The Legacy of the French New Wave in Contemporary Cinema : From Eustache to Desplechin and Dumont

The Legacy of the French New Wave and Its Influence on Later French Cinema

The French New Wave not only brought about a radical transformation in the language of cinema and narrative techniques, but it also inspired generations of filmmakers in France and beyond. This essay explores how the legacy of the New Wave—directly or indirectly—has been reflected in the vision, style, and cinematic worldview of directors such as Jean Eustache, Philippe Garrel, Jacques Doillon, as well as those associated with the cinéma du look and the jeune cinéma français.

1. Jean Eustache

Eustache’s La Maman et la Putain is a telling example of this connection.

In one scene, there is a reference to Godard’s Une femme est une femme, when the character Alexandre explains a particular way of making a bed and mentions that he saw it in a film. This is a reference to Anna Karina in Godard’s film, and Alexandre utters the famous line: “That’s what films are for. To teach you how to live, how to make your bed.”

Some critics question the extent of Eustache’s indebtedness to the French New Wave. They argue that, like Philippe Garrel, his filmmaking style harks back more to silent cinema, giving visual power rooted in early cinematic traditions.

Eustache’s female actors, such as Françoise Lebrun and Isabelle Weingarten in La Maman et la Putain, have a nearly timeless appearance reminiscent of silent-era heroines, with pale round faces and heavy eye and lip makeup evoking Lillian Gish or Mary Pickford.

Unlike the often dynamic editing and camera movement found in Godard or Truffaut, Eustache employs simple, static framing. His camera frequently remains directly in front of the actors for close-ups, two-shots, and straightforward shot–reverse-shot compositions.

Nevertheless, it is worth noting that the French New Wave itself often paid homage to silent cinema. Godard and Truffaut revived techniques such as iris shots and masking, which had long fallen out of favor. Eustache’s bed-making reference in Une femme est une femme could itself nod to the tradition of visual comedy in burlesque cinema. Godard’s penchant for showing characters in quiet contemplation of artworks was also a clear tribute to early cinema.

Eustache has been cited as a model by later filmmakers such as Arnaud Desplechin.

2. Philippe Garrel

Garrel’s Elle a passé tant d’heures sous les sunlights (1985) exemplifies the New Wave’s influence.

The film is significant for its blending of life and cinema. Friends of Garrel, such as Jacques Doillon, appear in scenes that seem personal, discussing, for instance, their desire to film their children. Doillon’s reference to his daughter Lola and his film La Femme qui pleure (1979) lends an air of authenticity to the exchange.

Yet, the line between reality and fiction is blurred. When Garrel confesses to Doillon that he is in love with Myriem Roussel (who plays Marie), it is unclear whether this is a genuine confession or a fabricated gesture to further complicate reality and fiction.

In another scene, Garrel tells Chantal Akerman that he funded his film through a heroin deal—perhaps a documentary-style setup introducing a fictional element, or a bluff concealing a hidden truth.

The film also illustrates how Garrel (and/or his alter ego Bonnaffé) seeks to control life as one would a film—shouting “Cut!” when things go wrong. But cinema’s unflinching gaze can threaten life itself and hurt those we love. Garrel has admitted that Nico was right to accuse him of making films about their life rather than trying to ease her suffering.

What we learn from Garrel—like from Godard, Eustache, or Doillon—is that cinema becomes truly cinematic when it astonishes us with life itself, when something or someone reveals a moment of unscriptable truth on screen.

This entanglement of life and cinema that defines Garrel’s work is a core lesson from Jean-Luc Godard and the French New Wave.

Garrel’s use of silence, especially after 1968, can be interpreted as a form of self-imposed austerity tied to his rejection of mainstream cinema. It also provides a lesson in narrative economy.

A sequence in Elle a passé tant d’heures sous les sunlights set to Nico’s “All Tomorrow’s Parties” exemplifies this economy. The song does not clarify the scene but blends time periods and characters—Marie, Bonnaffé, Lou—in Garrel’s life. He too is cited by Arnaud Desplechin as a major influence.

