# What is the best French New Wave film of all time?

> A wave of French directors tore up the studio rulebook in the late 1950s and 1960s, shooting on real streets with jump cuts and handheld cameras.

*By YPB Team · Published September 9, 2026 · https://youpick.best/ranking/what-is-the-best-french-new-wave-film-of-all-time*

---

## Current results (no votes yet)

1. **The 400 Blows**
   François Truffaut's 1959 debut following a troubled Parisian boy, the movement's founding masterpiece.
2. **Breathless**
   Jean-Luc Godard's 1960 jump-cut crime romance that broke classical film grammar.
3. **Jules and Jim**
   Truffaut's 1962 love triangle spanning decades, prized for its restless narration.
4. **Hiroshima Mon Amour**
   Alain Resnais's 1959 meditation on memory and the atomic bombing, told through a doomed affair.
5. **Cléo from 5 to 7**
   Agnès Varda's 1962 real-time portrait of a singer awaiting a medical diagnosis.
6. **Vivre sa vie**
   Godard's 1962 twelve-chapter study of a woman drifting into prostitution in Paris.
7. **Contempt**
   Godard's 1963 CinemaScope drama about a marriage collapsing on a film set in Capri.
8. **Le Samouraï**
   Jean-Pierre Melville's 1967 minimalist hitman thriller, a stylistic touchstone for the movement's edges.
9. **Last Year at Marienbad**
   Alain Resnais's 1961 puzzle film set in a chateau, famous for its disorienting timeline.
10. **Pierrot le Fou**
   Godard's 1965 road movie starring Jean-Paul Belmondo, shot in vivid color and fragmented form.
11. **Band of Outsiders**
   Godard's 1964 crime caper best remembered for its impromptu Madison dance scene.
12. **The Umbrellas of Cherbourg**
   Jacques Demy's 1964 sung-through musical about young lovers separated by war.
13. **Army of Shadows**
   Jean-Pierre Melville's 1969 drama of the French Resistance, austere and unsentimental.
14. **Le Beau Serge**
   Claude Chabrol's 1958 film often credited as the movement's opening shot.
15. **Les Cousins**
   Chabrol's 1959 companion piece to Le Beau Serge, contrasting provincial and city life.
16. **La Jetée**
   Chris Marker's 1962 photo-novel science-fiction short about time travel and memory.

Tags: movies, 60s, france