The New Wave’s American Reception

That the New Wave films immediately provoked huge enthusiasm is manifest in their significant critical and/or box office success and in the enormous amount of press reaction they elicited.

Ginette Vincendeau¹

Along with most of the arts in France, the cinema spent a long postwar period in the doldrums. But when De Gaulle came to power, his government announced that it did not intend to send good screen subsidies after the same old bad ideas. . . . Suddenly the New Wave was rolling, and on the crest of it dozens of ambitious young cinéastes went surfboarding to success.

Time²

News and summaries of the impressive gains by a new generation of New Wave French directors began very early on in the mainstream American press. While young scholar Noël Burch contributed a serious, even scathing overview of 1959 and its Cannes Film Festival winners for Film Quarterly,³ observers in the popular press soon added their own more upbeat perspectives on the films and personalities that seemed to be capturing so much attention around the world. By the fall of 1959, when the first of the year’s French films arrived in the United States, even Time magazine featured a story explaining and assessing what they boldly called Les Vagueistes. Newsweek followed suit, while The New Yorker and New York Times regularly reviewed New Wave films and included interviews with major stars and directors as the young French talents came ashore for their first publicity tours. By the winter of 1962, a canon of New Wave figures was solidly in place, so much so that Esquire began an article on “Paris in the Sixties: The Great Upsurge” with caricatures of highprofile, core participants hanging out at a café: Alain Resnais, François Truffaut, and Jean-Luc Godard are all there, alongside actors Jeanne Moreau, Jean-Paul Belmondo, and Françoise Brion, seated just across from Françoise Sagan. According to Esquire, “The New Wave is the most exciting art form of the Sixties, an integral part of the intellectual and cultural life that keeps Paris supreme among the world’s great cities.”⁴ This new Paris was populated by a young, creative generation, and Americans were eager to engage with its lively trends and learn more about the participants. In many ways, the American fascination with “cosmopolitan Frenchness,”⁵ from Audrey Hepburn’s Givenchy fashions to the Kennedys’ new French chef in the White House, was symptomatic of an era when France meant style and elegance.⁶ However, the casual, contemporary behavior and dialogue in New Wave movies seemed to give another, more direct and less pretentious peek into “being French.”

The New Wave’s scope, quality, and meaning differed from place to place, as only a portion of the most important films gradually reached eager world audiences. But in the United States, the New Wave was particularly significant. The U.S. perception and understanding of the New Wave, however, was also shaped by absences and gaps. Since American critics and audiences did not have ready access to many of the movies, social forces, or personalities who made up the French jeune cinéma (young cinema), their New Wave quickly became an even narrower roster of directors here than was the case in France. The United States contributed to a condensed perception of the movement that, for better or worse, went on to shape how many understood the French New Wave from the first days and ultimately for years to come.

American interest in the New Wave was immediate. The New York Times pounced upon the phenomenon early in June of 1959, informing readers that “‘[t]he New Wave’ (‘La Nouvelle vague’) as they are termed, is getting a tremendous play in the French press. Apart from the fact that most of them are friends, ex-film critics, under 30, wealthy (through family, marriage, or inheritance), ambitious, and like to make lowbudget films with little-known actor friends and top cameraman Henri Decae, there is very little binding them together as a school or movement.”⁷ Interestingly, in addition to signaling Decae as a vital member...