France's so-called New Wave was a confluence of pretension and mediocrity. It was first and foremost a mid-fifties school of film criticism that postulated that (1) cinema was of great intellectual import, probably too good for the masses, and that (2) most successful French directors before the publication of its fanzine, "Les Cahiers du Cinéma" (Marcel Carné, Julien Duvivier, Marcel L'Herbier, Jean Gremillon, Henri-George Clouzot, Jean Delannoy, Henri Decoin, to name a few) should be despised, shunned, bullied, ridiculed and persecuted or at least treated with suspicion while most American directors of the same period (except for Wyler, Zinnemann and Stevens) were to be considered as "geniuses" and "pioneers". It was therefore based on a misunderstanding which made it more important to talk intelligently and pretentiously about films (thereby excluding most people from film appreciation) than to make films that people would actually want to see.
The movement had two cliquish firebrands, Jean-Luc Godard - who made increasingly unwatchable and solipsistic films all through his career - and François Truffaut - an acid-tongued journalist who attained a certain commercial success with the help of snobism, in spite of his idiotic and dogmatic principles and his obvious lack of talent and humanity. They will always be remembered as the two vindictive and parochial "mean girls" of French cinema and judged by posterity as "dwarves standing on the shoulders of the giants that preceded them" (e.g.: Jean Renoir, René Clair and Sacha Guitry). Their main legacy is the sad fact that very few of France's really important films (i.e. pre-New Wave) have been preserved and restored for posterity, unlike their own idiotic opuses. For good measure, Truffaut also despised the work of Jean Gabin, Michèle Morgan, Gerard Philippe and Michel Simon.
This misunderstanding also means that all the more successful, quietly innovative or truly revolutionary films of the period have been claimed as "New Wave" when they simply were not (e.g.: the best films of Chabrol, Malle, Varda, Demy, Resnais and Rohmer) and their directors have repeatedly said so, while the films of their "enemies" were excluded from any form of recognition (e.g.: Marcel Carné's "Les Tricheurs" and Julien Duvivier's "La Fête à Henriette").
"Le Beau Serge" is a case in point. It can only be considered "New Wave" in that it is made with no money by a young, dedicated but inexperienced director who tried to imitate his elders and betters and made many mistakes along the way. At that point, Malle didn't know how to sustain attention, direct actors or put a final product together (look at the editing and listen to the music, all dreadful).
This film is only watchable today because of Gérard Blain's heartfelt James Dean impression, Blain having been exploited by the New Wave for his charm and screen presence (and the fact he was married to Bernadette Lafond) and then vomited as soon as he started producing intelligent films that didn't carry the official New Wave label (e.g.: "Les Amis", 1970).
Everything I wrote here has been written countless times before but it can never be repeated often enough.
Chabrol himself once said: "There is no new wave, there is only the ocean."
The movement had two cliquish firebrands, Jean-Luc Godard - who made increasingly unwatchable and solipsistic films all through his career - and François Truffaut - an acid-tongued journalist who attained a certain commercial success with the help of snobism, in spite of his idiotic and dogmatic principles and his obvious lack of talent and humanity. They will always be remembered as the two vindictive and parochial "mean girls" of French cinema and judged by posterity as "dwarves standing on the shoulders of the giants that preceded them" (e.g.: Jean Renoir, René Clair and Sacha Guitry). Their main legacy is the sad fact that very few of France's really important films (i.e. pre-New Wave) have been preserved and restored for posterity, unlike their own idiotic opuses. For good measure, Truffaut also despised the work of Jean Gabin, Michèle Morgan, Gerard Philippe and Michel Simon.
This misunderstanding also means that all the more successful, quietly innovative or truly revolutionary films of the period have been claimed as "New Wave" when they simply were not (e.g.: the best films of Chabrol, Malle, Varda, Demy, Resnais and Rohmer) and their directors have repeatedly said so, while the films of their "enemies" were excluded from any form of recognition (e.g.: Marcel Carné's "Les Tricheurs" and Julien Duvivier's "La Fête à Henriette").
"Le Beau Serge" is a case in point. It can only be considered "New Wave" in that it is made with no money by a young, dedicated but inexperienced director who tried to imitate his elders and betters and made many mistakes along the way. At that point, Malle didn't know how to sustain attention, direct actors or put a final product together (look at the editing and listen to the music, all dreadful).
This film is only watchable today because of Gérard Blain's heartfelt James Dean impression, Blain having been exploited by the New Wave for his charm and screen presence (and the fact he was married to Bernadette Lafond) and then vomited as soon as he started producing intelligent films that didn't carry the official New Wave label (e.g.: "Les Amis", 1970).
Everything I wrote here has been written countless times before but it can never be repeated often enough.
Chabrol himself once said: "There is no new wave, there is only the ocean."