La Nouvelle Vague, une bande à part

In 1959, an unforgettable boy did "the four hundred tricks" in front of the camera of a beginner named François Truffaut and splashed with his success, popular and Cannes, the filmography of a nascent band of intrepid. Claude Chabrol's "Le Beau Serge", Jean-Luc Godard's "A bout de souffle", Jacques Rivette's "Paris nous appartient", Eric Rohmer's "Le Signe du lion", Jacques Rozier's "Adieu Philippine", Agnès Varda's "Cléo de 5 à 7"...: This wave, quickly named "New Wave" - an expression invented by Françoise Giroud in an article dedicated to youth - is the work of apprentice directors who, for many, have swallowed kilometers of film at Henri Langlois' Cinémathèque française and sharpened their judgment in the columns of Cahiers du cinéma.