I.

Introduction

New Wave (cinema) (in French, “nouvelle vague”), term coined in 1958 by the journalist Françoise Giroud in an article for the magazine L’Express about the concerns and activities of young people in France. It was quickly applied to the explosion of new French film-making talent that came on the scene within a few months in 1958-1959. Ironically, it was first applied to Les Tricheurs (1958), a film about young people by Marcel Carné, the director of several of the most highly regarded “poetic realist” films of the 1930s, who bitterly resented the decline his reputation suffered as the opinions of the critics and future directors who spearheaded the New Wave became more influential.