Product Description

The French New Wave cinema is arguably the most fascinating of all film movements, famous for its exuberance, daring and avant-garde techniques. This is a fresh look at the social, economic and aesthetic mechanisms that shaped French film in the 1950s, as well as detailed studies of the most important New Wave movies of the late 1950s and early 1960s. Richard Neupert first tracks the precursors to New Wave cinema, showing how they provided blueprints for those who would follow. Jean-Pierre Melville, Alexandre Astruc, and the young Agnes Varda all offered valuable narrative lessons and cheap production models. They were followed by Roger Vadim and Louis Malle, whose sexy storylines and lively new narrative strategies helped define a marketable, youthful cinema. But Neupert demonstrates that it was a core group of critics-turned-directors from the magazine Cahiers du Cinema - especially Francois Truffaut, Claude Chabrol, and Jean-Luc Godard - who really revealed that filmmaking was changing forever. Later, their cohorts Eric Rohmer, Jacques Rivette, Jacques Doniol-Valcroze, and Pierre Kast continued in their own unique ways to expand the range and depth of the New Wave.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #862270 in Books
• Published on: 2003-01-31
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 368 pages

Customer Reviews

Starting point
This is a good overview of the topic. Excellent for newcomers. Written in a very readable style.

Excellent overview of the French New wave
Very well written overview of the films that defined the french New Wave. The first chapter explains the historical, economic, political and cultural context (post-war France) and explains why there was a demand for a new kind of cinema. Remaining chapters presents directors like Melville, Truffaut, Godard, Varda, Resnais, Malle and some more with biographical info and film analysis. Each film analysis is excellent and made me go and buy the movies on DVD. Fortunately, almost every movie presented in the book has been released on high quality DVD from labels like Criterion, Masters of Cinema and BFI. Even early films like Melvilles Silence de la Mer is now available. To sum up: I can really recommend the book to everyone who wants to know more about French Cinema, and understand the New Wave in particular. It's very well written and very clear on a subject that in other cases has been presented in an over-theorized way. Great job!