Key narrative + technical conventions of the French New Wave approach to film making. Left & right bank approach.
Some narrative and technical conventions of the French New Wave are:
- Discontinuity editing;
- Focus on the characters emotions and portraying them through the character’s absurd dialogue;
- No establishing shot- action in a scene starts with “in media res”;
- No master shot, hard to tell positions of characters;
- jump cuts are left in
- Use of long take
- Real locations
- Black and white
- Actors break the forth wall- extra diegetic gaze
- Extreme close ups for aesthetic purposes
In film, the left bank group embraced a loose association of writers and film-makers that consisted principally of the directors Chris Marker, Alain Resnais, and Agnès Varda. They had in common a background in documentary, a left wing political orientation, and an interest in artistic experimentation.
The “right bank” group is constituted of the more famous and financially successful New Wave directors associated with Cahiers du cinéma (Claude Chabrol, François Truffaut, and Jean-Luc Godard). Unlike the Cahiers group, Left Bank directors were older and less movie-crazed. They tended to see cinema alike to other arts, such as literature.