Nouvelle Vague: Richard Linklater’s ode to French New Wave, an influential artistic movement

Jean Luc-Godard’s 1960 film Breathless was less a story and more of an attitude.

As a seminal film in the French New Wave, Breathless heralded Godard as a filmmaker to watch, in both senses of the word, and the upending of the established cinematic order.

Starring Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg, Breathless was about a young criminal who steals a car, shoots dead a policeman and then hides out in Paris with his American girlfriend until his actions catch up with him.

It’s not a suspenseful thriller with recognisable genre beats, but a loose hang, where scenes of strolling down a boulevard or lazing in bed have as much potency as a chase.

With Breathless, Godard ditched the stultifying surrounds of a studio, shooting on location, usually by stealth as he didn’t obtain any permissions, with minimal or no lighting, using handheld cameras, and then used jump cuts in the editing.

It could be discombobulating, but it was also exciting. It felt fresh and young, it was a critical and commercial success. Godard helped make the alternative the mainstream.

A key figure in the movement along with names that are now so well-known, they could mononymous – (Francois) Truffaut, (Claude) Chabrol, (Eric) Rohmer, (Agnes) Varda, (Jacques) Demy, (Jacques) Rivette, (Louis) Malle and (Alain) Resnais – these young filmmakers chose freedom and iconoclasm to express themselves through art.

Their films would be an extension of themselves, not the studio or the producer who funded it, bending those artistic visions to their commercial demands.

This is a class of filmmakers that would go on to influence the likes of Steven Soderbergh, Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino and Richard Linklater.

As Linklater put it in an interview with Deadline, “They brought their own originality and kind of lowered the stakes of cinema, in a way. Like, every film didn’t have to be some epic, important thing.

“They were in opposition to their own French cinema. They were kind of at war with it, and they made short films and stuff, but they were critics, you know. They were writers.”

The prolific Linklater became an even more serious student of French New Wave cinema when he made his latest film, Nouvelle Vague, an ode the movement and to Godard.

Shot in black-and-white, and with the appearance of that same looseness of spirit (although it was actually meticulously planned), Nouvelle Vague tells the story of the making of Breathless, charting an impatient Godard from the offices of Cahiers du Cinema, the influential film magazine where he was a critic, to the streets of Paris, a small film crew in tow.

Working with an almost entirely French crew and cast (Linklater and American actor Zoey Deutch, who plays Seberg, are the exceptions), the filmmaker explores what it means to have the burning ambition of artistry pulsing through your veins, through the lens of a fun and, it must be said, delightful romp.

Like with any making-of depiction, there are drama and laughs, as Seberg gets increasingly frustrated with Godard’s laissez-faire approach – there’s no script, no real schedule (it’s a case of turn up and Godard films what he feels like, what he has ideas for, if any), and no make-up.

But what can come off as Godard’s insouciance is actually urgency – a desire to prove his worth as an artist, a need to make the film on his terms, and the seriousness of his vision.

Godard’s friends and Cahiers du Cinema compatriots Truffaut and Chabrol were already gaining notice – and Godard was in the audience at the 1959 Cannes Film Festival when Truffaut premiered The 400 Blows, a now-classic that was instantly lauded as an invigoration of the form.

It’s a compelling portrait of a young man at the beginning of his artistic life, a companion piece to another Linklater film out later this month, Blue Moon starring Ethan Hawke as lyricist Lorenz Hart, which looks at an artist at the very end of it.

The idea that filmmaking should have a personal element to it, the basis of auteur theory, was at the core of French New Wave, and Linklater’s ode to Godard and Breathless, is a reminder that in the 21st century, it’s a rare thing for that to be valued.

It can also be a call-to-arms to discover, or rediscover, a cinematic movement that is so foundational to some of your favourite filmmakers today.

So, when you’re done with Nouvelle Vague and Breathless, there’s a whole library of French New Wave to obsess over, but here are some starters:

The 400 Blows (Francois Truffaut): Drawing on his own childhood experiences, Truffaut’s semi-autobiographical film is about a young boy growing up and rebelling against the strictures of his parents and teachers.

Hiroshima mon Amour (Alain Resnais): Resnais was a documentary maker and his first narrative fiction feature, and there’s a gravity to this film about a French woman and a Japanese man who embark on an affair.

Les Bonnes Femmes (Claude Chabrol): A drama with a comedic bent about four Parisian women and their romantic entanglements.

Lola (Jacques Demy): Evoking predecessors The Blue Angel and Lola Montes, Demy’s naturalistic film is about a cabaret dancer (an effervescent Anouk Aimee) and the men who become enamoured with her.

Cleo from 5 to 7 (Agnes Varda): This almost formalist experiment takes place in real time over 90 minutes and follows a woman, Cleo, between the time she undertakes a test which will tell her if she has cancer, and the moment she discovers her fate.

Nouvelle Vague is in cinemas on January 8