Cinema has witnessed many great movements since its inception!
Cinema as an art form is comparatively a lot younger than other art forms such as music and fine art, which can find their roots in pre-historic time. Despite being a young art form, cinema in its 140-year history has witnessed some great art movements from different nations around the world and the current structure of cinema owes its audio-visual grammar to these storied film movements. Each movement has contributed uniquely to the cinema, and can be judged on its own merits. The quality of films in each vary depending on the sociocultural and sociopolitical conditions of the country at the time but each of these movements are unique and have a lot to offer if thoroughly studied. The list contains movements from the beginning to the twentieth century to the 21st century and very different styles from each other; some of the film movements borrow from others but have their own concrete identity.
Expressionism is a term common to art movements, but in this case specifically German Expressionism gave a lot of the art of cinema, it was around the very inception of cinema with films like Cabinet of Dr Caligari, Nosferatu and Metropolis, the German directors shaped the language of popular cinema for years to come, stylised sets, high key lighting and moody makeup, the talkies of Hollywood like the Film Noir have been heavily influenced by German Expressionism, directors like Fritz Lang and Ernst Lubitsch later became very influential. Their style can be still seen in the works of popular modern directors like Tim Burton.
The French new wave or the Nouvelle Vague is a film movement that started in the early 1960s and was spearheaded by young film critics who watched a lot of Hollywood cinema and were tired of the French Bourgeois cinema in the early 50s and 40s. The impact of the French New Wave was so massive that it quite literally reshaped cinema, and brought dynamism and eclectic style into filmmaking. With films like Breathless, 400 Blows, A woman is A woman, the French new wave shaped the film grammar of cinema as we know it now. The advent of the concept of the Author or the Auteur Theory comes from this movement including things like the jump cut and run and gun filmmaking have their roots in this movement. Popular directors include titans like Jean Luc Godard, Francois Truffaut and Chris Marker.
