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Essential French Films

post #1 of 92
2/27/08 at 1:12pm
Thread Starter 
I'm going to be exploring the world of French cinema in the next couple weeks or so. I'm excited, as I haven't watched a lot of foreign films up to this point, but I've read enough articles about certain movies that make me want to dive in. For those of you who have some familiarity (which I assume is everyone but me), what are your 5-10 must sees?
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post #2 of 92
2/27/08 at 1:30pm
Belle Du Jour
Rules of the Game
La Belle et la Bete
400 Blows
Jean De Florette
Hiroshima Mon Amour
Army of Shadows
Riffi
City of Lost Children

Would all be personal favourites of French Cinema, yes I like Jean De Florette but I can't defend my liking of it.
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post #3 of 92
2/27/08 at 1:32pm
Thread Starter 
I am watching Rififi tonight!
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post #4 of 92
2/27/08 at 1:47pm
Grand Illusion - Be sure to see this before you die.

Boudu Saved From Drowning

Alphaville

For more current work, La Haine & Delicatessen.
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post #5 of 92
2/27/08 at 1:48pm
French films and I don't mix, for some reason. I don't know why that is, I'm pretty open-minded when it comes to foreign films, my DVD shelf is filled with stuff from Japan and Italy and Germany and Korea... But for some reason I've never seen a French film I've really loved.

I've seen 400 Blows, I've seen Breathless, Rules of the Game, Masculine-Feminine, and a bunch more New Wave stuff... TCM had a Louis Malle marathon a few months back and I watched most of it. But I don't know why, none of it really appeals to me. Not that any of it is bad, all of it is extremely watchable but somehow it just doesn't appeal to me.

I just don't understand the French, I think.
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post #6 of 92
2/27/08 at 1:51pm
I'm a novice compared to most here, too, but here are a few:

Godard - Breathless, Bande A Part
Truffaut - The 400 Blows and Jules Et Jim
Clouzot - The Wages of Fear and Les Diaboliques
Melville - Le Cercle Rouge and Le Samurai
Renoir - The Grand Illusion
Lelouch - Les Miserables (probably not the classics the others are, but so good)

I'm not sure how I feel about The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, but it's certainly unique, and a lot of people seem to love it, so it's probably worth your time.

More recent stuff -

You've probably seen Jeunet's (and sometimes Caro's) stuff, but Delicatessen, City of Lost Children, and Amelie are pretty essential.

Haneke's Cache is really, really good, but he's not French, so I'm not sure if it qualifies despite it being, in many respects, a French movie. Same goes for some others (Kieslowski's Trois Colours movies; the fun, if slight, Paris Je T'Aime anthology; etc.).

Does Jean De Florette have a crappy reputation or something? I haven't seen it yet, but it's been on my list for a while. I thought it was pretty well-liked.
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post #7 of 92
2/27/08 at 3:02pm
It's viewed as being a little light and fluffy more than anything else.

You need to see at least some Cocteau and Brunel though Rath.
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post #8 of 92
2/27/08 at 3:30pm
La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc (1928). Absolutely fantastic. I'll also third/fourth City of Lost Children and darn near anything that could be labeled New Wave.

I have to go back and re-watch some of this stuff...
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post #9 of 92
2/27/08 at 3:36pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by RathBandu View Post
I am watching Rififi tonight!
If you don't climax during the heist scene, you're dead to me.
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post #10 of 92
2/27/08 at 3:37pm
Children of Paradise is one of the very best films ever made. Here's something I wrote about it in another venue:

You know how some things give people allergic reactions? Some things give me aesthetic reactions - a tightening in the back of my throat and sense of euphoria. I know I’m experiencing world-class art when I have an aesthetic reaction.

I had an aesthetic reaction to CHILDREN OF PARADISE. From the opening scene showing a fantasy Carnaval on the streets of old Paris to the pantomimes that made my breath catch in my throat to the heartbreaking conclusion, CHILDREN OF PARADISE sings “masterpiece” from every frame. It’s a story of love and hope, of inhibition and the lack thereof, of, well, of everything. It’s three hours long, and I confess that I sometimes fast-forward through particularly long subtitled films. I couldn’t fast forward through any of CHILDREN OF PARADISE, because so much happens with its actors’ faces that I couldn’t bear to miss a single delightful beat.

CoP draws its structure from a love pentagon centered on Garance, a beautiful woman who makes her way in the world using all the tools available to her. Many men give her their hearts, but she loves only one. How those loves unfold, and how the lives of those who love develop (or not) over time, provides the grist for enough drama to last far longer than the film’s brisk three-hour running time. The drama doesn’t carry this movie, howver. The performances do. From the sensitive idealist to the self-proclaimed scoundrel to the ambitious actor to the self-important dandy to the protective spouse to Garance herself, these people aren’t characters on a screen but real, living souls who evoke our tenderness, revulsion, and (most importantly) identification.

