What was the French New Wave?

The Nouvelle Vague was a late-1950s and 1960s movement of young French directors, many former critics at Cahiers du cinéma, who made personal, stylistically inventive films such as Breathless and The 400 Blows, championing directorial authorship.

What is Italian Neorealism?

It is a postwar Italian movement, exemplified by films like Rome, Open City and Bicycle Thieves, that used real locations, available light, and often nonprofessional actors to portray the lives of ordinary people.

New Waves and Postwar Modernism

New waves and postwar modernism cover the renewal of cinema after 1945, from Italian Neorealism and the French Nouvelle Vague to the art cinemas and new waves that spread worldwide, redefining film style and authorship.

Definition

The postwar movements of artistically ambitious, often nationally based cinema, marked by modernist narration and a director-centered conception of film, that reshaped world cinema from the late 1940s onward.

Scope

This topic covers the major postwar art-cinema movements: Italian Neorealism, the French New Wave and its critical roots in auteur theory, and the subsequent waves in Britain, Germany, Eastern Europe, Japan, Latin America, and beyond. It examines the modernist narrative norms, ambiguity, episodic structure, self-conscious style, that distinguished these films from classical Hollywood, and the festival and art-house infrastructure that sustained them.

Core questions

What stylistic and narrative norms define postwar modernist art cinema?
How did Neorealism and the French New Wave transform filmmaking?
How did auteur theory reframe the director as the author of a film?
How did new waves emerge and spread across different national cinemas?

Key theories

Art-cinema narration: Bordwell's account of a distinct mode of narration, defined by psychological realism, authorial expressivity, and narrative ambiguity, that postwar art films deploy against classical norms.
The politique des auteurs: The critical position advanced by the Cahiers du cinéma critics, drawing on Bazin's realism, that the director is the true author of a film, which underwrote the French New Wave.

History

Italian Neorealism arose amid postwar reconstruction, using location shooting and nonprofessional actors to depict everyday life. In 1950s France, the Cahiers du cinéma critics championed directorial authorship and then made films themselves, launching the Nouvelle Vague around 1959. Through the 1960s and 1970s, new waves emerged in Britain, Czechoslovakia, West Germany, Japan, Brazil, and elsewhere, supported by festivals and art houses, establishing the international art cinema as a durable alternative to Hollywood.

Debates

Auteurism and its limits: Auteur theory elevated the director as sole author, but critics argued it neglected screenwriters, collaborators, and industrial conditions, sparking lasting debate over the locus of cinematic authorship.

Key figures

André Bazin
Jean-Luc Godard
Roberto Rossellini
Richard Neupert

Seminal works

neupert2007
bordwell1985
bazin1967

Frequently asked questions

What was the French New Wave?: The Nouvelle Vague was a late-1950s and 1960s movement of young French directors, many former critics at Cahiers du cinéma, who made personal, stylistically inventive films such as Breathless and The 400 Blows, championing directorial authorship.
What is Italian Neorealism?: It is a postwar Italian movement, exemplified by films like Rome, Open City and Bicycle Thieves, that used real locations, available light, and often nonprofessional actors to portray the lives of ordinary people.