Encounter 1 - The politique des auteurs

The Nouvelle vague was born out of the cultural ferment that invaded Paris and France after the war. Cinema became more and more a cultural phenomenon: the Cinématheque Française directed by Henri Langlois, film clubs, magazines, among which André Bazin's Cahiers du Cinéma, constituted the prerequisites for the birth of a new criticism on which a new and combative generation of cinephiles took shape, fighting against ‘de papa’ French production and in defence of auteur cinema (in particular Hitchcock, Vigo, Renoir, Rossellini). This was the birth of the politique des auteurs, i.e. the theoretical seed from which the Nouvelle vague would flourish.