By: Nazia Adnin
Some of the most prominent pioneers among the group, including François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Éric Rohmer, Claude Chabrol, and Jacques Rivette, began their career as critics for the famous film magazine Cahiers du cinema. Cahiers co-founder and theorist André Bazin was a source of influence for the movement. Talking about the wave in an interview in 1961, Truffaut said, "the 'New Wave' is neither a movement, nor a school, nor a group, it's a quality".
Rebellious characters were in center of most of the films. These characters break rules, don’t have strong family bonds and have destructive behaviors. For instance in Breathless (Jean-Luc Godard, 1960), Michel steals a car in Marseille, steals his girlfriend’s money and kills a cop on the way to Paris. Costello from The Samurai (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1967) is a professional hitman who steals car, murders and constantly runs away from the police superintendent. The French New Wave era became so influential on international cinema that it is highly discussed and analyzed worldwide till the date. There may not have been any Scorsese, Soderbergh, or Tarantino without this film movement. The legacy of French New Wave still continues in contemporary cinema.
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