Screen Studies: French New Wave

Original writings by and interviews with filmmakers and critics such as Godard, Truffaut and Bazin, some newly translated for this edition, are accompanied by critical and contextualising commentary by the editors, leading authorities in the field.

The French New Wave was perhaps the biggest - and briefest - explosion in the history of world cinema, with more than hundred French directors shooting debut features between 1958 and 1964. Its aftershocks are still being felt today. Filmmakers came to be seen as outstanding artists rather than mere studio technicians, paving the way for contemporary cinematic auteurs. This volume begins by tracing the social and cultural changes of postwar France that gave birth to the New Wave then examines in detail the careers of artists like Alain Renais and Jean-Luc Godard.

Masculine Singular is an original interpretation of French New Wave cinema by one of France's leading feminist film scholars. Sellier argues that gender relations and the construction of sexual identities were the primary subject of New Wave cinema, drawing on sociological surveys, box office data, and popular magazines of the period, as well as analyses of specific New Wave films.

This volume is the first title to comprehensively analyse the links between the New Wave and the New Novel, exploring intellectual figures such as Roland Barthes and Jorge Luis Borges, and their relationship with French cinema and its theorists.

The directors of the French New Wave were the original film geeks: a collection of celluloid-crazed cinephiles with a background in film criticism and a love for American auteurs. This guide reviews and analyses all the major films in the movement and profiles its principal stars.

A young boy, left without attention, delves into a life of petty crime.

A small-time thief steals a car and impulsively murders a motorcycle policeman. Wanted by the authorities, he reunites with a hip American journalism student and attempts to persuade her to run away with him to Italy.

In a strange and isolated chateau, a man becomes acquainted with a woman and insists that they have met before.

Cleo, a singer and hypochondriac, becomes increasingly worried that she might have cancer while awaiting test results from her doctor.

Decades of a love triangle concerning two friends and an impulsive woman.