In the following years, the Young Turks were successful film critics with almost full creative control at Le Cahier du Cinema but they wanted to make movies of their own. 

 

So they did and applied the philosophy they had spent years thinking about: Most of them started with short films. Truffaut shot Les Mistons in 1957 and Jean Luc Godard, Une Histoire d’Eau in 1961, which was a revolutionary short film for the time and very representative of new wave ideas. Shot on location, with natural lights and non-professional actors.

 

Here are a few of the full-length features that are most associated with the French New Wave today: 

 

Le Beau Serge (1958) by Claude Chabrol 

 

À Bout de Soufle (1960)  Jean-Luc Godard 

 

Hiroshima, Mon Amour (1959) Alain Resnais 

Les Quatre Cents Coups (1959) by François Truffaut was the first film to bring international attention to the French movement because, despite its small budget, it was critically acclaimed at the 1959 Cannes Film Festival. This is when the phrase “French New Wave” popped up.

 

Fun Fact: The term was first used in a book about the French youth’s lifestyle changing in the ‘50s and was later appropriated by journalists to talk about the film craze.