New Wave

THE GLOBAL IMPACT OF THEFRENCH NEW WAVE

The impact of the nouvelle vague was such that its films were seen very widely. This undoubtedly had important effects on and implications for young filmmakers in many parts of the world. The widespread distribution and enthusiastic reception of the films helped to create conditions in which innovative work in other countries could be made, seen, and discussed. Compared to the 1950s, there was a veritable explosion of films that rejected old subjects and, usually, old forms as well—certainly insofar as they strived for "gloss" and perfection—often marked by a blurring of fiction and documentary and increasingly politicized as the 1960s progressed. More or less contemporary with the French New Wave was the so-called "British new wave," at its height approximately 1959 to 1963, with directors like Tony Richardson, Lindsay Anderson, John Schlesinger, and Jack Clayton. Also given the "new wave" title by critics was the new cinema emerging in Czechoslovakia, at its height in the period from 1963 to 1968, with directors like Miloŝ Forman, Vera Chytilová, Jaromil Jireŝ, Evald Schorm, Jan Nêmec, and Jiří Menzel; other Eastern bloc countries also saw the emergence of innovative work, with directors like Roman Polanski and Jerzy Skolimowski in Poland; Miklós Jancsó, András Kovács, and István Szabó in Hungary; and Dus̆an Makavejev and Aleksander Petrović in Yugoslavia. In Western Europe new filmmakers appeared: Bernardo Bertolucci, Marco Bellocchio, Ermanno Olmi, Pier Paolo Pasolini, and Francesco Rosi in Italy; Bo Widerberg and Vilgot Sjöman in Sweden; and later, Risto Jarva and Jaakko Pakkasvirta in Finland. In Germany the 1962 Oberhausen Manifesto, openly indebted to the nouvelle Jan Ne vague , called for a new indigenous German cinema of auteurs and attacked their own "Daddy's cinema"; with the introduction of loans for first features and the establishment of a film school in the mid-1960s, the New German Cinema began to emerge. Alexander Kluge's Abschied von gestern ( Yesterday Girl , 1966) was followed by films by Volker Schlöndorff, Jean-Marie Straub and̀le Huillet, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Werner Herzog, and Wim Wenders. Farther afield, in Japan Nagisa Oshima was making his first films in 1959–1960; in Brazil, Cinema Nôvo saw its beginnings in 1961–1962 with first features by Glauber Rocha and Ruy Guerra; the early to mid-1960s brought the first features by Claude Jutra, Gilles Groulx, and Jean-Pierre Lefebvre in Quebec; in India, the radical 1960s work of Ritwik Ghatak was followed by the early work of Mrinal Sen and Shyam Benegal.

The political and cultural turbulence of the late 1950s and 1960s that followed the birth and baptism of the French New Wave was to be seen very clearly in these new cinemas. Inevitably, the French New Wave was seen as a major influence on the various new waves, new cinemas, and young cinemas that came after it. In several cases the "new wave" label was borrowed to associate these movements with the French New Wave, whether as a marketing tool or a broad critical category. What is the relationship of these new waves to the French New Wave? Although in all cases there was some relationship, or connection, or influence, in reality the question is very difficult to answer.

The nouvelle vague showed that, given the right circumstances, young filmmakers could change dramatically the face and reputation of a country's cinema without working their way up by the conventional routes. The nouvelle vague also showed that there were different kinds of stories to tell and radically different ways to tell them—lessons not lost on young filmmakers in Czechoslovakia or Brazil or Quebec. But should the nouvelle vague be seen as the instigator of and chief influence on the various new waves and new cinemas that followed in the 1960s, or as one manifestation—though perhaps the earliest and most visible, and important because of that—of seismic changes taking place in cinema and society in different parts of the world at roughly the same time? The 1950s and 1960s saw developments in cinema and other areas of culture that had a global impact, such as the potent legacy of neorealism, the precipitous decline in audiences for Hollywood and other mainstream cinemas under the impact of television and the emergent art cinema, the growth of youth culture, the development of new technologies in cameras, film stock, and sound recording, and the increasing accessibility of both the ideas and the practice of Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956). In the political realm, the end of one kind of empire and the development of another and the consequent shift in the balance of global power, the rise of the New Left in the West and challenges to Soviet-imposed socialism in Eastern Europe, also had global effects. These new forces combined with more specifically national contexts—very different in, say, Britain, or Czechoslovakia, or Brazil—to produce changes in national cinemas that were marked as much by their similarities as by their differences.

It may also be that the cultural and economic imperatives that so often drive cinema result in cyclical efforts to liberate or "purify" the medium from the accumulation of unquestioned conventions that went before. In such a perspective, the French New Wave followed in the steps of, and shared some of the concerns of, Italian neorealism, while the Danish Dogma 95, for example, draws on the nouvelle vague as a crucial reference point.