3. Jacques Doillon

Doillon appears in Sunlights as one of Garrel’s filmmaker friends, speaking about his desire to film his children.

His Les Doigts dans la tête (1974) is often cited as his first truly personal auteur film.

Firmly anchored in the early 1970s, it focuses on two social phenomena: free love and open relationships, and the labor unrest following the May 1968 movements.

The story follows a young baker named Christophe involved with a girl named Rosette, who then begins a relationship with Liv, an outgoing Swedish girl who evokes Scandinavian liberalism and sexual freedom.

Like Eustache and Garrel, Doillon is seen as a model by next-generation filmmakers like Desplechin.
 

4. The cinéma du look – Beineix, Besson, Carax

This movement, which emerged in the 1980s, has often been compared to the French New Wave—sometimes favorably, sometimes critically.

Parallels include their focus on youth and the auteur figure, an obvious legacy of the New Wave.

Key differences lie in their treatment of urban space. The New Wave was known for filming on location in real Paris streets, while the cinéma du look is associated with often artificial, claustrophobic sets.

The cinéma du look’s main failure, compared to the New Wave, lies in its less successful understanding of rhythm. For the New Wave, rhythm was not just technical editing skill but involved broader structural and scenographic elements—dialogue, music, mise-en-scène. Rhythm entailed a sense of “disorder and flow.”

Beineix’s Diva (1981) was rarely directly compared to the New Wave. Critics linked it instead to 1930s–40s French classicism or Jean Cocteau’s films. It recalls late 1930s poetic realism with its striking yet artificial visuals. Critics, including Fredric Jameson, dubbed it “the first French postmodern film,” noting its lack of critical awareness about capitalist tendencies and its depiction of urban spaces as mere aesthetic objects.

Besson’s Subway (1985) reflects early-1980s France marked by economic stagnation, austerity, and unemployment. Unlike the New Wave, where generational conflict was central, the cinéma du look often omits parents—reflecting rising divorce rates and single-parent families.

Subway explores surveillance of youth and their self-conscious performance under scrutiny. It is not a political movement but “a mute cry of anger from a generation deprived of consumerist rewards by the previous generation’s mismanagement.”

Its use of the Paris Metro's underground has drawn criticism. Though it appears youth reclaim the space, the film presents it as a “giant playground” with no critical awareness of spatial use or economic relations. The absence of ordinary people, especially the homeless, is a major flaw.

Carax’s Boy Meets Girl (1984) and Mauvais Sang (1986): Carax was noted for his relentless determination to do things his way—even at a young age. This stubbornness extended to the set.

Carax’s use of artificial settings is notable. The reconstructed Pont Neuf in Les Amants du Pont-Neuf is famously interpreted by Guy Debord as a sign of the “irretrievable loss of the beloved Paris.”

The cinéma du look’s playful imagery often hinders real encounters. While the Situationist dérive was meant to enable encounters with unexpected people and places, the New Wave overflowed with such encounters—side characters, extras, passersby offering brief moments of humor or reflection.

Except Boy Meets Girl, which owes a clear debt to the New Wave, the cinéma du look rarely allows such aimless encounters. It reflects the leisure society critiqued by the Situationists: one that segments populations, controls movements, and narrows horizons.

What is lost between the New Wave and the cinéma du look is that sense of openness to chance—the idea that anything could happen.

5. The jeune cinéma français of the 1990s – Desplechin, Dumont

This generation, including Arnaud Desplechin and Bruno Dumont, has a complex relationship with the legacy of the French New Wave.

Desplechin initially cited Jean-Pierre Léaud, Jean Eustache, and Philippe Garrel as influences—not directly Truffaut, Rivette, or Resnais. Some critics claim that Eustache and Garrel reduced the New Wave model to a “pale ghost,” while Desplechin belongs to the first generation freed from the New Wave as an “overarching cinematic superego.”

