A DVD Guide to the French New Wave

The French New Wave, or La Nouvelle Vague, changed cinema by making streets, flats, cafés and ordinary conversations feel as expressive as studio sets. Emerging in the late 1950s, the movement questioned polished storytelling and encouraged filmmakers to work with lighter cameras, natural locations, fragmented editing and performances that seemed to unfold in real time.

For viewers accustomed to algorithmic streaming, exploring the movement on DVD offers a more deliberate experience. A physical disc can preserve the original aspect ratio, include valuable interviews and essays, and provide a satisfying route through films that may appear and disappear from Australian streaming catalogues. It also makes room for browsing by director, cinematographer, actor or label rather than by viewing history.

Rain City Video’s shelves reflect that kind of patient discovery, with recommendations that connect famous titles to overlooked films. A French New Wave collection does not have to begin with a large purchase. A few carefully chosen DVDs can open a path from François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard to Agnès Varda, Éric Rohmer, Claude Chabrol and Jacques Rivette.

Where the movement came from

The New Wave grew out of the writing and criticism of Cahiers du Cinéma. Critics including Truffaut, Godard, Rohmer and Rivette argued that directors should have a distinctive personal style, or auteur voice. They admired Hollywood filmmakers such as Alfred Hitchcock, Howard Hawks and Nicholas Ray, while criticising the rigid literary adaptations and studio conventions common in established French cinema.

When these critics began directing, they carried their arguments into practice. Low-budget production, handheld cinematography, location sound and jump cuts allowed them to shoot quickly and respond to the world around them. Paris became a central character: its boulevards, Metro entrances, bookshops and cramped apartments gave the films a restless, immediate texture.

The movement was also shaped by postwar youth culture. Characters listened to jazz, discussed movies, drifted between relationships and treated identity as something unfinished. A New Wave film can feel casual, yet its apparent looseness often conceals precise choices about rhythm, framing, literary reference and the relationship between audience and story.

Start with Truffaut’s human stories

François Truffaut is often the most welcoming entry point. The 400 Blows follows Antoine Doinel, a neglected Parisian boy whose school troubles and family tensions lead him towards petty rebellion. Its final freeze-frame is famous, but the film’s lasting strength comes from its tenderness, observational detail and sympathy for a child adults repeatedly fail to understand.

The Doinel story continues through Antoine and Colette, Stolen Kisses, Bed and Board and Love on the Run. Watching several of these films together reveals Truffaut’s interest in memory, romantic confusion and the awkward transition into adulthood. Jean-Pierre Léaud’s performance changes with the character, moving from wary adolescence to an adult still searching for emotional stability.

Other Truffaut DVDs show a darker and more formal side. Jules and Jim combines a triangular romance with rapid editing, voice-over, freeze-frames and an exuberant sense of movement. The Soft Skin is a controlled study of infidelity, while Day for Night explores filmmaking itself with affection and sly humour. Look for editions with interviews, documentaries or commentaries, since Truffaut’s ideas about cinema are especially rewarding in supplementary material.

Follow Godard’s radical experiments

Jean-Luc Godard offers a more disruptive route through the movement. Breathless follows small-time criminal Michel and American student Patricia through Paris, combining crime-film energy with digressive conversation and deliberate breaks in continuity. The jump cuts are its most recognisable feature, but the film’s deeper achievement is the way it makes viewers aware of editing, performance and cinematic convention.

A DVD of Vivre sa vie presents a more austere Godard. Divided into twelve tableaux, it follows Nana, a woman drawn into sex work, while treating her life through quoted philosophy, cinema references and carefully composed interiors. Contempt expands his concerns into widescreen colour, marital breakdown and a bitter portrait of the film industry, with locations that make the Mediterranean landscape part of the drama.

Godard’s films reward repeated viewing rather than instant clarity. Pierrot le Fou uses vivid colour, pop music, advertising language and literary fragments to turn a lovers-on-the-run story into a meditation on consumer culture and violence. Some Australian viewers may first encounter these films through a university screening, a Melbourne cinematheque program or SBS, but DVD ownership allows the pauses and rewatches that Godard’s constructions invite.

Explore the wider New Wave circle

A French New Wave shelf should extend beyond the two best-known men. Agnès Varda’s Cléo from 5 to 7 follows a singer waiting for medical results across Paris, balancing anxiety with visual curiosity. Its near-real-time structure gives streets, strangers and passing encounters unusual importance. Varda’s La Pointe Courte is an earlier, more hybrid work, combining documentary observation with stylised domestic drama.

Éric Rohmer’s films are quieter and more conversational. In My Night at Maud’s, Claire’s Knee and The Green Ray, moral decisions emerge through talk, hesitation and shifting desire rather than dramatic spectacle. Claude Chabrol brings suspense and bourgeois unease to the movement, particularly in Le Beau Serge and Les Cousins. Jacques Rivette’s Céline and Julie Go Boating is longer, stranger and more playful, moving between theatre, friendship and an almost supernatural mystery.

The influence also travelled beyond Paris. French New Wave techniques shaped filmmakers in Britain, the United States, Japan and Australia, where directors adopted location shooting, improvisation and a more personal relationship to genre. A viewer in Sydney, Brisbane or Perth can therefore treat the movement as a living film language rather than a sealed historical period.

Choose DVDs with care

Australian disc buyers need to check technical details before ordering or purchasing. Most locally released DVDs use Region 4 and PAL standards, while many French DVDs are Region 2 and may require a region-free player. Blu-ray releases use a different regional system: Australia generally falls within Region B, although individual titles and labels can vary. Imported editions may also lack English subtitles or include only French-language extras.

The best edition is not always the newest or most expensive. Check whether the transfer preserves the original framing, whether subtitles are optional and removable, and whether the disc includes a restoration note. Criterion, BFI, Artificial Eye, StudioCanal and specialist French labels have often produced useful editions, but availability changes across the Australian market. Retailers, second-hand shops and specialist cinemas may stock different versions from those found in major chain stores.

Physical media can be built gradually. A practical approach is to begin with one Truffaut title, one Godard title and one film by Varda or Rohmer, then add films that respond to your tastes. This complements the advice in building a film library, especially when the aim is to buy durable editions rather than accumulate discs that will rarely be revisited.

Create a richer viewing ritual

The films benefit from attention to their sound and image. Use the original French track and subtitles rather than a dubbed version where possible. Listen for street noise, café chatter, car horns and pauses in conversation; these details often create as much atmosphere as the music. A modest television, soundbar or DVD player can be perfectly adequate if the disc is well mastered and the room is free from distractions.

A useful viewing sequence might pair The 400 Blows with Breathless, followed by Cléo from 5 to 7 and My Night at Maud’s. This progression moves from autobiographical coming-of-age drama to formal disruption, urban subjectivity and philosophical conversation. Later, Jules and Jim, Vivre sa vie, Pierrot le Fou and Céline and Julie Go Boating can broaden the picture considerably.

The social history of physical rental is part of this experience. Browsing a shop, reading a handwritten recommendation and discussing a director with another film lover offer a welcome alternative to solitary platform menus. Rain City Video’s account of rental store history helps explain why that shared culture still matters, even for viewers building collections in Australia.

A New Wave DVD shelf ultimately works best as a map rather than a checklist. Each title points towards another director, performer, editor, composer or movement. The reward is the gradual recognition that these films are connected by curiosity: curiosity about how stories are made, how people behave when conventions loosen, and how cinema can make an ordinary Paris afternoon feel newly alive.