Instiutution

Originally founded by Marcel L’Herbier in 1943, the Institut des Hautes Études Cinématographiques (IDHEC) had its first peacetime graduation.

Post-War Reconstruction

The abolishment of Vichy’s Comité d’organisation de l’industrie du cinéma (COIC), the wartime regulatory organ of French cinema.

Post-War Reconstruction

The Commissions d’épuration ran trials that banned prominent film figures like Arletty and Henri-Georges Clouzot from cinema.

Blum-Byrnes

The bilateral economic accord, the Blum-Byrnes Agreement, was signed by Leon Blum and James F. Byrnes. A specific clause abolishes France’s pre-war quota system (Which mandated a specific ratio of French to foreign films) and replaced it with a screen quota. This was massively controversial and led to a massive backlog of American films saturating French cinemas.

Cannes

The first official Cannes Film Festival was held between September 20 and October 5 1946. The Grand Prix du Festival (Precursor to Palme d’Or) went to La Bataille du rail by René Clément.

STRUCTURAL CHANGES

On October 25 1946, the French government passed a law creating the Centre national de la cinématographie (CNC) to replace temporary post-war committees. This state institution took total control over regulatory licensing, box-office audits, and national film industry subsidies.

Structural Changes

The foundation of Union nationale des ciné-clubs de France (UNCF), which would expand rapidly into a legal way for people to see films outside of movie theatres.

BLUM-BYRNES

Backlash to the Blum-Byrnes Agreement. Due to the agreement, French film production had fallen to roughly 74 feature films made. This sparked mass street demonstrations throughout Paris, connected to the Communist Party, demanding state protection against Hollywood hegemony.

NEW WAVE

Alexandre Astruc published his Camera-Stylo manifesto in L’Ecran Francais, which articulates his argument for film breaking away from the tyranny of theatrical scripts. This was the conceptual precursor to the Auteur Theory.

BLUM-BYRNES

In response to the industry protests against the Blum-Byrnes agreement, the French enacted an emergency temporary fiscal policy, the Loi d’Aide, which established a special tax on every movie ticket sold, which went to a fund managed by the CNC to be redistributed back to French producers to subsidise future domestic film production.

Cannes

The 1948 Cannes Film Festival was cancelled due to budgetary constraints and state funding being pulled; it would also be cancelled in 1950 for similar reasons. In 1951, the situation would stabilise, and Cannes was moved to a spring slot to avoid competing with the Venice Film Festival

NEW WAVE

The Objectif 49 cine-club was founded by Andre Bazin and Alexandre Astruc with honorary president Jean Cocteau. It includes many notable names: Robert Bresson, René Clément, Raymond Queneau. It will, in July – August 1949, organise the Festival du Film Maudit in Biarritz, which would celebrate innovative films rejected by the mainstream. It was also attended by younger cinephiles like Francois Truffaut, Jacques Rivette and Claude Chabrol, who felt snubbed at the event.

BLUM-BYRNES

The Blum-Byrnes agreement is formally renegotiated, legally increasing the protective screen quota for domestic films.

Tradition of Quality

Thanks to the funding loophole created by the Loi d’Aide, French cinema became centred around a highly polished, literary, commercially lucrative style of cinema heavily driven by the screenwriting duo of Jean Aurenche and Pierre Bost. This “Tradition of Quality” would become the explicit target of the New Wave critics.

New Wave

In April 1951, Andre Bazin, Jacques Doniol-Valcroze, Joseph-Marie Lo Duca and Leonide Keigel published the first issue of Cahiers du Cinema featuring Gloria Swanson on its iconic yellow border cover. It replaced the defunct Revue du Cinema and would become the ferment of a young generation of critics.

Structural Changes

The CNC scaled up its operations, establishing major international promotion offices to systematically export high-budget French star vehicles (Principally Gerard Philipe and Martine Carol films).

POSITIF

Positif was founded in Lyon by Bernard Chardere. It would define itself as an explicitly leftist outlet and become the great rival of Cahiers du Cinema.

Structural Changes

The government officially updated the Loi d’Aide and introduced the Prime à la qualite which allowed a selective jury to grant advance subsidies to scripts or films deemed to possess “cultural and artistic merit.” This mechanism would directly fund the debut features of the New Wave.

