Intermedial Dialogues: The French New Wave and the Other Arts

Casting fresh light on one of the most important movements in film history, Intermedial Dialogues: The French New Wave and the Other Arts is the first comprehensive study of the New Wave’s relationship with the older arts. Traversing the fields of literature, theatre, painting, architecture and photography, and drawing on André Bazin alongside recent theories of intermediality, it investigates the ‘impure’, intermedial aesthetics of New Wave cinema. Filmmakers under discussion include critics-turned-directors François Truffaut, Eric Rohmer, Jean-Luc Godard, Jacques Rivette and Claude Chabrol, members of the Left Bank Group Alain Resnais, Agnès Varda and Chris Marker, but also lesser-known directors, notably the ‘secret child of the New Wave’, Guy Gilles. This wide-ranging book offers an original reading of the complex, often ambivalent ways in which the New Wave engages the other arts in both its discursive construction and filmic practice.