The French New Wave were all too different to generalise like this. Godard and Rohmer (or Resnais) could't be more different really. It was actually the previ

The French New Wave were all too different to generalise like this. Godard and Rohmer (or Resnais) could't be more different really. It was actually the previous generation of French directors that they were all reacting against - who were making somewhat pretentious literary adaptation films. You can read about it in Truffaut's 1954 essay 'A certain tendency in the french cinema'. Neorealism was actually a fairly minor influence - as none of the new wave directors were social realists. But older, maverick French directors like Bresson and Melville were much more influential, as it was their freewheeling sensibility which united all the new wave directors and sent them hurtling off in different directions.