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The Best of
1958-1974
| Aggressive jump-cutting, the
director as auteur, an unhealthy obsession with American crime thrillers,
heart-rending tales of loneliness and tragic romance, politically astute,
often dangerously subversive, sometimes sickeningly pretentious...
Love it or hate it, it cannot be denied that the new wave of film directors
of the late1950s and early 1960s left their mark on French cinema.
From the hot-headed former critics of the
review magazine Les Cahiers du cinéma (Truffaut, Godard,
Chabrol and Rohmer) to the great innovators such as Resnais, Varda, Demy,
Rivette, not forgetting the talent of Malle, Rozier, Eustache, Lelouch
and Costa-Gavras - all played their part in re-defining French cinema in
the 1960s.
Here is a selection of the films which
represent the triumphs of the French New Wave.
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Claude
Chabrol (1958) |
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Louis
Malle (1958) |
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Claude
Chabrol's debut feature was this poignant tale of friendship and failed
ambition. Striking in its humanity and realism, it marked the start
of the French New Wave.
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Louis
Malle brings a fresh persepective on the film policier in this,
his eye-opening directoral debut. Jeanne Moreau gives a spell-binding
performance, with music from Miles Davis.
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Alain Resnais (1959) |
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Claude Chabrol (1959) |
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The
scars of the present reflect the unspeakable tragedy of the past, in this
remarkable debut film from Alain Resnais. The striking cinematography
makes dialogue all but superfluous.
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With
its young cast and university setting, Chabrol's second film has a distinctively
New Wave feel. It features Jean-Claude Brialy and Gérard Blain,
two actors favoured by the New Wave directors.
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François
Truffaut (1959) |
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Jean-Luc Godard (1959) |
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Vociferous
film critic of the cinéma de la qualité, François
Truffaut picked up the gauntlet and won instant acclaim for this partly
auto-biographical study of childhood rebellion.
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In
one of the most spectacular directoral debuts in film history, Jean-Luc
Godard gives new meaning and form to the medium of film in this bizarre
pastiche of the film policier.
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Claude
Chabrol (1960) |
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François Truffaut
(1960) |
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Chabrol's
realistic portrayal of female ennui provoked a violent backlash but it
is now regarded as one of the masterpieces of the New Wave.
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The
first and best of Truffaut's homages to the American crime thriller features
a sublime performance from Charles Aznavour.
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Jacques
Demy (1961) |
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Alain Resnais (1961) |
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Jacques
Demy's first major film is now regarded as a major work of the New Wave.
It is a wistful tale of love and fidelity, filmed with the expansive eloquence
which marks most of Demy's films.
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A
love triangle set in a baroque mansion offers a haunting study in time,
space and memory. Alain Resnais' ethereal dream-like film makes a
compelling cinematographic innovation.
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Jacques Rozier (1962) |
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Chris Marker (1962) |
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With
its undying energy and youthful exuberance, this film encapsulates the
French New Wave perhaps better than any other film. Rozier's debut
film is nothing less than an act of cinematic rebellion.
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A
short but captivating film in which the memories of survivor of a post-apocalyptic
world provide mankind's only hope of survival. A chilling and humane
portrait in the form of a photo-novel.
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François Truffaut
(1962) |
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Jean-Luc Godard (1962) |
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Truffaut's
enduring masterpiece is a poignant love triangle which captures fully the
director's humanity and morbid passion for life, and which features Jeanne
Moreau in arguably her best screen role.
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One
of the defining films of the French New Wave, Vivre sa vie is a
pot-pourri of poetry and irony, a film which, despite its unconventional
form, both captivates and shocks its audience.
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Agnès Varda (1962) |
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Alain Resnais (1963) |
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Agnès
Varda's
finest work is this poignant reflection on the meaning of life, told from
the perspective of a woman who realises she is about to lose everything.
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A
compelling study of intense personal regret, this is the film which best
exemplifies Resnais' unusual technique of fusing time, place and memory.