New wave

In January 1954, Cahiers du Cinema published ‘Une certaine tendance du cinéma français‘ by a 21-year-old Francois Truffaut, which attacked the dominant ‘Tradition of Quality’

New wave

Writing in his review of Jacques Becker‘s Ali Baba et les quarante voleurs, Francois Truffaut coined and defined the term ‘La politique des auteurs’, which asserted that a filmmaker interjects a singular personality and style into their film, famously stating that an auteur’s worst film is inherently more artistically valuable than a non-auteur’s masterpiece.

New wave

A collective of filmmakers signed the Manifeste des Trente, which protests the CNC’s industrial policies threatening the viability of short films.

Film Theory

Film critic Raymond Borde and Etienne Chaumeton published Panorama du film noir americain, which formally coined and systematised the parameters of ‘Film Noir’

Cannes

The Cannes Film Festival officially introduced the Palme d’Or, with the inaugural winner being Delbert Mann for Marty.

New wave

And God Created Woman was released, directed by Roger Vadim, it fundamentally altered the international view of French cinema. It also turned Brigitte Bardot into a global icon. The film is celebrated by Cahiers writers.

Structural changes

The CNC establishes the Official Avance sur Recettes Code. The system allowed filmmakers to receive state funding based on a script treatment alone, with the loan to be repaid only if the film turned a profit. This explicitly insulated experimental directors from commercial bankruptcy.

NEW Wave

While Le Beau Serge is often regarded as the start of the French New Wave, the success of Francois Truffaut‘s The 400 Blows at the 1959 Cannes Film Festival was the groundbreaking moment of the movement.

Film Theory

The term Cinema verite is coined by Edgar Morin about the film Primary (1960), and he and Jean Rouch will later pioneer the term in Chronicle of a Summer (1961)

Radical Politics

Several filmmakers like Alain Resnais, Pierre Kast and Jacques Doniol-Valcroze signed The Manifesto of the 121, which led to severe crackdowns and limits in CNC funding.

Structural Changes

The French Ministry of Education officially integrated film into high school curricula. This catalysed a massive expansion of youth-led cine-clubs.

New Wave

By 1961, there was a considerable backlash to the French New Wave, blamed for declining cinema attendance. It would be attacked as ‘miserabilism’ by critics.

Cannes

The French Syndicate of Cinema Critics establishes Critics’ Week, the independent parallel section at the Cannes Film Festival, with the explicit mandate of exclusively showing first and second feature films by international directors.

Structural Changes

Minister of Culture Andre Malraux restructured the CNC’s Avance sur recettes committee into two distinct sub-committees. One is designed to evaluate artistic merit, the other to grant emergency completion subsidies.

Cause Celebre

After intense pressure from conservative Catholic organisations, the state board of censors bans Jacques Rivette‘s The Nun, leading to a major cause celebre for creative freedom until the ban is legally overturned.

Cause Celebre

Andre Malraux abruptly dismisses Henri Langlois, the eccentric and legendary curator of the Cinematheque Francaise. This leads to the Langlois Affair, a massive, explosive controversy where directors withdrew screening rights and violent street protests broke out, clashing with the police until Langlois was reinstated in April.

May 68

During the May ’68 events, Francois Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Lelouch and Louis Malle, with foreign directors, physically halted screenings at the Cannes Film Festival, forcing its shutdown in solidarity with the striking students and workers in Paris.

May 68

During the May Uprisings, many directors filmed uncredited cine-tracts like Jean-Luc Godard, Alain Resnais and Chris Marker for the movement.

May 68

Following May ’68, collectivist cinema became prominent, with Chris Marker organising the Société pour le Lancement des Œuvres Nouvelles (SLON) and Jean-Luc Godard forming the Dziga Vertov Group with Jean-Pierre Gorin.

Cannes

Filmmakers formed the Société des Réalisateurs de Films (SRF) and put on the Directors Fortnight at Cannes to combat commercial conservatism, entirely run by directors and free from political and State censorship

Structural Changes

Following lobbying by SRF, the French government abolished ‘pre-censorship’ wherein the state could legally block a film project at the script phase.