Avec la Nouvelle Vague, le cinéma découvre une nouvelle façon de faire des films et de les produire. Georges de Beauregard, en produisant «A bout de souffle», lance la carrière de Jean-Luc Godard. Raoul Levy produit «Et Dieu créa la femme» avec l'appui de la Columbia, propulsant Brigitte Bardot au firmament. Quant à Robert Dorfmann, de sa collaboration avec Gérard Oury naîtront des succès populaires : «Le Corniaud», «La Grande Vadrouille».
The New Wave was partly driven by producers who saw hand-held cameras and cheaper lighting as ways to save money. Breathless was a collaboration between a producer and director who were both dangerously close to bankruptcy. Robert Dorfmann literally gambled the salaries of crew members to try to win enough to cover his overdrafts on The Sucker. Raoul Levy threatened to tear up his contract with Columbia unless the studio distributed And God Created Woman in the US—a film that turned Brigitte Bardot into a household name.
