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Editing in À bout de souffle (France, 1960)
Before reading this post it would be a good idea to watch the film’s opening: In any concise guides to film history, Jean-Luc Godard’s A bout de souffle (Breathless) is accredited with introducing the...
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Bonnie and Clyde (US, 1967)
Bonnie and Clyde broke the mould of Hollywood product and was probably the film that lay the seeds for the New Hollywood cinema of the early ’70s as it’s doubtful that Columbia would have made Easy...
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Tirez sur le pianiste (Shoot the Pianist, France 1960)
Tirez sur le pianiste was Truffaut’s second feature, following on from the critical and commercial success of Les quatre cents coups (The 400 Blows). It failed to emulate the success of its...
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Varda and the Nouvelle Vague
All praise Godard and Truffaut, but let’s not forget another true auteur in Agnès Varda. To name her position in this celebrated movement, Varda was associated with the (so-called) ‘Left Bank’...
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Bonnie and Clyde 2: Genre and New Wave
Ever since Nick posted a short piece on Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde and its links to the French New Wave, we’ve been inundated with visitors searching for ‘Bonnie and Clyde’ – and some days 20-25%...
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Nouvelle Vague Directors: Jacques Demy
Jacques Demy (1931-1990) is the New Wave director who, like Louis Malle, is difficult to categorise. Some link him to the ‘Left Bank Group’, but this is primarily because he married Agnès Varda in...
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Black God, White Devil (Deus e o Diabo na Terra do Sol, Brazil, 1964)
I guess the English title has the benefit of pithiness that the original title (God and the Devil in the Land of Sun) but suggests that the film is about race when it isn’t. The film is about...
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Unter dir die Stadt (2010): German Screen Studies Network #1
At the inaugural symposium of the German Screen Studies Network at King’s College, London in July, a number of films were screened at London’s Goethe Institut to complement the conference’s theme of...
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A Blonde in Love (Lásky jedné plavovlásky, Czechoslovakia 1966)
This fascinating youth pic, from the Czech New Wave, both ‘universalises’ the teenage (or early-20s) experience and sets in squarely in its time. The time was just before the ‘Prague Spring’, but...
View ArticleAscenseur pour l’échafaud (Lift to the Scaffold, France 1958)
Ascenseur pour l’échafaud is the latest cinema re-release by the British Film Institute. The film has often been argued to be the first ‘French New Wave’ film or at least an important pre-cursor’ to...
View ArticleGüeros (Mexico 2014)
Güeros is an unusual and exciting film. It’s particularly remarkable as a début film – but its director Alonso Ruizpalacios was already an experienced theatre and TV director who had previously won...
View ArticleAudition (Kdyby ty muziky nebyly/Konkurs, Czechoslovakia 1963)
MUBI celebrated the achievements of Milos Forman, who died in April this year, by streaming two of his earliest films. The first, completed in 1963, comprises two short films put together ‘after the...
View ArticleDiamonds of the Night (Démanty noci, Czechoslovakia 1964)
One of the few things you can be sure about in Jan Němec’s début film, and contribution to the then nascent Czech new wave, is that the protagonists are on the run from the Nazis. Co-scripted by Němec...
View ArticleA Kind of Loving (UK 1962)
In a recent post on The Day the Earth Caught Fire I suggested that British new wave films had a tendency to be misoygnist (which garnered much disagreement in the comments) and two films I’ve seen...
View ArticleThe Girl (Eltávozott nap, Hungary 1968)
This début fiction feature by the documentarist Márta Mészáros is a stunning portrait of a young woman in Hungary searching with steely determination for a sense of her own identity in a society...
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