ABSTRACT
We now move transcontinentally to Paris and the French nouvelle vague (New Wave), a movement that explicitly articulated a theory of auteurism, a film movement contraposed to the studio system. The filmmakers who constituted the movement – François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Eric Rohmer, Agnès Varda,6
Claude Chabrol, and Jacques Rivette – expressed their understanding of the nouvelle vague through the role of the auteur, the director who relies on improvisation in respect of the script and the acting. The nouvelle vague and Paris are linked to the degree that the relationship appears self-evident, and few scholars have investigated the conditions and implications of that connection beyond the fact that several of the important auteurs of the nouvelle vague grew up in Paris.7
