New Wave (idea)

An international resurgence of cinema came about in the 1960s and 1970s, rich in experimentation, contemporary in style and content, intensely personal. Unrelated nations went through social and political upheavals, the death of Josef Stalin loosened the grip on Russian-controlled East European filmmaking and incidentally the old-school studio system, in the United States as well as abroad, was beginning to eat itself alive. The result was that each country sprung its' own New Wave of young and enthusiastic directors, often as a direct reaction to the pre-existing system of filmmaking. Collectively a body of work has been produced that was huge in volume and quality, and probably has not been equaled since. This is an attempt to map out the major (and minor) movements of the era, each with its' major (and minor) players and films.

The influences between the movements can be indirect and mapping them in this way can be downright misleading. The Hollywood filmmakers of the late 1940s and 1950s influenced the French and the Germans, the French influenced the East Europeans, the East Europeans influenced the French, etc, ad infinitum. In their turn the American filmmakers of the late 1960s and early 1970s, listed at the bottom, were influenced by all those who preceded them. The list is also in no way complete, and any feedback is appreciated.

• American Influences.
  • Robert Aldrich: Kiss Me Deadly, The Big Knife, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (later The Dirty Dozen, Ulzana's Raid)
  • Stanley Donen: On the Town, Singin' in the Rain, It's Always Fair Weather, Funny Face, The Pajama Game (later Charade, Two for the Road, Bedazzled)
  • Samuel Fuller: The Steel Helmet, Pickup on South Street, Run of the Arrow, Forty Guns (later Shock Corridor, The Naked Kiss)
  • Howard Hawks: Scarface, Bringing Up Baby, Only Angels Have Wings, His Girl Friday, Ball of Fire, To Have and Have Not, The Big Sleep, Red River, Monkey Business, Rio Bravo
  • Alfred Hitchcock: The 39 Steps, Rebecca, Shadow of a Doubt, Notorious, Strangers on a Train, Dial M for Murder, Rear Window, Vertigo, North by Northwest, Psycho, The Birds, Marnie
  • Fritz Lang: Metropolis, M, Scarlet Street, Rancho Notorious, The Big Heat, Beyond a Reasonable Doubt
  • Anthony Mann: Raw Deal, Winchester '73, The Naked Spur, Man of the West (later Cimarron, El Cid, The Fall of the Roman Empire)
  • Nicholas Ray: They Live by Night, In a Lonely Place, On Dangerous Ground, The Lusty Men, Johnny Guitar, Rebel Without a Cause, Bigger than Life
  • Douglas Sirk: All That Heaven Allows, Written on the Wind, The Tarnished Angels, Imitation of Life
  • Frank Tashlin: The Girl Can't Help It, Hollywood or Bust, Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?, Bachelor Flat
  
  
  
• Foreign Influences.
  • Robert Bresson: Diary of a Country Priest, A Man Escaped, Pickpocket, Au hasard Balthazar, Mouchette
  • Henri-Georges Clouzot: The Wages of Fear, Diabolique
  • Jean-Pierre Melville: Les enfants terribles, Bob le flambeur, Le Samouraï
  
  
  
• French New Wave (Nouvelle Vague). Reacted against contemporary French cinema of bloated middlebrow entertainment emphasizing high production values, the so-called Tradition of Quality.
  • Claude Chabrol: Le Beau Serge, Les Cousins, Les bonnes femmes, Les Biches, La Femme infidèle, Just Before Nightfall, Wedding in Blood, Violette (later The Ceremony, Merci pour le chocolat)
  • Jean-Luc Godard: À Bout de Souffle, A Woman is a Woman, Contempt, Band of Outsiders, Pierrot le fou, Alphaville, Masculine-Feminine, Week-end
  • Jacques Rivette: The Nun, L'amour fou, Celine and Julie Go Boating (later Va savoir)
  • Eric Rohmer: La collectionneuse, My Night at Maud's, Claire's Knee, Chloe in the Afternoon (later Autumn Tale, The Lady and the Duke)
  • François Truffaut: The 400 Blows, Shoot the Piano Player, Jules and Jim (later Day for Night, The Story of Adele H., Small Change, The Man Who Loved Women)
  
  
  
• French Left Bank School.
  • Jacques Demy: Lola, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, The Young Girls of Rochefort
  • Chris Marker: La Jetée (later Sans soleil)
  • Alain Resnais: Hiroshima mon amour, Last Year at Marienbad, Muriel (later Stavisky, Providence, Mon Oncle d'Amérique)
  • Agnès Varda: Cleo from 5 to 7 (later Vagabond)
  
  
  
• British Free Cinema. Cinematic extension of the Angry Young Men, rebelling against British cinema's conservatism and aversion to realism.
  • Lindsay Anderson: This Sporting Life, If... (later O Lucky Man!, Britannia Hospital)
  • Lorenza Mazzetti: Together
  • Karel Reisz: Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, Night Must Fall (later Morgan, Isadora, Who'll Stop the Rain, The French Lieutenant's Woman)
  • Tony Richardson: Look Back in Anger, The Entertainer, A Taste of Honey, The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (later Tom Jones, The Loved One, The Border, The Hotel New Hampshire, Blue Sky)
  
