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 Andre Bazin alongside recent theories of intermediality, it investigates the ‘impure’, intermedial aesthetics of New Wave cinema. Filmmakers under discussion include critics-turned-directors Francois Truffaut, Eric Rohmer, Jean-Luc Godard, Jacques Rivette and Claude Chabrol, members of the Left Bank Group Alain Resnais, Agnes 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.

Key Features:

A wide-ranging study which explores the complex, often ambiguous ways in which the New Wave engages with the other arts in both its discursive construction and cinematic practice

Affords a new prism for understanding New Wave filmmaking and its legacy through comprehensive analysis of the ways in which the New Wave aesthetic was shaped through intermedial dialogue and medium rivalry

Reassesses one of the most acclaimed movements in film history drawing on cutting-edge theory in the prominent field of intermediality studies

Offers an inclusive, heterogeneous view of the New Wave through inclusion of lesser-known directors such as Guy Gilles, Jean-Daniel Pollet and Jacques Demy alongside renowned Nouvelle Vague filmmakers