Top 20 French New Wave Films

Since cinema’s inception, it has been molded and remolded over and over by different peoples all around the world. At the beginning, the equipment needed for filmmaking necessitated a considerable amount of capital. Camera rigs were bulky, rigid, and needed a lot of light. As a result, producers, especially in Hollywood, reigned supreme.

In the 1950s French theorists and critics coalesced to write about a new form for how cinema could be, a form that privileges the director, and the director’s vision. That each film was a conception (or distortion) of reality, and the director should dictate and execute on that conception. In 1951, film theorist André Bazin co-founded the film magazine Cahiers Du Cinéma. Throughout the 1950s, the magazine attracted many young writers that would go on to direct films. And those writers-turned-directors would actualize their writings and criticisms on film form, challenging conventional norms and practices, and with it, exploding the fabric of what film could be and eventually create a French cinema revolution. The American film brats of the 70s were inspired by the French New Wave films of the 60s. There have been many film movements at different periods of time across the world. Of them all, The French New Wave films (Nouvelle Vague) have created a lasting, cascading effect on every generation of filmmakers and filmgoers to follow in its wake.

Introduction to French New Wave

In André Bazin’s What is Cinema? collection of essays, he talks about film’s unique ability to mummify time, capture its duration and change. In 1954, François Truffaut called for a rejection of stale literary adaptations that make unimaginative films in favor of unique new ideas (sounds familiar to debates we have regarding IP today, no?). And so, when this new generation of filmmakers took the reins, they put their ideology to the test. Sadly, Bazin did not get to see this movement he nurtured fully realized, as he passed at the age of forty while Truffaut was filming his debut feature, The 400 Blows.

Still image from François Truffaut’s film The 400 Blows

In addition to Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Chabrol, and Éric Rohmer all wrote for Cahiers Du Cinéma and became the leading directors of the movement. Alongside the Cahiers Du Cinéma alumni, another group of filmmakers emerged at the same time called the Left Bank filmmakers. Directors of the Left Bank include Agnès Varda, her husband Jacques Demy, Alain Resnaid, and Chris Marker. These two filmmaking pillars emerged in the late-1950s and changed cinema forever.

What Makes French New Wave Films Unique

Changing cinema forever is a bold claim. Let’s discuss how. First off, it helps that many of the directors involved started out as writers and continued to be so after their directing debuts. Therefore, they were able to shape the narrative around their work and self-mythologize. The term nouvelle vague was not directly coined by the magazine, though, but in the magazine L’Express by Françoise Giroud.

For the films themselves, they are as varied as each director working within the movement. Cahiers championed privileging the director and the director’s vision. What made these director’s visions stand the test of time is what stories they wanted to tell, where they set the films, and how they made them.

Stories of the new wave often focused on character studies of young people or people on the margins going through periods of turmoil and existential crisis. Many of these films, such as La Chinoise, commented explicitly about the politics of the day. They didn’t shy away from uncomfortable dialogues. In fact, making audiences uncomfortable and playing with their expectations was a distinguishing feature of Godard’s oeuvre. Iconoclasm defined the movement as a whole, but especially Godard. Godard even disguised the Cahiers directors from the Left Bank directors, saying the Cahiers director should solely hold the title of New Wave filmmakers.

New more agile equipment allowed younger filmmakers the ability to shoot anywhere. And the New Wave directors certainly did so. Shooting on location on the streets of Paris, in tiny apartments where these artists lived instead of on soundstages and using natural light enlivened the world the characters of these films inhabit. Part of this was the necessity of shooting films on small budgets, but that constraint turned into a defining aspect of the aesthetic of New wave films.

French New Wave Filmmaker, Jean-Luc Godard

And most notably of French New wave films, filmmaking conventions were challenged. The conventional craft that was built up over decades was called into question. Film grammar was challenged in the use of jump cuts within a single setup instead of cutting on movement between setups to hide the edits. Dialogue was improvised instead of crafting the perfect higher-than-life dialogue seen in many films. Humans stutter, we don’t always speak exactly as we mean to. Improvised dialogue tried to capture this aspect of the human condition.

The New Wave films sought to expand what cinema can be, and these films that follow exemplify that ever-enduring innovation.

The Top 20 French New Wave Films

This list of classic must-watch top twenty films provide an overview and survey a variety of what the movement had to offer. Including the main directors of the movement: Truffaut, Godard, Rohmer, Rivette, and Chabrol from Cahiers Du Cinéma and Varda, Demy, Marker, and Resnais from the Left Bank.

1. The 400 Blows (Les Quatre Cents Coups), 1959 - François Truffaut

Often demarcated as the film that incited the movement (despite not being the first chronologically of these filmmakers works), The 400 Blows is François Truffaut’s debut that centers on a boy trying to survive while experiencing many injustices from school to family starring Jean-Pierre Léaud as Antoine Donnel. Truffaut and Léaud would go on to make five films about Donnel as he grows up through childhood into adulthood. The last image of The 400 Blows is one of the most lasting endings in cinema.

