Cinema & Nouvelle Vague
France is the birthplace of cinema. On December 28, 1895, the Lumière brothers screened the first public film at the Grand Café on Boulevard des Capucines in Paris — "L'Arrivée d'un train en gare de La Ciotat". The audience reportedly jumped up in fright. The age of moving pictures had begun.
Georges Méliès soon invented the trick film: His "Voyage to the Moon" (1902) is the first science fiction film in history. The iconic scene — a rocket hitting the moon in the eye — is known to half the world.
The Nouvelle Vague
In the late 1950s, a group of young filmmakers broke with everything that defined classic cinema. The Nouvelle Vague (New Wave) filmed with handheld cameras on the street, improvised dialogues, broke narrative conventions, and made auteur cinema the ideal.
- Jean-Luc Godard — "À bout de souffle" (Breathless, 1960) with Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg became the manifesto of the movement. Jump cuts, breaking the fourth wall, existential coolness
- François Truffaut — "Les 400 coups" (The 400 Blows, 1959) was the autobiographical breakthrough. Truffaut became the audience favorite of the Nouvelle Vague
- Agnès Varda — the "grandmother of the Nouvelle Vague" created a feminist masterpiece with "Cléo de 5 à 7" (1962), long before the term existed
- Éric Rohmer, Jacques Rivette, Claude Chabrol — each developed their own style, but all shared the belief that the director is the auteur (author) of their film
The Nouvelle Vague had a lasting influence on world cinema — from Scorsese to Tarantino to Korean cinema. France actively protects its cinema to this day: The funding system of the Centre National du Cinéma (CNC), the quota for French films on television, and the "exception culturelle" (cultural exception from free trade) ensure a vibrant film landscape. France produces over 200 films annually — the third-highest number worldwide after India and the USA.
The Cannes Film Festival is the most prestigious film festival in the world. The Palme d'Or is the highest award a film can receive.
