Using portable equipment and requiring little or no set up time, the New Wave way of filmmaking often presented a documentary style. The often filmed in long takes from behind the actors and would also use non-actors who would walk in and out of the frame in the background.

The “Left Bank” filmmakers’ relationship to film was different to that of the five “Cahiers.” It was a collective impulse to steer French cinema away from film as an extension of literature, and toward the development of a cinematic language that stood for itself.

The “Right Bank” were constituted of the more famous and financially successful New Wave directors associated with Cahiers du cinéma (Claude Chabrol, François Truffaut, and Jean-Luc Godard)