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The New Wave (French: Nouvelle vague) of French cinema was a cinematic movement of the 1960s.
The writers of the magazine Cahiers du cinéma decided to apply their theories of the auteur — the director as the center of all moviemaking — to the world by directing movies themselves. They praised movies by Jean Renoir and Jean Vigo. Former writers of the magazine such as François Truffaut with his The 400 Blows (1959) and Jean-Luc Godard with Breathless (1960) marked the beginning of this era. Other directors included Claude Chabrol, Jacques Rivette, and Eric Rohmer, Louis Malle.
The movies featured hitherto unprecedented methods of expression, such as seven minute tracking shots. The movies also featured existential themes such as stressing the individual and accepting the absurdity of human existence. The themes and expressions were not the only important aspects of the films, but how they were shot. French New Wave directors often shot in the streets, rejecting the idea of films made in studios. The use of lightweight cameras, lights and sound equipment were innovations that the filmmakers used to the best advantage. Many New Wave Films are recognizable by their fluid movements, often following characters down the Paris streets.
It is important to realize that many of the French New Wave films were done on extremely small budgets. Often they were shot in a friends' apartment, used friends as the cast and crew, and were forced to improvise on equipment to make due (such as using a shopping cart for tracking shots). The cost of film was also a major concern and so efforts to save film turned into stylistic innovations: for example, in Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless, several scenes have a choppy feeling to them as they were filmed in one long take and parts that didn't work were simply cut right from the middle of the take.
The style had an impact on American movies as well. After Arthur Penn's Bonnie and Clyde (1967) the New Hollywood directors (e.g. Altman, Coppola, De Palma and Scorsese) of the late 1960s/early 1970s made movies inspired by their European (and in particular French) counterparts. The latest American director who admits a serious influence of the French new wave is Quentin Tarantino.
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