Tweet Share After World War II, as countries that were once occupied by the Nazis opened up to American influence, French movie theaters were flooded with Hollywood movies they hadnât been able to see during the war. This attempt at a kind of cultural imperialism had an unintended consequence: French filmmakers were singularly taken with the B-movie marginalia of American cinema, absorbing forgotten Westerns and hard-boiled detective pictures that would eventually inspire the French New Waveâs riffs on codified and recognizable movie genres. The rest is, of course, history: A generation of passionate young cinephiles like Godard, Truffaut, Rohmer and Rivette became influential filmmakers, completely changing the landscape of European cinema. Just as American films had altered the perspective of French filmgoers, the works of these directors and their counterparts from Italy, Germany and other European nations would find their way to the United States, giving young American would-be auteurs the inspiration they needed to break with Hollywoodâs bloated traditions.Â