Departing from the documentary series’ focus on one filmmaker and his works, La Nouvelle Vague par elle-même, made in 1964, provides an account of the movement that revitalized French cinema. Are-release of these spur of the moment interviews with thirteen filmmakers including Claude Cabrol, Jean Rouch, Jean-Luc Godard, Jacques Rivette, François Truffaut, Agnès Varda…

“In France, people believe in genres, tragedies are for crying and stabs in the back, and comedy is for laughing and kicks in the rear. When Shakespeare appeared with both things together, he was considered a vulgar and savage figure for a long time. Obviously to a different extent, modestly speaking, that is what happened with some films, with three fourths of the Nouvelle Vague production, the ambition of which is to mix genres, to mix things up a bit, where nothing stops a character from being kicked in the behind and three minutes later being stabbed in the back. (…)
This [Les Carabiniers, 1963] is a film against war. There are two war films that did not work: my film Les Carabiniers and Dewever’s Les Honneurs de la guerre: they were two very simple, honest films about war, and each was a catastrophe, whereas all the other films, like The Longest Day, were incredible successes because people love war films, they love seeing people slaughtered and women tortured, the elderly raped and whatever else, as long as it is for the sake of saving the country. These two films showed instead the stupidity of war, which is the result of human stupidity, so I think that they could not be trusted, and no one felt like seeing them.”

Jean-Luc Godard, excerpt from his interview