2. Breathless (À bout de souffle), 1960 - Jean-Luc Godard

If the New Wave was reduced to two films, it would be The 400 Blows and Breathless. Breathless is at once a love-letter to movies and an attempt to depart to something new. The story follows a noir setup and stars Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg. Belmondo’s character incessantly mimics a Humphrey Bogart character by tracing his finger on his lips. In addition to the Bogart gesture, the film is swimming in visual references to other films. In contrast with these visual odes to cinema, the filmmaking breaks with tradition to create something new by using jump cuts, breaking eyelines and the 180 line to confuse the viewer, and by breaking the 4th wall.

3. Hiroshima Mon Amour, 1959 - Alain Resnais

Alain Resnais’ feature debut premiered the same year as Truffaut’s The 400 Blows. The story follows a French actress’ 24 hour triste with a Japanese architect. The explores memory using brief flashbacks to evoke glimpses of memory washing over the protagonists as they intently discuss their pasts. The film uses the atomic devastation at Hiroshima to explore grief and trauma, and how tragedies become mediated through newsreels and other mass media of the time. Can someone who didn’t live through the events truly understand what happened?

4. Le Bonheur, 1965 - Agnès Varda

Agnès Varda manipulates her audience like a mad puppeteer in Le Bonheur (Happiness). The film exudes a saccharine exterior which hides the rotten core inside. François and Thérèse are idyllically married until the family fractures for a while, until, from the outside, it becomes whole again. To reveal anymore would be a disservice to this film. Varda’s feminist triumph has made audiences enraged and dismayed for generations.

5. Cléo from 5 to 7, 1962 – Agnès Varda

Singer Cléo Victoire spends the entire duration of the film passing time as she hears the results of a biopsy that may be malignant. Cléo from 5 to 7 uses real-time story structure to illustrate the existential dread of waiting for life-or-death news. How do you pass the time when waiting for news so significant? Our lives are steeped in milestones that denote significant moments in our lives, but the bulk of our lives are in between these significant moments. Cléo explores these in between moments and what it means to live.

6. The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, 1964 Jacques Demy

The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, starring Catherine Deneuve and Nino Castelnuovo as ill-fated lovers, explodes with color and longing. Every line of dialogue is sung. The emotions are so strong, they must come out as song to properly express themselves. The stage design mixed with the sound design combine to create a sensory overload that matches the main character’s crisis of lost love as Nino’s character is drafted to serve in the Algerian War.

7. My Life to Live (Vivre sa vie), 1962 - Jean-Luc Godard

New Wave icon Anna Karina stars as Nana in Godard’s Vivre sa vie. Nana searches for identity as the film depicts 12 key moments in her life, from the moment she leaves her husband, to watching Joan of Arc and wanting to become an actress, to circumstance dashing that dream and forcing her hand into prostitution. Nana tries to trailblaze a path for herself and is denied by realities of her surroundings and community.

8. Last Year at Marienbad, 1961 - Alain Resnais

Film’s power to distort reality is utilized to its fullest extent in Resnais’ Last Year at Marienbad. We follow three unnamed characters as two men vie for the same woman. The first man claims they met a year ago and planned to be together one year later (hey, that’s now). The second man appears to be her husband. But nothing can be clarified. The unnamed woman does not remember what these men claim. Resnais uses flashbacks and disrupts the audience's understanding when and what exactly is taking place. We know no more than the unnamed woman. Film’s power to dissect the imperfection of memory and how reality can be manipulated is on full display.

9. La Jetée, 1963 – Chris Marker

Chris Marker’s La Jetée is an experimental science fiction short film constructed almost entirely of still photographs. The story is of a dystopian society trying to fix society of its devastation after WW3 while the protagonist is projected through time to find a solution, which lies within a memory of the protagonist. Even more experimental in form than its New Wave contemporaries, La Jetée explores the eternal themes of memory, fabricated realities, and cinema place in constructing and destructing these realities.

10. The Fire Within, 1963 - Louis Malle

Louis Malle’s The Fire Within tells the story of a recovering alcoholic who, despite being declared cured by the clinic, knows he’ll drink as soon as he leaves. When he does leave the clinic, his uncertainty hardens to resolve. The film spans a few days, and Alain, our protagonist, wrestles with reality and what it means to live, how he perceives himself vs how others perceive him, and the existential endurance of living without meaning.

11. Shoot the Piano Player, 1960 - François Truffaut

A devastating love story is the backdrop for this crime drama as a Pianist is threatened by gangsters due to his brothers’ escapades. As with many New Wave films, Shoot the Piano Player eschews the boundaries of genre to flow freeform where the story takes our characters. Truffaut called his sophomore feature a “grab bag.”

12. Les Cousins, 1959 - Claude Chabrol

Claude Chabrol examines love and jealousy through the tenuous cousins, one naive and provincial, the other bohemian and self-assured, as they both vie for the same woman (a recurring theme of the New Wave). The film asks if there is any connection between the morality of a character and the success they achieve.