The New Wave’s influence in Comment je me suis disputé (Ma vie sexuelle) (1996) is subtle. According to Desplechin, what he inherited was its “fantasy”—not in the sense of imagination but of playful fabrication. He believes the New Wave is too often associated with realism and improvisation, though playful films were part of it too.

This playfulness appears in his self-consciously unrealistic elements, like the encounter with Rabier and his monkey or the improbable fall of the protagonist down the stairs.

Nonetheless, Truffaut’s influence is clear. Desplechin knows his films intimately and considers Truffaut’s interview collection his “bible.”

Comment je me suis disputé is seen as a generational film, with Desplechin hailed as the “leader” of 1990s young French cinema. It examines human relationships through a Hegelian dialectic of recognition—characters yearn to be acknowledged by others.

A core trait Desplechin preserves from the New Wave is a generosity toward characters—a refusal to judge them, accepting their humanity. This has been called an “ethics of the gaze.”

Bruno Dumont

Dumont’s films such as La Vie de Jésus (1997) and L’humanité (1999) have been widely analyzed.

His mise-en-scène is radically materialistic. La Vie de Jésus centers meaning around the physical body.

With long takes and fixed frames in which characters often remain motionless, Dumont brilliantly portrays the boredom and entrapment of provincial life. This style has been called “ethical” because it depicts the physical pressures leading to violence without recourse to psychology.

However, Dumont’s claim to make “humble cinema” is undermined by his efforts to impose the sacred—through titles like La Vie de Jésus or acts such as mouth-kissing to absorb another’s sin. This contrasts with Bresson’s neutral representation of divine grace.

His films’ association of slow cinema with the sacred has also drawn criticism.

6. François Ozon
His film Swimming Pool (2003) has been analyzed as a self-portrait of the filmmaker through the figure of a writer.
Ozon has explicitly stated his preference for working with female actors.
The film demonstrates a pronounced cinematic self-awareness reminiscent of the French New Wave. Ozon draws a parallel between the relationship of a writer and their publisher and that of a director and their producer.
However, the character of Sarah (the middle-aged writer) is portrayed as a limited and reactionary stereotype of an English woman.
Critics have pointed to the film’s regressive representation of gender and gender roles in its production process.
Ozon describes the ambiguity between "real" and "imaginary" scenes as a technique he learned from Buñuel. However, in Swimming Pool, this ambiguity has been criticized as a pretext for an exploitative representation of gender.

7. Olivier Assayas
Assayas reflects on the difficulty New Wave directors faced in maintaining their ideals amid the demands of the film industry.
His film Irma Vep (1996) depicts New Wave male directors as narcissistic and disconnected from reality.
Clouds of Sils Maria (2014) addresses 21st-century celebrity culture; the film examines the interplay of private life, public persona, and celebrity presence on social media, highlighting their dependence on personal assistants due to growing isolation.

8. Agnès Varda
Her film Cléo from 5 to 7 (1961) includes a pastiche of silent cinema.
Her later works, such as The Gleaners and I (2000), continue her long engagement with documentary, focusing on social issues, intimate portraits, and self-representation.
In this film, Varda situates her self-portrait within a cultural critique of what society discards without reason—suggesting that with age, people too become “waste.”
This perspective resonates with the concept of the abject, which is often associated with women, particularly in old age.
By filming close-ups of her aging body, Varda consciously resists the “cultural imperative of representing beauty.”

Although each of these filmmakers has followed a unique path, they all remain in some form of ongoing dialogue with the New Wave—whether through direct homage, formal reinvention, or critical distancing.
From Eustache’s fidelity to emotional honesty to Garrel’s experimentation, from the performative stylization of the cinéma du look to the intellectual complexity of Desplechin and Dumont, the legacy of the French New Wave persists like a creative specter woven into the fabric of French cinema since the 1960s.

— A survey through the book "The Legacy of the New Wave in French Cinema"