The merits of a film say it is its form

In May 1959, a young director and an actor even younger than him, François Truffaut (twenty-eight years) and Jean-Pierre Léaud (fourteen years), triumph at Cannes with "The four hundred blows", intimate and clear log. "The film of tomorrow will be an act of love." For the general public, the new wave was born. In a year, the major films of this small group armed with cameras out on the screens: "The Cousins", Claude Chabrol, table without concessions from young bourgeois adrift. "The four hundred blows", "hiroshima mon amour", construction literary and brain of Alain Resnais, and "A end of breath", by Jean.-Luc Godard, clear aesthetics breaking with the traditional rules of cinema. The success has stoked passions, said Antoine de Baecque in "The new wave, portrait of a youth" (Flammarion). The right complains that the young impudent "a moral and a libertine universe", the left, "free, the uselessness and disengagement", even a "species of ideal anarcho-fascist".

New wave is the only artistic movement born right in this period dominated by the new novel, the semiology of Roland Barthes, the "brechtisme" in the theatre, structuralism, etc. (Dixit Jacques Laurent) "angry" young critics write in right-wing journals, "Cahiers du cinéma" at the time even if the editor, André Bazin, is a Christian from left; "The Round Table", revue to documentation writers (Jouhandeau, Chardonne, Morand) and especially "Arts", weekly cultural where young people "disengaged", Nimier, Laurent, Déon, but also Jean-Louis Bory (future critical to the "Nouvel Observateur"), "put forward the elegance, the abandon, this time moralistic and"théseuse"style dominated by Sartre and his forced to"Modern times", Camus and"Combat", Vilar and the NPT."", Aragon and the"French letters".

And the cinema created woman

Flashbacks. It all begins with a scandal: the emergence of Brigitte Bardot, free, instinctive and unclothed young woman in "and God created woman". The film, released in 1956, is a shock. "Suggestive swimming clothes glued to the body, open thighs, shiny skin, rah-rah exasperated, falling bodies one after the other, defeated beds, barefoot, sighs, respect, frenzy, Sun, disoriented, up to a wedding night in full noon, during the meal consumed family said wedding", indignant press. How a young filmmaker of twenty-eight years, the name of Roger Vadim, dare to his young wife entrust the role of a resourceful The insolent in adds with a slogan: "The impossible dream of married men." Established critical choking, a small group of young journalists, taken by a certain François Truffaut, breathe. Critical, they will become the new wave filmmakers. They announce the colour: "films must show girls as we like, boys like us meet them all the days, short, things as they are. The film "of quality" to the former, populated stars, shot in the studio, is finished. These young people hate the literary avant-garde the new novel, they prefer the classic writing and Hollywood film: Hitchcock, Hawks, Lang (Fritz, pas Jack), Ray, Minnelli... They rejected the academicism of the classical right and militant culture "progressive". Their horizon, is not the Oder-Neisse line, but the camera. The merits of a film, say, it is its form. Or: "morality is a matter of travelling" (Godard). Clear: the content, the message of a film is in the framing, the movement of equipment, mounting.

Poor, but stylish

As they pass across the camera, young critics to move rules of production, labour charges, the heaviness of French cinema. They create their own structures of production. They are free, but less rich. They must turn over meagre: catch less, therefore more spontaneity; steps studio, therefore the natural settings; not featured, so a new generation of actors (Belmondo, Brialy, BB, Anna Karina, Alexandra Stewart, Clotilde Joano...). The economic constraints give birth to a new style. Or rather new styles. Because new wave means "of the circles of different diameters filmmakers", says film historian. The first, the "young Turks": Chabrol, Truffaut, Godard, Rivette, Rohmer; left bank filmmakers: Resnais, Chris Marker, Agnès Varda; "adventurers of the camera", close to the documentary: Jean Rouch, François Reichenbach, Pierre Schoendoerffer. Mavericks, Demy, Mocky; Finally, a last group of filmmakers from commercial cinema, but worn by the wave: Vadim, Malle, Molinaro, Sautet, Broca...

A short saga

Stakeholders have never claimed the new wave label, any more than in literature "Hussars". "I see that a common point between young filmmakers, written Truffaut, they practice all fairly systematically the device slot and Pinball, unlike the old directors who prefer maps and whisky. The term, coined by Françoise Giroud refers to youth. October 3, 1957, "The Express", she is leading with j.. Servan-Schreiber, sports, a pretty young smiling woman with the title: "The new wave comes!" announces an investigation into the youth with the FIFG, through a questionnaire. Behind the phrase, a question: what culture this generation born after the war is being build, what will be the face of the country tomorrow A year later, new wave means a film under the pen of critic Pierre Billard. "It then attends a dual, said Antoine de Baecque, young moviegoers have imposed the cinema as an art major, as young people elected him as their favourite entertainment and, in return, 1958 youth seems to emerge as the preferred (and commercially attractive) subject to the filmmakers on the lookout for good scenarios."

The saga of the new wave is brief. The fall of 1961, the "young Turks" record their first commercial failures: Truffaut, with "shoot the pianist", Chabrol, with "good women". The triumph of the "Prairie Street" of the trio La Patellière-Audiard-Gabin, rings the return of the old guard. Truffaut, Rohmer, Resnais, Chabrol are K.-O. They will have to wait until the 1970s for a second youth. But the myth of the new wave was born. A generation of young filmmakers dusted French cinema and filmed young people of his generation. They are recognized in these films, they have made the symbol of their aspirations and their revolt at the making of a film born right the symbol of "the spirit of may 68. Fifty years after, he still images: Belmondo, aka Michel Poiccard, the cigarette-billed, hat of gangster in "A end of breath". And replicas: Jean Seberg begging "bébel": "what is this"ugly"".