Cinematographers Roger Hubert and Marc Fossard give CHILDREN OF PARADISE a fantastical, better-than-life look, creating several images so excellent that they inspired me to hit the pause button so I could enjoy them at leisure. This entire movie looks great (and sounds great, too!), a testament to the mens’ excellent craftsmanship as well as the meticulousness of the good folks at Criterion, who released the DVD.

CHILDREN OF PARADISE looks great. It sounds great. Hey, it is Great. I have the aesthetic reaction to prove it.
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post #11 of 92
2/27/08 at 3:39pm
Au Revoir Les Enfants.
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post #12 of 92
2/27/08 at 5:07pm
French cinema is filled with amazing comedies, but I really don't know how much is lost with the translation.


A classic Louis de Funes; La Soupe aux Choux.
Le Diner de Cons is sublime.
Les Visiteurs is pretty funny, unlike the american butchery it made.

And to fill the list put forth by the others:

Bresson's Au Revoir Balthazar and Pickpocket.

Eustache's La Maman et la Putain.
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post #13 of 92
2/27/08 at 5:16pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by MissZooey View Post
La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc (1928). Absolutely fantastic.
I second this. I watched it with very little experience with films older than like 1982 and I was still blown away. I love this movie.
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post #14 of 92
2/27/08 at 6:23pm
Joan d'Arc is one of the great films of all time, but I wouldn't call it a French film, though I guess Criterion does, and it is/was in French - though it's silent. tough call that. It's imminently worth seeing, regardless.

I'm a masters man, so yeah, stick to directors. With Demy, I would agree about Umbrellas, but you should throw in Lola, and Bay of Angels.

Most advice is going to pillage the Criterion collection, cause that's what's available, but don't forget about Becker and especially (as a genre fan) LE TROU.

Jean Renoir is the greatest director in the canon, so Rules of the Game, Grand Illusion, etc. etc.

I'm also a big Melville proponent, but then there's also Rohmer.

Bresson: Mouchette, Au Hasard Balthazar, Pickpocket, essential viewing.

Pagnol's Fanny trilogy is worth checking out as well.

Start digging, and I'll give you a head's up where to look next from what you like.
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post #15 of 92
2/27/08 at 6:27pm
Second/Third on the Bresson - Au Hasard Balthasar.
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post #16 of 92
2/27/08 at 6:56pm
Rappeneau's CYRANO DE BERGERAC is my favourite film of all time. Incredible sense of period, pathos, great battle scenes, Depardieu's best performance, French dialogue in rhyming couplets with english translation by Anthony Burgess in rhyming couplets...a perfect film.

Carax's LES AMANTS DU PONT NEUF is a raw, sad reflection on doomed love with incredible night-time scenes shot in and around le Pont Neuf.

Tati's LES VACANCES DE MONSIEUR HULOT is the finest comedy ever made, period. Of his other films, TRAFFIC and perhaps MON ONCLE warrant repeated viewings (although they both have their longeurs).

Not exactly a French film, but a Belgian film in the French language, IL EST ARRIVE PRES DE CHEZ VOUS (MAN BITES DOG), is the best serial killer black comedy ever made, and it also packs an incisive and powerful meditation on the complicity of the viewer in the images on screen.

Kervern & Déléphine's AALTRA is a beautiful black comedy involving the most unlikely road trip of all time, following the adventures of a pair of paraplegics travelling from France to Finland in search of compensation for an industrial accident.

Beiniex's 37°2 LE MATIN (BETTY BLUE) is another sad, beautiful meditation on love and madness.

Nicole Garcia's L'ADVERSAIRE is based on the true story of a man who appears to be leading the perfect life, with the perfect job and a nuclear family, only for the truth to be stranger than fiction.
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post #17 of 92
2/27/08 at 7:05pm
La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc & Au Hasard Balthazar absolutely.

I'll throw Mauvais Sang (Bad Blood) out there.
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post #18 of 92
2/27/08 at 7:27pm
For a visual feast, 2 of my faves: Cocteau's B & B and Jeunet's AMELIE.
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post #19 of 92
2/27/08 at 7:42pm
Even though it's technically a short, La Jetée is pretty much required viewing.

Also, check out Jacques Tati's Playtime (the other Hulot films have already been mentioned, but I love Playtime the most.)
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post #20 of 92
2/27/08 at 9:01pm
Although this area is hardly my strong point, I can recommend Les Yeux Sans Visage, and agree with Cyrano De Bergerac and the Three Colours trilogy.
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post #21 of 92
2/27/08 at 10:37pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by DARKMITE8 View Post
For a visual feast, 2 of my faves: Cocteau's B & B and Jeunet's AMELIE.