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Louis Malle (1963) |
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Jean-Luc Godard (1963) |
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A
melancholic study of a burnt-out writer looking for reasons not to kill
himself. Arguably Malle's best film, it avoids sentimentality and
voyeurism and instead offers a poignant depiction of despair.
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Brigitte
Bardot shows genuine talent in this aching, melancholic story of
ennui and self-fulfilment. Considered by many as Godard's best
film, Le Mépris is also the director's first and best attempt
to satarise and demonise the film-making industry.
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François Truffaut
(1964) |
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Jacques Demy (1964) |
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Exceptional
performances from Françoise Dorléac and Jean Desailly make
this compassionate portrait of a doomed May to December romance particularly
memorable.
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With
the yearning music of Michel Legrand, Jacques Demy creates a fairytale
world which is cursed by ill-fate and biting melancholia, making this arguably
the best French film musical and also one of the most memorable of screen
love stories.
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Jean-Luc Godard (1964) |
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Jean-Luc Godard (1965) |
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Jean-Luc
Godard clearly had tongue firmly in cheek when he made this homage to the
low budget American thriller. Brilliantly subversive, daringly funny,
it is one of Godard's more accessible works.
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Godard's
most celebrated film is this bizarre yet striking deconstruction of American
pulp fiction. It marks the start of Godard's radical departure from
the conventional narrative form in his continual quest to re-invent cinema.
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Jean-Luc Godard (1965) |
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Claude Lelouch (1966) |
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Lemmy
Caution is resurrected for this bizarre blend of crime thriller and science-fiction,
intended as a satire on contemporary French politics. Outrageously
funny and deeply disturbing, Alphaville is often cited as the best example
of French film science-fiction.
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Claude
Lelouch won the Palme d'or at Cannes in 1966 for this quintessentially
French love story, distinguished by its imaginative cinematography and
that "impossible to forget" musical theme.
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Jacques Demy (1967) |
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François Truffaut
(1968) |
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Danielle
Darrieux and the famous Dorléac sisters give their all in this ebullient
musical romance set in Jacques Demy's sugar-coated fantasy world.
Much lighter than Les Parapluies de Cherbourg, the film still has
its poignant moments.
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Although
distracted by the events of 1968, François Truffaut still managed
to make this brilliant romantic comedy, the third installment in his popular
Antoine Doinel cycle, starring Jean-Pierre Léaud.
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Jean-Luc Godard (1967) |
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Claude Chabrol (1969) |
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Godard's
most extreme assault on bourgeois complacency and the materialistic capitalist
system is not comfortable viewing, but some of the imagery he evokes in
this post-apocalyptic Utopia is breathtakingly effective.
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A
sleepy provencial village harbours a serial killer and the school mistress
suspects the local butcher. One of the best psychological thrillers
made in France, filled with suspense, with a chilling macabre under-belly.
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Eric Rohmer (1969) |
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Claude Sautet (1969) |
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The
third of Rohmer's Morality Tales revolves around free-will and the ability
to choose our own destiny. Jean-Louis Trintignant captures the ambiguity
and dilemma in Rohmer's thesis, making this one of his most compelling
and profound films.
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With
possibly the most poetic and tranquil depiction of death in any film, Les
Choses de la vie is both a poignant and reassuring drama, beautifully
filmed, with fine performances from Michel Piccoli and Romy Schneider.
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Costa-Gavras (1969) |
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Eric Rohmer (1970) |
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This
landmark political thriller won two Oscars and was inspired by real-life
events in Greece. Beneath the obvious caricatures and the black comedy
there is a chilling sub-text.
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With
its witty, closely observed dialogue and enchanting performances, the fifth
in Rohmer's series of Moral Tales makes an engaging study of the perils
of temptation.
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Jean
Eustache (1973) |
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Jacques
Rivette (1974) |
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The
one truly great film from the last of the New Wave directors is this intellectual
yet profoundly spiritual film about one man's search to find an absolute
love, free from all social constraints.
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Rivette's
surreal comedy revolves around a bizarre murder mystery in which nothing
is quite what it seems. Spotting where reality ends and fantasy begins
is just one of the film's many pleasures.
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