There is a commonly held assumption that the Nouvelle Vague (New Wave) movement was a left-wing, politically-charged attempt to destroy the film-making establishment and re-write the rules of Cinema for a new generation – a sort of cinematic punk rock, if you like. It is easy to deduce, from the protagonists’ involvement in the May ’68 uprising, their outright written condemnation of an entire generation of filmmakers, and from the sheer impact of their output, how such an assumption could arise, but it is entirely misconceived. The principal protagonists: filmmakers François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Chabrol and Eric Rohmer, were a group of relatively cosy right wing intellectuals who, having bitterly criticised the state of French cinema in print, felt compelled to show how they thought it should be done. Insodoing, they mined numerous influences of their own, including documentary films, Jean Renoir, and most of all, the cool aesthetics of American crime cinema. The idea of a ‘Nouvelle Vague’ arose over a decade later, when it was concluded that a revolution had indeed occurred, not just in Cinema, but in all of French culture. As is often the case, commentators were thus moved to categorise the phenomenon, and gradually suck various directors and writers into it, after the event.
In hindsight, the principal techniques espoused by the New Wave: the use of handheld cameras, outdoor locations, unconventional narratives and unknown actors, were nearly all explainable by a lack of funds. The key tangible difference which marked this rather disparate collection of young filmmakers out from what had gone before, was the achievement of ‘Cinéma Vérité’ (a quest for ‘truth’ through feature film-making) as opposed to the ‘Cinéma de Papa’ (the academistic and formulaic pseudo-literary tradition). The latter ‘daddy cinema’ had strangled the industry since the war and according to Truffaut, was infantilising France and ripping the heart out of the ‘Septième Art’ which the French had invented with the Lumière brothers and Méliès, and without their knowing it, they were about to re-invent.
The colossal influence of the movement (in particular that of Godard, whose pronouncement: “A story should have a beginning, a middle, and an end… but not necessarily in that order” remains as iconic a statement as any in the medium) may be important to film scholars and enthusiasts, but what of the films themselves? How have these historical timepieces survived over time? Not all of them well, if we’re honest. A handful, though, remain untouchable classics. Les Quatre Cents Coups was one of the first key films of the Nouvelle Vague and won Truffaut the best director prize at the Cannes Film Festival. It is possibly the finest example of the movement’s richest achievement: Cinema Vérité, in its triumphant depiction of a raw and exhilarating truth about childhood. The film tells the story of a misunderstood adolescent, Antoine Doinel (Jean-Pierre Léaud) who bunks off school (‘faire les 400 coups’, hence the title) and gradually drifts into a life of petty crime. The SMIC, whose appeal is as direct and straightforward as any SMIC could be, comes from a scene where a puppet show is performed at the school. The children gaze in awe upon the crude marionettes, whilst Antoine and his accomplice sit at the back of the hall and plot their next escapade. Without exposition, Truffaut portrays so much about childhood (its innocence and its sophistication)…as well as the very nature of Cinema itself.