I'll second Beauty and the Beast. It's a wonderful, wonderful film.
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post #22 of 92
2/27/08 at 10:51pm
If you like lesbian vampires(who doesn't) then you gotta check out the films of Jean Rollin. Beautiful and haunting, and full of hot bloodsucking babes.
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post #23 of 92
2/27/08 at 11:34pm
I'm going along to a French film festival tonight. Apparently sometime during the fest they're showing Louis Malle's Elevator to the Gallows, I'm gonna try and check it out.

Anything by Truffaut or Renoir does it for me.
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post #24 of 92
2/27/08 at 11:46pm
Thread Starter 
Rififi was awesome. So grim. I had no idea that was Dassin as the Italian until I read the production notes (which also pointed out how deeply HUAC hated this guy. I mean, they stopped him at least twice from making movies overseas. Jesus, what the hell did he do to piss them off besides refuse to name names?). That heist sequence, like I've said with other movies, a Rosetta Stone scene. Between his use of London in Night and the City and NYC in Naked City, Dassin's a total master at using locations and making a city come alive on screen. All-time.

Also, French movie in 1955: Nipple. I know, it's French, but still, it's always surprising when you see it in a movie from so long ago.
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post #25 of 92
2/27/08 at 11:52pm
And then thinking that nipple is now 80 years old and shit, too.

The Doniel set is essential viewing.
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post #26 of 92
2/27/08 at 11:57pm
Thread Starter 
Yeah, I basically went through Criterion's website for a couple of hours and started making a list based on that and this thread. My Netflix queue is at 490 movies and I'll throw things on there and just forget about them, so I have to prioritize.

The thing about the nipple was kind of a joke, but it also came out of a chat discussion where we were talking about how it can be surprising to see what they were getting away with, or the ideas that they're floating. Like the incest stuff in Bunny Lake, or the "religion as sideshow" theme of Nightmare Alley.
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post #27 of 92
2/28/08 at 12:08am
Quote:
Originally Posted by FrankCobretti View Post
I'll second Beauty and the Beast. It's a wonderful, wonderful film.
FUCK YOU, I mentioned it in the second post. That's a third mister, A THIRD.

Also, Rath, if you think a nipple is shocking wait until you get into stuff like Hiroshima Mon Amour or a lot of Bergman's work.

The shock of nudity and sex is very much an american construction, so a lot of older films just flaunt that shit.
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post #28 of 92
2/28/08 at 12:11am
Well, wait until you get to IN THE REALM OF THE SENSES.
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post #29 of 92
2/28/08 at 12:17am
Thread Starter 
I've seen that, actually. I think I was fifteen at the time.
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post #30 of 92
2/28/08 at 12:27am
You could go the whole hog and just get a copy of Ai No Corrida.

Holy Shit, did not know that Realm of the Senses = Ai No Corrida, I've never seen it referred to anything other than its original title.
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post #31 of 92
2/28/08 at 12:33am
Americans are tarded, Spike.
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post #32 of 92
2/28/08 at 12:46am
Demy's Bay of Angels. Great dysfunctional romance set amidst the world of gambling.
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post #33 of 92
2/29/08 at 2:58am
Gotta back up the Bressons - AU HASARD BALTHAZAR (masterpiece), PICKPOCKET, L'ARGENT, FOUR NIGHTS OF A DREAMER, MOUCHETTE.

Also - CONTEMPT. Definite viewing.

And essential by any standard, the Eclipse set of Raymond Bernard films - WOODEN CROSSES and the five hour LES MISERABLES. The latter being one of the greatest adaptations ever produced; filled with such humanity and such poetic imagery that I still question how it survived as long as it did through the war and its detractors against Bernard.
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post #34 of 92
2/29/08 at 3:27am
I just watched The 400 Blows last night for the first time.

Awesome, still liked Bicycle Thieves more. I loved the opening credits though. I thought the opening credits summed up French New Wave better than any other images I've seen in any of the movies of that era.
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post #35 of 92
2/29/08 at 3:50am
Another "essential" I would consider is CLEO FROM 5 TO 7. Varda's meditation on existentialism probably isn't for some, but I've always been drawn to the sheer possibilities of filmmaking she displays in fine form.
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post #36 of 92
2/29/08 at 3:52am
I like some PORT OF SHADOWS, and Beaks swears by his Quai Des Orfevres
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post #37 of 92
2/29/08 at 10:25am
Down with Godard! Down with Truffaut!

Up with Chabrol!

LES BONNES FEMMES
A DOUBLE TOUR
LE BOUCHER
LA RUPTURE
TEN DAYS WONDER
INNOCENTS WITH DIRTY HANDS
NADA
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post #38 of 92
3/3/08 at 11:43am
Eyes Without A Face.
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post #39 of 92
3/3/08 at 12:24pm
I recently (last Thursday to be precise) watched Belle De Jour again (my only other viewing was when I was 14 and I think my appreciation of the film was weighted against my disappointment at the lack of nudity). Just a fucking awesome piece of work, lyrical, beautiful and so fucking cool.