  
  
• Czech New Wave.
  • Vera Chytilová: Daisies
  • Jaromil Jires: The Joke
  • Pavel Jurácek: Every Young Man, A Case for a Young Hangman
  • Milos Forman: Black Peter, Loves of a Blonde, The Firemen's Ball (later One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Amadeus, Man on the Moon)
  • Ján Kadár: Defendant, The Shop on Main Street (later The Angel Levine)
  • Ivan Passer: Boring Afternoon, Intimate Lighting (later Born to Win, Cutter's Way)
  
  
  
• German New Wave (Neu Welle).
  
  • Rainer Werner Fassbinder: The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, Despair, The Marriage of Maria Braun
  • Werner Herzog: Even Dwarfs Started Small, Aguirre: The Wrath of God, Stroszek (later Fitzcarraldo, Invincible)
  • Alexander Kluge: Yesterday Girl, The Artist in the Circus Dome: Clueless
  • Volker Schlöndorff: Young Torless, A Degree of Murder, The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum (later The Tin Drum, Swann in Love, The Handmaid's Tale)
  • Jean-Marie Straub: Not Reconciled, The Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach
  • Wim Wenders: Alice in the Cities, Kings of the Road, The American Friend (later Paris, Texas, Wings of Desire, The Million Dollar Hotel)
  
  
  
• New Italian Cinema.
  • Michelangelo Antonioni: The Outcry, L'Avventura, Red Desert (later Blowup, Zabriskie Point, The Passenger)
  • Bernardo Bertolucci: Before the Revolution, The Spider's Stratagem (later The Conformist, Last Tango in Paris, The Last Emperor, The Sheltering Sky, Besieged)
  • Pier Paolo Pasolini: Accattone, The Gospel According to St. Matthew, Theorem (later The Decameron, The Canterbury Tales, Salo)
  
  
  
• Japanese New Wave. Reacted against the traditional filmmaking of Yasujiro Ozu, Kenji Mizoguchi, Akira Kurosawa.
  
  • Shohei Imamura
  • Nagisa Oshima: A Town of Love and Hope, The Cruel Story of Youth (later In the Realm of the Senses, Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence)
  • Masahiro Shinoda
  • Yoshishige Yoshida
  
  
  
• Polish New Wave. Reacted against Soviet-dictated style and content in post-World War II Communist Poland.
  
  • Andrzej Munk: The Men of the Blue Cross, Eroica, Bad Luck
  • Roman Polanski: Knife in the Water (later Repulsion, Rosemary's Baby, Chinatown, The Pianist)
  • Jerzy Skolimowski: Identification Marks: None, Barrier, Hands Up (later The Deep End, Moonlighting)
  • Andrzej Wajda: Kanal, Ashes and Diamonds, Siberian Lady Macbeth
  
  
  
• Russian New Wave.
  • Grigori Chukhraj: Ballad of a Soldier
  • Mikheil Kalatozishvili: The Cranes are Flying, I am Cuba
  • Andrei Konchalovsky: The First Teacher, Siberiade (later Runaway Train, Tango & Cash)
  • Sergei Paradjanov: Shadows of Our Forgotten Ancestors
  • Andrei Tarkovsky: Ivan's Childhood, Andrei Rublev, Solaris, Stalker
  
  
  
• American Movie Brats.
  • Peter Bogdanovich: Targets, The Last Picture Show, Paper Moon (later They All Laughed, Mask, The Cat's Meow)
  • Francis Ford Coppola: You're a Big Boy Now, The Godfather, The Conversation, Apocalypse Now (later One from the Heart, Rumble Fish, The Cotton Club, Bram Stoker's Dracula)
  • Brian De Palma: Greetings, Sisters, Carrie (later Dressed to Kill, Blow Out, Scarface, The Untouchables, Mission: Impossible, Femme Fatale)
  • Martin Scorsese: Mean Streets, Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull (later The King of Comedy, Goodfellas, Bringing Out the Dead, Gangs of New York)
  • Steven Spielberg: The Sugarland Express, Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind (later Raiders of the Lost Ark, E.T., Jurassic Park, Schindler's List, Saving Private Ryan, A.I., Minority Report)
  
  
  
• American non-Brats.
  • Robert Altman: MASH, McCabe & Mrs. Miller, The Long Goodbye, Nashville, 3 Women (later Popeye, The Player, Short Cuts, Gosford Park
  • Hal Ashby: The Landlord, Harold and Maude, The Last Detail, Being There
  • Sam Peckinpah: Ride the High Country, The Wild Bunch, The Ballad of Cable Hogue, Straw Dogs, Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia