Cinematic reaction against New Wave autonomy: deliberate formal excess, irony, self-deconstruction — Godard, Rivette post-1968. Not continuation but dismantling.
The Nouvelle Vague had established its laws – freedom of narrative, camera subjectivity, a break with classical editing. What came after was less a continuation than a conscious sabotage of these rules. The Post-New Wave emerged in 1968, when Godard, Rivette, and others turned their own tools against themselves. They didn't film in spite of the Nouvelle Vague principles, but precisely to deconstruct them. That is the crucial point – not evolution, but deconstruction.
Godard's "Deux ou trois choses que je sais d'elle" or later "Weekend" clearly show this: the camera became a reflexive weapon. Where the Nouvelle Vague still flirted with cinematic freedom, the Post-New Wave relied on ironic excess. Sudden cuts to black, abrupt cuts between shots, sound-image breaks that don't function psychologically but visibly disrupt. Rivette's formal obsessions – repetitive shots, empty spaces, textual work – overstretched camera immediacy to the point of gesture. This is no longer a documentary gaze, but deliberate artificiality.
On set, this means concretely: you don't need a dramatic backstory. An empty corridor, filmed for ten minutes, static camera, text overlay irrelevant to the image – that is work in the Post-New Wave spirit. Lighting is not subordinated to mood, but made visible. Handheld camera not for authenticity, but for its visible artificiality. Editing as disruption, not as a rhythmic element.
The difference from the Nouvelle Vague lies in the attitude towards viewer deception. Godard, Truffaut wanted to deceive immersively – to penetrate life. The Post-New Wave forbids you from ever believing you are "really seeing something." It constantly shows you the construction. Not as decay, but as a radical formal consequence. Anyone who still believes in the immediacy of the camera after 1970 has not understood the lesson.