Getting your questions ready
Getting your questions ready
Beat the crowd
10 questions No timer
50 free French New Wave trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
A handful of film critics at a yellow-covered magazine decided they could do better than the French films they were panning, borrowed hand-held cameras and shopping carts, and changed cinema. The Nouvelle Vague lasted only a few years at full strength, roughly 1958 to 1962, but its jump cuts, location shooting and director-as-author thinking are still everywhere. These 50 questions cover the critics and the films: André Bazin and Henri Langlois as father figures, Truffaut's attack on the Tradition of Quality, Astruc's caméra-stylo, the auteur theory named by Andrew Sarris, and the Left Bank group of Resnais, Varda, Marker and Demy. You will get Breathless in detail, from Jean Seberg's fee to the cinematographer pushed in a wheelchair, and The 400 Blows from its idiom of a title to its freeze-frame ending, plus Jules and Jim, Cléo from 5 to 7, Hiroshima mon amour, Contempt and the Umbrellas of Cherbourg. Easy questions cover directors and stars; the hard tier asks about Rivette's short, Rohmer's pseudonym and the American film Truffaut credited with starting it all. Every answer is cited to a page we checked, with a short explanation so you learn something even when you miss.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What is the French name for the New Wave?
Nouvelle Vague
The movement peaked roughly between 1958 and 1962.
Q 02Which film magazine did Truffaut, Godard, Rohmer, Rivette and Chabrol all write for?
Cahiers du cinéma
Its early covers were film stills on bright yellow with no headlines.
Q 03Who directed Breathless (1960)?
Jean-Luc Godard
It was his first feature and Jean-Paul Belmondo's breakthrough.
Q 04Who directed The 400 Blows (1959)?
François Truffaut
It was his debut and his most successful film in France, with 4.1 million admissions.
Q 05Which editing technique did Breathless make famous?
Jump cuts
Godard trimmed long takes from the middle to hit a 90-minute running time, on Melville's advice.
Q 06Which American actress plays Patricia, selling the Herald Tribune on the Champs-Élysées?
Jean Seberg
She took $15,000, a sixth of the budget, and privately doubted the film would sell.
Q 07What is the name of Truffaut's alter ego, played by Jean-Pierre Léaud in five films?
Antoine Doinel
Léaud played him in five films, ending with Love on the Run in 1979.
Q 08How does The 400 Blows end?
A freeze-frame of Antoine at the sea
An optical zoom pushes into his face as he looks into the camera.
Q 09Who is the 'spiritual father' to whom Truffaut dedicated The 400 Blows?
André Bazin
The Cahiers co-founder died just as shooting was about to start.
Q 10Who founded the Cinémathèque Française, the other 'father figure' of the movement?
Henri Langlois
The future directors met each other at his screenings.
Q 11Which 1954 Truffaut essay attacked the French 'Tradition of Quality'?
Une certaine tendance du cinéma français
He denounced safe literary adaptations turned into unimaginative films.
Q 12Which American critic coined the English term 'auteur theory'?
Andrew Sarris
The French original was 'la politique des auteurs'.
Q 13Who wrote the 1948 manifesto 'The Birth of a New Avant-Garde: The Camera-Stylo'?
Alexandre Astruc
He argued cinema could express thought as directly as the novel or essay.
Q 21Which New Wave director appears in Breathless as a dead body hit by a car?
Jacques Rivette
Michel's alias Laszlo Kovacs is a nod to Belmondo's character in Chabrol's Web of Passion.
Q 22Which screenwriter, a notorious seducer, inspired Michel's character in Breathless?
Paul Gégauff
Gégauff wrote many of Chabrol's scripts.
Q 23Which prize did Godard win for Breathless in January 1960, before its release?
Prix Jean Vigo
Cahiers put the film on its cover the same month.
Who directed the 2025 film about the shooting of Breathless, with Zoey Deutch as Seberg?
Q 14Which 1958 Chabrol film is traditionally credited as the first New Wave feature?
Le Beau Serge
It was inspired by Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt; Varda's La Pointe Courte was chronologically earlier.
Q 15Which Varda film of 1955 was chronologically the first New Wave feature?
La Pointe Courte
It had no commercial release until 2008.
Q 16Which group included Resnais, Varda, Marker and Demy, as opposed to the magazine critics?
Left Bank
They were older, more literary, and identified with the political left.
Q 17Which 1953 American film did Truffaut credit with showing the New Wave the way?
Little Fugitive
He praised Morris Engel for showing them independent production.
Q 18In which 1967 Godard film does a famous long tracking shot follow a traffic jam?
Weekend
Long tracking shots and existential absurdity were hallmarks of the style.
Q 19What did New Wave crews reportedly use for tracking shots when they lacked a dolly?
A shopping cart
Godard also pushed his cinematographer around in a wheelchair on Breathless.
Q 20Who was the cinematographer of Breathless, hired by producer Georges de Beauregard?
Raoul Coutard
He shot hand-held with almost no lighting and pushed Ilford HP5 from 400 to 800 ASA.
Richard Linklater
Nouvelle Vague casts Guillaume Marbeck as Godard and Zoey Deutch as Seberg.
Q 25Which French idiom does the title Les quatre cents coups come from?
To raise hell
An early US subtitler rendered the title as Wild Oats before the distributor vetoed it.
Q 26Where were the reform-school scenes of The 400 Blows filmed?
Honfleur
The final beach scene was shot a few miles away at Villers-sur-Mer.
Q 27Which award did The 400 Blows win at Cannes in 1959?
Best Director
It opened the festival and was later nominated for the Best Original Screenplay Oscar.
Q 28Who plays Catherine in Jules and Jim?
Jeanne Moreau
Critic Ginette Vincendeau called her style the incarnation of the New Wave actress.
Q 29Who wrote the 1953 semi-autobiographical novel behind Jules and Jim?
Henri-Pierre Roché
Truffaut found the book in a Paris shop and befriended the elderly author.
Q 30Who composed the score for Jules and Jim?
Georges Delerue
Time magazine listed it among the ten best soundtracks in its All-Time 100 Movies.