Here’s a list of some great resources for studying the films and key figures of the French New Wave. These will be helpful for anyone following along with our current podcast series.
Watching
The Criterion Channel
You can find many films from the French New Wave in various collections and with great special features on the Criterion Channel, there will be some holes but it’s probably the most comprehensive one-stop shop for the French New Wave.
Kanopy
Kanopy is a service used by many libraries that allows you to stream films for free based on digital “tickets.” There is a great selection of classic films and many from the French New Wave.
Just Watch
If you want to know where to watch a specific film, Just Watch is a great resource that shows where films are available to rent and stream on pretty much every streaming service.
Reading
Cahiers du Cinema in English
Many of the French New Wave directors started out by writing film criticism for the Cahiers du Cinema (Notebooks on Cinema) magazine. Here is a PDF collection of articles and editions of the magazine that have been translated into English.
A History of the French New Wave Cinema
This book offers a fresh look at the social, economic, and aesthetic mechanisms that shaped French film in the 1950s, as well as detailed studies of the most important New Wave movies of the late 1950s and early 1960s (via GoodReads).
Rent the book digitally on Internet Archive.
Hitchock/Truffaut
A collected and transcribed record of a series of interviews between Alfred Hitchcock and François Truffaut. Covering everything from technique to theory, this book became a definitive handbook for nearly all of the influential filmmakers of the generation that followed, including the American New Wave.
You can also listen to the audio of the full conversations included in the book here.
Listening
Here are a few of our previous episodes that have touched on films from the French New Wave:
The Filmlings 