I also pop my Godard cherry tomorrow with my first viewing of Breathless.
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post #40 of 92
3/3/08 at 1:27pm
Bunuel and Dreyer raise questions of origin. Is Belle De Jour a French film because of the language? Does director outrank language or vice versa? If Laurence of Arabia is a British film, is then Passion a Danish film?
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post #41 of 92
3/3/08 at 1:45pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Andre Dellamorte View Post
Bunuel and Dreyer raise questions of origin. Is Belle De Jour a French film because of the language? Does director outrank language or vice versa? If Laurence of Arabia is a British film, is then Passion a Danish film?
To say nothing of the Trois Colours films. Polish director; Polish writers; largely a French or French-speaking cast (with a notable exception or two); dialogue is mostly in French except for White; and the stories are set in France, Poland, and Switzerland; but the unifying principle is based on the French flag and French political ideals.
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post #42 of 92
10/19/09 at 1:02pm
Does anyone know if any of these films are good?

"Mia Et Le Migou", Jacques Rémy Girerd
"Pour Un Instant La Liberté", Arash T. Riahi
"Les Enfants De Timpelbach", Nicolas Bary
"Passe-Passe", Tonie Marshall
"Erreur De La Banque En Votre Faveur", Gérard Bitton & Michel Munz
"J'ai Toujours Revê D'Être Un Gangster", Samuel Benchetrit
"Le Plaisir De Chanter", Ilan Duran Cohen (great name btw)
"Le Premier Jour Du Reste De Ta Vie", Rémi Benzançon
"L'Anée Suivante", Isabelle Czajka
"Le Bal Des Atrices", Maiwenn
"Coco Chanel Et Igor Stravinsky", Jan Kounen
"L'Armée Du Crime", Robert Guédiguian
"Éden À L'Ouest", Costa-Garvas (yeah I know, it's Costa-Garvas so bound to be, but has anyone seen this?)
"Ne Te Retourne Pas", Marina De Van
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post #43 of 92
10/19/09 at 1:09pm
Good bump, Daniel. I added a whole bunch of French films that I haven't seen before to my Netflix Instant queue and am working through those along with review stuff. Tonight (hopefully) - Grand Illusion!
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post #44 of 92
10/19/09 at 1:14pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Martin Savage View Post
French cinema is filled with amazing comedies, but I really don't know how much is lost with the translation.


A classic Louis de Funes; La Soupe aux Choux.
Le Diner de Cons is sublime.
Les Visiteurs is pretty funny, unlike the american butchery it made.
I can get behind Diner de Cons et Visiteurs, but by God, not Soupe au Choux!

You're better off with Grande Vadrouille, Petit Baigneur or Rabbi Jacob. Three very funny Funes movies, if you like that sort of thing.
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post #45 of 92
10/19/09 at 1:15pm
I really enjoyed "Once A Theif" with Chow Yun Fat, which takes place in France.

And, obviosly, Amelie is a classic. I saw it 3 times in theaters back in the day
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post #46 of 92
10/19/09 at 1:22pm
Kate,

There was a scene in G.I.Joe that was set in Paris as well...


They've been mentioned here before, but I'll second them as favourites: L'Armée des Ombres (Army of Shadows) and C'est Arrivez Près de Chez Vous (Man Bites Dog).
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post #47 of 92
10/19/09 at 3:33pm
I'm not too big on French cinema especially the older stuff but I do like these movies:

Amelie
Delicatessen
L'appartement
Taxi 1-3
Nid de Guêpes
Banlieue 13
Angel-A
La Femme Nikita
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post #48 of 92
10/19/09 at 4:48pm
It's been brought up here already but Masculine-Feminine is outstanding. I also highly recommend both Le Samourai and Alphaville, as well as The Phantom of Liberty.
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post #49 of 92
10/19/09 at 4:54pm
I saw a french film once when I was working at a movie theater. I forget what it was called, but it was about a guy who pretends to be gay in order to avoid getting fired. It was really really funny. Kind of like the Anti-Chuck&Larry
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post #50 of 92
11/10/09 at 3:41pm
Some favourites:

Zero De Conduit
Etre Et Avoir
I'm Not Here To Be Loved
The Beat My Heart Skipped
Quai Des Orfevre
36 Quai Des Orfevre (different picture to the Clouzot masterpiece above)
La Bete Humaine
Jour Se Leve

Also anyone interestd in this thread should seek out anything by the *amazing* Maurice Pialat. Like the Belgian Dardenne Brothers, he's a minimalist filmmaker, stripping away stories to pure action and character. His pictures are as breathtaking as any canonical filmmaker's you'd care to think of from Ozu to Bergman to Bresson to Cassavetes.
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