Francois Truffaut’s directorial debut The 400 Blows was the main hit of the 1959 Cannes Film Festival. This film was significantly different from mainstream cinema of that time which told little about human life and feelings. Film critic Truffaut was tired of script-centered films that lacked an author’s voice and creativity; he and his colleagues (Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Chabrol, Eric Rohmer, Jacques Rivette) who wrote for French film magazine Cahiers du Cinema were inspired by the films of Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock, and Howard Hawks, and wanted the cinema to be more fresh and exciting, thus helping solidify the idea of the director as ‘auteur.’
For these film critics and directors who have become the core of the French New Wave movement, it was important to be the authors of their films, to take part in all stages of filmmaking, to be independent of big film studios, and to express complex existential ideas. The French New Wave exhibited the pure joy of cinema. Let’s look at the best films of this movement, ranked.
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9 Zazie in the Metro
Nouvelles Editions de Films
The 1960 film Zazie in the Metro, directed by Louis Malle, follows brash country girl Zazie (Catherine Demongeot), who comes to Paris and dreams of riding the subway, but it is on strike. A colorful walk through Paris with Zazie under her uncle’s not-so-watchful eye may seem completely nutty – but certainly worth a look. Louis Malle played with editing, packed film with jokes, and presented the comedy that in the 1961, the New York Times was described the film as an “exercise in cinematic Dadaism.”
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8 La Jetee
Argos Films
La Jetee is an iconic 1962 short film by Chris Marker, one of the most beautiful experimental films ever made. Mixing black-and-white still photos and narration, it tells the story of time travel in a post-apocalyptic future. In the aftermath of World War III, a prisoner goes back to the moment of his childhood, when he saw a woman at the airport just before the shocking incident. Scientists hope that the prisoner will be able to find a way to save the present in the past. The intellectual science fiction film is about elusive and strange memories resembling a maze in which the viewer can get lost with the main character of the movie. Terry Gilliam’s 12 Monkeys was inspired by this short film.
7 The Umbrellas of Cherbourg
Parc Film
The 1964 Cannes Film Festival-winning musical drama The Umbrellas of Cherbourg stars the great Catherine Deneuve and Nino Castelnuovo as lovers, separated by circumstances and war. Young Genevieve wants to wait for Guy, but her mother insists on her marriage to a wealthy jeweler. Jacques Demy made a deceptively simple love story in which all the words were sung, deconstructing the musical in a colorful way. Sad and wise reflection on the way true feelings doesn’t conquer all inspired Damien Chazelle’s love story La La Land.
6 Shoot the Piano Player
Les Films de la Pleiade
Shoot the Piano Player is utterly playful, Francois Truffaut’s homage to classic American gangster films. Based on the novel Down There by David Goodis, it tells the story of a pianist who was involved in a gangland feud. The crime story becomes a backdrop to a tale of tragic love, glory, and downfall. Empire described Shoot the Piano Player as “a superb combination of genre movie and Truffaut’s special brand of perfectly observed, humanist detail.”
5 Cleo from 5 to 7
Cine-Tamaris
For Agnes Varda’s 1962 drama Cleo from 5 to 7, Corinne Marchand appears as a singer, who is counting out the minutes until 6:30 p.m. to hear her cancer test result. The fear that death is near makes Cleo take on new perspectives in her life. Before her filmmaking career, Varda had been a serious photographer, so each Cleo from 5 to 7 scene has a perfect composition. She captured the essence of her characters and made an emotional film which is often cited as one of the best films directed by a woman.
4 Hiroshima, My Love
Along with The 400 Blows and Breathless, Hiroshima, My Love (or Hiroshima Mon Amour) can be called one of the main films of the French New Wave. This Alain Resnais romantic drama tells the poetic story about unrequited love that was found for an ephemeral moment. Hiroshima, My Love follows a French actress (played by Emmanuelle Riva) who came to Hiroshima to make an anti-war film. There, she has an affair with a Japanese architect (Eiji Okada). Their time together is interrupted by brief flashbacks about the war. The film uses the relationship allegorically in fascinating political ways. Filmmaker Eric Rohmer raved about Alain Resnais, saying that he “has a very strong sense of the future, particularly the anguish of the future.”
3 Band of Outsiders
Columbia Films
Jean-Luc Godard described his film Band of Outsiders as “Alice in Wonderland meets Franz Kafka.” The film follows a girl named Odile (played by Godard’s muse Anna Karina) who teams up with two crooks (played by Sami Frey and Claude Brasseur) to commit a robbery. Band of Outsiders is a perfect re-imagining and deconstruction of gangster films with endlessly memorable scenes, including the Madison dance scene that influenced the Uma Thurman’s and John Travolta’s dance in Tarantino’s ’90s action film Pulp Fiction (which is fitting, as Tarantino named his production company, A Band Apart, off of the French title for this film). The scene with the characters running through the Louvre Museum to break a world record influenced a similar part in Bertolucci’s ode to the French New Wave, The Dreamers.
2 The 400 Blows
Les Films du Carrosse
The most personal Francois Truffaut film, The 400 Blows is a story of youthful (and cinematic) rebellion. The film centers on a boy named Antoine Doinel (Jean-Pierre Leaud); adults see him as a troublemaker, but Antoine wants only one thing: understanding. Parasite director Bong Joon-ho described The 400 Blows as “the most beautiful feature film debut in the history of cinema.” Many other experts also gave the picture a place in their lists of the best films ever made. Truffaut followed the fictional life of Antoine for over 20 years, using the same great actor to make a series of five films about him as he aged.
1 Breathless
Les Films Imperia
The plot of the 1960 drama Breathless is almost the same as a typical crime film, showing a criminal (played by Jean-Paul Belmondo), who is hiding in the apartment of a beautiful woman (Jean Seberg) – but Jean-Luc Godard had turned the classic genre on its head and created one of the most influential movies of the modern era, one which marked the turning point of mainstream cinema into true modernism. 50 years after the release of Breathless, The New York Times critic A. O. Scott wrote, “Breathless is a pop artifact and a daring work of art, made at a time when the two possibilities existed in a state of almost perfect convergence. That is the source of its uniqueness. Much as it may have influenced what was to come later, there is still nothing else quite like it.”
