nd 1950s, but praised the work of 1930s French film- makers Jean Renoir and Jean Vigo and the work of the Italian neo-realists, including Roberto Rossellini and Vittorio De Sica. They also championed certain Hollywood directors, for example, Alfred Hitchcock, Nicholas Ray and Howard Hawks, who they saw as auteurs (authors) of their films, despite the fact that they worked within studio systems making genre pictures. These directors were labeled auteurs because of distinctive themes that could be detected running throughout the body of their work.
Nottingham (2008) suggests that while the New Wave era in France "ended" effectively in the 1970s, its influence continues to be felt today. The angst of the post-war years is important in defining this genre:
A distinctive philosophy - existentialism - evolved in France in the post-war years. This philosophy, associated with Jean-Paul Sartre and other French intellectuals, was a major influence on La Nouvelle Vague. Existentialism stressed the individual, the experience of free choice, the absence of any rational understanding of the universe and a sense of the absurdity in human life. Faced with an indifferent world an existentialist seeks to act authentically, using free will and taking responsibility for all their actions, instead of playing pre-ordained roles dictated by society. The characters in French New Wave films are often marginalized, young anti-heroes and loners, with no family ties, who behave spontaneously, often act immorally and are frequently seen as anti- authoritarian (Nottingham, 2008, p. 2).
One might argue that many of these same concerns are found in the work of newer French filmmakers working within the context of a "national cinema" that owes much to New Wave ethics.
In discussing the French New Wave, Jean Douchet (1998) stated that the strategy of these films was to undermine the cinema of fact and of observation and the ci...