Indeed. And all noir films. American cinema is a lot more than just its best picture nominees. Why is OP ignoring films like Rebel Without a Cause, East of Eden, The Defiant Ones, Anatomy of a Murder, The Hustler, Paths of Glory?

I love French New Wave and Breathless is one of my favorite films, but OP overstates their case.

OP was simply referring to nominees as best picture in the Oscars between 55-65 to make his point.

With cherry picking you can make any point you want. It not only ignores most of the films in that era, it even ignores most of the best picture Oscar nominees, to say nothing of the fact that OP so wildly mischaracterizes 12 Angry Men and Sweet Smell of Success that I wonder if they've seen the films in the first place.

I have to agree with OP, 12 angry men is a fantastic movie on many levels, but it really feels more like good Shakespeare than 12 real dudes discussing execution and their consience

The noir films was a significant inspiration for the nouvelle vague. They were highly regarded by french critics, which even gave the genre its name.

12 Angry Men is pretty stiff and theatrical. Not a criticism since it is a great movie, but it it wolds apart from say Five Easy Pieces.

Stiff and theatrical are better descriptors. Or mannered and a bit stilted.

I've only seen Breathless and A Band Apart. My sense is that Godard played a big part in transforming cinema from mannered to free-form. But I'd caution against framing that transition in terms of quality. Lots of stiff, theatrical movies are excellent, many of them have really good camerawork, and Godard certainly didn't invent moral ambiguity.

I don't think OP is framing it in terms of quality. Just a different style of filmmaking. A change. Whether the change is for the better - different story!

That's also due to the fact that it's a classical chamber play. I'd say a "theatrical" feel was definitely intended.

And for me, I miss some of that straightforward cinema today. Sometimes you don’t want ambiguities and meandering characters.

Everything is a blockbuster and a franchise.

Matt Damon said that in the past studios could expect to make half of the money back in DVD sales. Now that DVDs are gone studios are a lot more concerned about funding movies that are _not_ blockbusters/franchises. Sucks!

Can you imagine a studio funding a movie like Fracture (2007) today? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UG1Lxnn8Qa8 - probably not, a movie about a genius man who murders his cheating wife and an egotistical district attorney. But the film is tremendous, can't be made today.

You should hang out around small cinemas and niche festivals, you'd see everything can be and is made. There's a universe beyond studios. I just saw Cronenberg's Futur Crimes (the direct successor to Videodrome and eXistenZ) a few days ago, and Maps to the Stars yesterday. The man is as nuts as ever and he can still get his films made, it just takes producers who do it for fun and inventive financing. Films are the easiest they've ever been to make.

It becomes a 6 episode miniseries.

Exactly. Storytelling format follows the dollars which follows consumer habits. Right now all the dollar is in content made-for-Netflix and franchise movies because most people just want to watch online stuff at home nowadays.

> Sometimes you don’t want ambiguities and meandering characters.

Or antiheroes, or love triangles, or…

You know, ketchup[1] in the right amount can do wonders but slather it everywhere and it’s the delight of a four year old, but it’s really not the way it should be experienced.

[1] pick your condiment of choice.

When a movie has a love story that doesn't involve a love-triangle or infidelity I breath a palpable sigh of relief. Realistic or not, does all romance have to involve competition or deception?

I just watched a romance movie where the plot was one was dying of a terminal disease. I watched it because the protagonist was Feynman, otherwise I'd have turned it off because watching people die is not entertaining to me.

Cinema instead of being a reflection on society is more a mirror of itself. (look at Weinstein/Polanski and people like them in cinema and how they were treated until they could no more --look at their compasses).