The Film Blog

French New Wave was one of the most influential movements for the film industry ever. It lasted from the late 1950s to the late 1960s. The French New Wave style was presented in a more documentary fashion and the techniques included long tracking shots, mise-en-scene, fast scene changes (aka jump cuts) and improvised dialogue as well as unorthodox methods of filming like breaking the 180 rule. Whereas a lot of Classic French cinema employed a strong narrative, French New Wave films went so far as to abandon that philosophy, instead reminding it's audience of the fact that cinema is just a sequence of moving images.

Neorealism, also known as Italian neorealism, is an extremely influential film movement that lasted from 1944 to 1952. Films influenced by neorealism often were extremely low budget, with performances from non professional actors and dealt with themes of poverty, depression, injustice and desperation set in a post World War 2 Italy. Several significant figures of the movement were Federico Fellini, Roberto Rossolini, Giuseppe de Santis, Vittorio De Sica and Roberto Lattuada.  A significant film in the movement was Bicycle Thieves which released in 1948 and is considered one of the greatest films ever.