Les Amants (The Lovers)

Watching this I remembered something from French National Cinema, a module I took at Roehampton. The New Wave, whilst displaying the influence of American noir and B-movies, was fired by the desire to provide alternatives to the dominant modes of French cinema, namely films about the bourgeoisie, featuring large country chateaux and aristocrats. The Italian Neo-Realist films of the early 1950s were a similar reaction; the Italians called them "white telephone" films (because they always featured people using white telephones, duh!).

Louis Malle's Les Amants, made in 1958, has chateaux and aristocrats and is a little on the dull side. But it also has Jeanne Moreau, scandalous-in-the-50s nudity and an encouragement of adultery and child-abandonment.