Let’s put aside the argument about which movie the French New Wave started with, let’s assume that the first spark of this trend was crashed by the Legendary filmmaker Agnès Varda, which we lost in March, with the Parallel Lives – La Pointe-Courte.
French young filmmakers created a different, dynamic, unprecedented understanding that eliminated the boundary between the fictional film and the documentary, taking the cinema out of the four walls of the shooting studios. Other master directors such as François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Éric Rohmer, Claude Chabrol, Jacques Rivette and Jacques Demy passed through this road opened by Varda. From now on, nothing in cinema would be as before.
Of course, it is not possible to limit this innovation wave, which started to be felt in France with the 1960s and make its effect from England to Japan, not only with cinema. Because this innovation fire has been effective in a wide area from street movements to pop culture. Street events in Paris in 1968 accelerated as a result of the dismissal of cinematic director Henri Langlois. Or Anna Karina, one of the unforgettable figures of the New Wave, Jean-Luc Godard’s muse, has become a pop icon in the internet age today.
Of course, it was unthinkable that music, which is an art that is directly related to social or cultural transformations, to stay away from the wide area of French New Wave. In many masterpiece-level works we can include in this stream, we can hear music composed by important musicians such as Michel Legrand, Georges Delerue, and Jean Costantin, making very powerful contributions to the inspiring spirit of these films.
It will be incomplete to limit the influence of the current, which has had such a great impact on the artistic and social field, to the tunes that we have heard only in the movies. Undoubtedly, Nouvelle Vague is one of the most important responses of the French New Wave in the field of music. Born out of a partnership of French musicians Marc Collin and Olivier Libaux, the band combines the energetic spirit of genres such as punk, new wave and post-punk with the joyful spirit of Bossa Nova in places.
With the attitude of many legendary bands and artists, from Joy Division to Depeche Mode, from The Clash to The Smiths, by reinterpreting their songs in their own filters, the directors who are the representatives of the New Wave movement recreate the spirit of the films that inspire them with another cinema understanding. Well, we can talk about the similarity.
All about French New Wave Cinema.
Visits: 86
