What are some characteristic of New Wave films?

Necessity and principle dictated the form and expression of French New Wave. Rising out of the desperate times following the second world war, young French filmmakers in the late 1950s and 60s searched for methods of production that broke with old forms but that also (and perhaps more importantly) cut costs. Jean-Luc Goddard's Breathless, for example, employs a series of wrenching jump cuts--a hallmark of New Wave style.

The effect challenged traditional modes of cinematic expression, another hallmark of the French New Wave. But it also allowed Goddard to cut length without re-filming. Both aesthetic impulses and budgetary constraint inspired the movement's innovations.

French New Wave admired individuality in expression and films that eschewed convention. Young New Wave filmmakers emulated Hollywood auteurs of the time like John Ford, Alfred Hitchcock and Orsen Wells. They eschewed classical conventions of plot. New Wave film more often than not related spare stories of alienation or existential angst. Protagonists, as in the 400 Blows and Breathless, often find themselves on the wrong side of a conservative society's most elemental dictates. They struggle against those dictates, fail to submit, and suffer banishment or death for their contrarian impulses.