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Glite Dictionary
Nouvelle Vague

Nouvelle Vague

1 9.3
A French film movement from the late 1950s and 1960s that used new ways of filming and telling stories
  • noun
  • /nuˈvɛl ˈvɑg/
translation icon : Nueva Ola
  • The Nouvelle Vague movement challenged traditional storytelling methods and changed the landscape of cinema.

Examples

  • Many filmmakers were influenced by the ideas and styles of Nouvelle Vague cinema in their own works.

  • Every day he walked to the local grocery for fresh fruits and vegetables, took long strolls into the dry amber hills, or rented one of the Nouvelle Vague classics he'd always meant to watch from Blockbuster.

    Fiction book (2000)

  • Sivel's career spanned what Crisp identifies as the French cinema's "classical" era, beginning with the French film industry's conversion to sound and continuing through the emergence of the Nouvelle Vague.

    Academic text (1998)

  • A documentary about the Nouvelle Vague highlights its impact on modern filmmaking techniques.

Synonyms

New Wave
vsNouvelle Vague
3 7.5

A movement in 1950s and 1960s French films that used new ways of telling stories and showing images

is the original French phrase used for that movement

Surface Forms

Nouvelle Vague singular
Nouvelle Vagues plural

Morphology

Nouvelle + Vague

The literal French words translate to 'new wave', so a learner who knows the constituents (or their translations) can infer a general sense of a recent trend or movement. However, the specific historical and cinematic referent (the late-1950s/60s French film movement and its stylistic features) is a proper-name cultural concept that cannot be fully derived from the constituents alone, so prior cultural exposure is needed.

Etymology

Nouvelle Vague comes from the French words nouvelle meaning 'new' and vague meaning 'wave'. Critics used the image of a fresh wave to describe young directors who changed movies, and that's why the term now means a 'new wave' film movement with bold, experimental ideas.