Flaneur:A Further Understanding Of The French New Wave From Modernism

French New Wave cinema is one of the most outstanding achievements of film art and an important part of modernist artistic works.The French New Wave cinema movement appeared during the mid 20 th century.It can be viewed as Youth Film Moment because those New Wave artists took “the youth of today” as their creative object.They made a screen version of the idealized youth image and the image fits with the modernist figure “flaneur”.In the 19 th century,French poet Charles Baudelaire found unique value of the “flaneur” from the perspective of Modernity.He introduced the “flaneur” as a spokesman of modernity and an urban observer.Then Walter Benjamin enriched the meanings of “flaneur” from the standpoint of modernity and modernism perspective.After reinterpreted by Baudelaire and Benjamin,“flaneur” has become a crucial element of modernist art creation and a key point to help understand Modernist art.In a variety of the New Wave director's works,the young who challenge and go against the mainstream lifestyle,traditional moral value are definitely the leading role.Those deviant characters are in the same strain with the flaneur.The French New Waves cinema is the prototype and the representative work of modernist film.The flaneur provides new possibilities for a further understanding of the French New Wave cinema.This paper is divided into four chapters.The first chapter discusses the historical context of the French New Wave,pointing out the correlation between the New Wave cinema and Modernism.Secondly,the modernist characteristics of New Wave film are interpreted by analyzed the film narration.The second chapter clarifies the origin and concept of the flaneur,and tries to prove the consistency between the flaneur's gaze and the New Wave camera's “watching”.The third chapter points out how the new wave director shapes the image of the flaneur on the screen and interprets the meaning behind the flaneur through analyzed the characters in the new wave works.The fourth chapter discusses two French New Wave stars Jean Moore and Jean-Paul Belmondo.Their stardom shows traits of the flaneur.The paper attempts to interpret the modernist art characters of the French New Wave cinema,including the modernist culture and the Zeitgeist within it.