13. The Young Girls of Rochefort, 1965 - Jacques Demy

Catherine Deneuve and Françoise Dorléac star in Jacques Demy’s opulent musical which takes over the town of Rochefort and guest stars Gene Kelly. Following up on the success of Cherbourg, Rochefort utilizes the same explosion of color to create a larger than life fantasy tale. In this, Rochefort is a bit of a departure from many of the features of the New Wave and harkens back to grand larger-than-life escapist productions. The colors, songs, choreography, and atmosphere depicted in The Young Girls of Rochefort stands at the zenith of the movie musical.

14. Paris Belongs to Us, 1961 - Jacques Rivette

Jacques Rivette’s first feature began production before his Cahiers brethren in 1958 but wasn’t released until 1961. The film didn’t receive the same near-unanimous acclaim that his contemporaries debut features did. Nonetheless, Paris Belongs to Us has stood the test of time along with its contemporaries and depicts a Parisian milieu steeped in a paranoia that was rampant in the nuclear age. Literature student Anne reads for a Shakespearean play while dealing with cabals and conspiracies affecting everyone around her. Paranoia and the distortion it takes on reality play a key role as Anne’s world crumbles around her. If any title sums up the New Wave, its Paris Belongs to Us.

15. Band of Outsiders (Bande à part), 1964 - Jean-Luc Godard

Godard continues his patented blend of revering and devouring his filmmaking forebears in Band of Outsiders which follows a trio of misfits including Anna Karina’s Odile and two cinephile slackers. The story follows the film noir lovers who devise a heist of their own. Multiple sequences have been referenced in pop culture including an impromptu dance scene and a sequence where the outsiders run through the Louvre.

16. Chronicle of a Summer, 1961 - Jean Rouch, Edgar Morin

Anthropologist and filmmaker Jean Rouch collaborated with sociologist Edgar Morin to create this cinéma vérité documentary about the lives of everyday people over one summer. At the end of the endeavor, Rouch brings his interlocutors back to discuss the nature of the reality the film sought to capture. Though a documentary, Chronicle of a Summer is in a clear dialogue with many New Waves films exploring notions of reality and cinema’s capacity to achieve it through a singular vision.

17. La Collectionneuse, 1967 - Eric Rohmer

The first feature film of Eric Rohmer’s six Moral Tales (the first two being short films), La Collectionneuse follows two men staying at a 17th century villa when a mysterious woman appears and stays with them. Rohmer describes the film as love from idleness. All of the moral tales revolve around a man being tempted by another woman, before returning to their partner at the beginning of the film. Rohmer plays with how these characters act, react to their own actions, and self-conceptualize these actions to themselves.

18. Lola, 1961 - Jacques Demy

Lola, a cabaret dancer, reconnects with an ex and he soon falls back in love with her in Jacques Demy’s Lola. The protagonist is named after the Marlene Deitrich character Lola Lola in Von Sterberg’s 1930 film Blue Angel. Demy’s brand of grandeur meets raw heartbreak is well-defined in this debut feature.

19. Le Mépris (Contempt), 1963 - Jean-Luc Godard

Brigitte Bardot stars in Godard’s Contempt, about the disintegration of a marriage during a troubled pre-production of the film the husband is trying to make. Godard often tells stories centering on filmmakers, aspiring filmmakers, or cinephiles. In Contempt, he uses the plot to explore the business of movie-making and where creativity goes to die and the foot of capital creatives need to make their films. In that pursuit, Michel Piccoli plays Bardot’s husband as he meekly offers her affection to an American producer to aid in making his next film.

20. Jules et Jim, 1962 - François Truffaut

Jules and Jim tells the frenetic tale of two men who both love the same women (yes, this again). The film explores how alluring new love can be and how strained it can become over time. The film uses many of Truffaut’s New Wave techniques including freeze frame shots and quick hectic cuts to evoke the chaos of the character’s precarious relationship to the audience.

The Legacy of French New Wave Films

The filmmakers of the French New wave sought to expand the boundaries of the cinematic form. Film schools were being founded and populated in the 50s and 60s and young filmmaking hopefuls would see and be inspired by these French Filmmakers showcasing that film still had room to grow. The French New Wave had a direct influence on the 1970s New American Hollywood movement where directors were privileged to tell different types of stories.

Still image from 1967’s Bonnie and Clyde

From the filmmaking techniques proudly showcased to their ability to work on shoestring budgets, New Wave filmmakers laid a blueprint for aspiring filmmakers around the world to our current day.

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Where to Watch French New Wave films

As of the time of this writing, there are no French New Wave films on Netflix. Not only that, there are no French-produced films from the 20th century on the platform. Amazon Prime had older French films, but not many of the New Wave catalog. The most high profile ‘60s French Film on Prime right now is Le Samouraï by Jean-Pierre Melville. Max, on the other hand, currently has many of the films on this list on the platform. The safest bet for finding New Wave films is on the Criterion Channel, where they currently have a curated collection of New Wave feature films as well as New Wave short films.

As filmmakers have for decades, it's time to explore this treasure trove of cinema! Afterwards, take to Letterboxd or Reddit to discuss your favorite French New Wave classics.

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