Resnais: 50 Years of Nouvelle Vague

May 2009

Alain Resnais’ new film Les Herbes folles (adapted from a novel by Christian Gailly) will be released this year. Sabine Azéma, who has been Resnais’ actress in 9 films, plays a character called Marguerite Muir. Mrs. Muir…you’ll see what the ghost is.

1959-2009. This year is also an anniversary for the “historical” New Wave.

It is said that even if the term was first the title of a press article (in the fall of 1957) for an inquiry about young generations, one year later it was applied only to cinema.

In the spring of 1959, Chabrol’s Le Beau Serge, Truffaut’s The 400 Blows and Resnais’ Hiroshima mon amour are released. In March 1960, Godard’s Breathless is an unexpected sensation.

Alain Resnais has never been part of the Cahiers du cinéma group. He was close to Chris Marker and to a group of committed filmmakers and writers. But the famous “modernity” through the reinvention of narration that is seen in Hiroshima made him a crucial part of an important moment in cinema history.

Resnais goes on inventing: this could be the true and lasting mark of the New Wave.

- Marie-Pierre Duhamel Muller