BFI | Sight & Sound

May 2009

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Features

The New Wave at 50: The star reborn

Half a century after a group of young French directors changed forever the way films are made, we assess the legacy of the nouvelle vague. The movement also transformed film acting, introducing a new kind of star, says Ginette Vincendeau

The New Wave at 50: Riding the wave

Directors Jacques Audiard, Catherine Breillat, Charles Burnett, Claude Chabrol, Hou Hsiao-Hsien and Christophe Honoré on what the New Wave means to them now

The New Wave at 50: A priest and his flock

The critic André Bazin was a father figure for the New Wave directors, writes Nick James, but they didn't always practise what he preached

The New Wave at 50: Journey to the end of the beach

As Godard's Pierrot le fou is rereleased, David Thomson looks at how the breakdown of a love affair was played out both on and off the camera

The New Wave at 50: All the world's a stage

Jonathan Romney unearths the Alain Resnais 1963 classic Muriel, a film whose formal experimentation still seems daring today

The New Wave at 50: The ones that got away

The critical focus on a handful of big-name New Wave auteurs has obscured the wider explosion of French film-making at the time, says Geoffrey Nowell-Smith

That was the war that was

Armando Iannucci's television work has exposed the uselessness of British politicians, not least in The Thick of It. So where did he go to broaden the scope of its sister film In the Loop, asks Lisa Mullen? America, of course

The new horror

Breaking the mould of the vampire film and the coming-of-age story - and what's expected of Swedish cinema - Let the Right One In is one of those uncategorisable masterpieces best described in terms of what it isn't, says Mark Kermode PLUS Kim Newman surveys the contemporary horror scene, and concludes that what's missing is a sense of meaning

Body language

When John Wrathall's screenplay Good was filmed, it gave him the chance to watch Viggo Mortensen at work, and to see how a film actor makes a role his own