TCM Spotlight: New Waves Around the World: ‘French New Wave’
TCM, beginning at 7 p.m.
Tonight, Turner Classic Movies continues its spotlight on influential “new wave” filmmaking movements with a visit to France. After the end of World War II, and free from censorship by Nazi occupiers, French cinemas were able to begin showing foreign films to the public, along with previously banned French-made films. The French “Nouvelle Vague” (New Wave) movement grew in popularity between 1958 and 1962, with films being seen as a new way of expression. These productions were breaking the mold of what films used to be as people started to see the camera as being the filmmakers’ pen or
paintbrush and cinema as an art form. The French New Wave influenced future films by proving that great films can be made outside the studio setting and on a low budget. Great examples of films from this new wave featured tonight are, in order: the 1956 comedy Le Coup du Berger, a short film directed by Jacques Rivette; Louis Malle’s 1958 drama The Lovers, which won the Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival; the 1959 romantic drama Hiroshima Mon Amour (pictured), a French/Japanese co-production that earned screenwriter Marguerite Duras an Academy Award nomination; Jean-Luc Godard’s legendary 1960 crime drama Breathless, one of the quintessential
examples of French New Wave cinema that earned Godard a Silver Bear award for Best Director at the Berlin International Film Festival; writer/director Claude Chabrol’s 1958 drama Le Beau Serge, considered the first Nouvelle Vague production; Francois Truffaut’s 1960 crime-drama thriller Shoot
the Piano Player; Lola, a 1961 romantic drama starring Anouk Aimee that was writer/director Jacques Demy’s debut film and which he described as a “musical without music”; and the 1962 musical comedy/drama Cleo From 5 to 7, written and directed by French New Wave pioneer
Agnes Varda. — Evan McLean