonde Jean...
Directed by Jean-Luc Godard • 1963 • France
Starring Brigitte Bardot, Michel Piccoli, Jack Palance
Jean-Luc Godard’s subversive foray into commercial filmmaking is a star-studded Cinemascope epic. CONTEMPT stars Michel Piccoli as a screenwriter torn between the demands of a proud European direct...
Directed by Eric Rohmer • 1963 • France
Bertrand bides his time in a casually hostile and envious friendship with college chum Guillaume. But when ladies' man Guillaume seems to be making a play for the spirited, independent Suzanne, Bertrand watches bitterly with disapproval and jealousy. With ...
Directed by François Truffaut • 1964 • France
Starring Jean Desailly, Françoise Dorléac, Nelly Benedetti
François Truffaut followed up the international phenomenon JULES AND JIM with this tense tale of infidelity. The unassuming Jean Desailly is perfectly cast as a celebrated literary scholar, ...
