Few movements have shaped the cinematic landscape as significantly as the French New Wave. Scores of directors, actors, actresses, and other contributors are largely associated with the movement. Far too many to name. However, throughout the past several decades, a few standout filmmakers have come to most commonly be associated with the New Wave. In fact, they’re considered the founders thereof.

They all helped the French New Wave bring various rule-breaking elements to the table that filmmakers still rely on today. With innovative editing techniques and revolutionary methods of camerawork, the movement was highly impactful for putting the director at the forefront of projects.

But the conceptualization of the movement didn’t materialize overnight. It took years of groundwork, like a coup against a government of corruption that kept its people under an umbrella to shield any potential downpours of artistic expression. Against production studios that sought to replicate the Golden Age of Hollywood, these artists set out to express themselves with a camera unlike any filmmaker before them, thus rendering the French New Wave the most important film movement in history.

The Origin of the French New Wave

The 400 Blows
Cocinor

The term is generally attributed to a group of French film critics that rose to prominence in the early 1950s. They wrote for a magazine called, “Cahiers du Cinéma,” or, “Notebooks on Cinema.” In 1954, one of the critics — Francois Truffaut — penned an essay called “Une certaine tendance du cinéma français,” which roughly translates to, “A Certain Tendency of the French Cinema.”

Truffaut argued that the country’s insistence on literary adaptations essentially had its filmmakers swimming in a pool of unoriginality. In turn, the Cahiers took massive inspiration from American directors such as John Ford, Orson Welles, and Nicholas Ray for their distinct artistic expressions. So they set out to make movies themselves.

One could argue the movement officially began with the release of Le Beau Serge in 1958, while others might insist it was La Pointe Corte (1955) by Agnes Varda that kicked things into gear. The French New Wave wouldn’t find success internationally, however, until The 400 Blows (1959) by Francois Truffaut and Breathless (1960) by Jean-Luc Godard.

And although those three aforementioned directors — Varda, Truffaut, and Godard — were arguably the most influential creatives of the movement, several others made names for themselves throughout the sixties.

Related: The Best Movies of the French New Wave, Ranked

The Birth of the French Auteur

Breathless
Les Films Impéria

Before this period, French films mostly lifted actors up on a pedestal and not the filmmakers themselves. Part of that is because films were being adapted from popular works of literature instead of being written from the ground up, costing both the writer and the director their creative latitude. Rarely would production studios take the films in a direction that wasn’t in line with the material from which it was adapted. Thus, the French New Wave forced their ways into the fold as authors, or “auteurs” of their own scripts. That’s where the term comes from.

These early French auteurs crafted styles that are almost genres in themselves. Like a horror movie or a western, you also have Godard films, and the Varda genre. With thoughtful, iconoclastic themes and distinctive visual styles of storytelling, these were movies that audiences got an understanding for after a few short years. It’s like a Tarantino movie of today, or Spike Lee, the Coens, or Wes Anderson. They’re all auteurs as well, with their own unique aesthetics, and they took great inspiration in that regard from the New Wave directors.

Giving filmmakers total latitude of their projects, including scripting and casting, provided a more tangible tone that would resonate with audiences through familiarity. They would also encourage improvisation with dialogue, which wouldn’t have been the case had a given director simply been given a script to make. That director likely would have stuck to it.

The New Wave directors divided themselves into two groups: the Cahiers du Cinema faction, and the “Left Bank.” This second group consisted of filmmakers like Alan Resnais, known for Last Year at Marienbad (1961) and Chris Marker, who released La Jetée in 1962. The most prominent member of the Left Bank was the aforementioned Agnes Varda, who made La Pointe Courte (1955) and Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962). The directors of each group were largely supportive of and cordial with one another, with the Cahiers backing the projects of the Left Bank and appreciating the impact their work would leave behind.

Related: Breathless: How Jean-Luc Godard's Movie Changed Cinema Forever

The French New Wave's Continued Legacy

Band of Outsiders
Les Films Impéria

On top of showcasing the potential of independent narratives and a thematic resonance that matched their more mainstream counterparts, the New Wave films popularized — if not outright invented — several lasting techniques of continuity editing and cinematography that ultimately made the movement as successful and influential as it was.

In Breathless, Godard popularized the use of jump cuts — before this, filmmakers relied on dissolves. With jump cuts, they saved film stock by breaking shots apart, editing a cut into a single frame with the camera staying in place. This opened up a world of opportunities for filmmakers in terms of editing.

Shot with natural lighting, Breathless also featured lesser-known actors and was partially filmed with handheld cameras, several facets of filmmaking that became associated with independent movies. A later Godard movie, Week-end in 1967, popularized the tracking shot. He would attach a camera to a shopping cart in order to track the frame, which showed the world that filmmaking was more accessible when the crew thought outside the box behind-the-scenes, not just within the story.

This is what they inspired — revolutionary ideas and creative motives. The narratives of France’s New Wave combined realism and irony to form a distinct aesthetic, with ambiguous endings that would often transmit authorial commentaries on various social subjects. Their films made statements, and they still do today.

Driven by innovation and ambition, their projects were adored by audiences, critics, and perhaps more so by filmmakers. They represented independent filmmaking, exhibiting the potential advantages of budget restrictions, striving to make films against a system of guidelines like ripping up an instruction manual and assembling something on instinct. They advanced editing methods and camera movement, and created an atmosphere of self-reliance that would inspire hundreds of worldwide filmmakers in the coming decades to pick up a camera and film something.