Introduction
The Beginnings (1895-1919)
The films which the Lumières recorded with their
Cinématographe were silent shorts that merely represented scenes
from everyday life, the moving picture equivalent of photographs.
The first person to recognise cinema as a new art form in its own right
and see its potential as a medium of entertainment was another
Frenchman, Georges Méliès. At his specially
constructed film studio in Paris, Méliès used his
experience as a stage magician to create some startlingly inventive
fantasy films, the best known of which is Le Voyage dans la Lune (1902),
the world's first science-fiction film. Méliès's
remarkably inventive films (which numbered over 500, some painstakingly
coloured by hand) proved to be phenomenally successful around the world
and established cinema as the latest form of mass entertainment, one
that would soon overtake theatres and music halls in popularity.
Georges Méliès may have created the voracious public
appetite for cinema, but it was two other Frenchmen, Charles
Pathé and Léon Gaumont, who derived most of the benefit
when they founded their production and distribution companies,
Pathé and Gaumont (which remain the most important in France to
this day). Léon Gaumont was fortunate to have on his staff
Alice Guy, who proved to be an extremely talented filmmaker.
Originally employed as a secretary, Guy made around 400 short films in
a diverse range of genres between 1896 and 1920 and deserves to be
credited not only as the world's first woman film director but also as
the person who invented film narrative. Over at Pathé, a
former café entertainer Ferdinand Zecca was blazing a trail as a
director of naturalistic dramas. Zecca was called upon to direct
the company's most lavish and sophisticated films, the grandest of
which was the 44 minute long La Vie
et la passion de Notre Seigneur Jésus Christ (1903),
which he co-directed with another prominent figure at Pathé,
Lucien Nonguet.
1905 marked the arrival of cinema's first international superstar, Max
Linder. Over the course of the next twenty years, Linder would
appear in over 200 films for Pathé, around half of which he
directed himself, and his work would have a great influence on the
subsequent giants of film comedy, particularly Charlie Chaplin.
In 1908, Pathé created a subsidiary SCAGL (la Société
Cinématographique des Auteurs et Gens de Lettres) that was devoted
to prestige adaptations of classic works of literature. The man
who was appointed artistic director of this new company was Albert Capellani,
one of Pathé's most prolific and innovative film directors.
Capellani's first film for SCAGL L'Arlésienne
and Le Film d'Art's L'
Assassinat du Duc de Guise, both released in the autumn of 1908,
represented a major advancement for cinema, the first attempt at a complete
film narrative. From 1908 to 1913 Capellani made significant advances
in technique, notably continuity editing and use of depth of field. His
magnum opus Les Misérables
(1913) was an epic production that became a worldwide success and established
the feature or long métrage as the most popular film format from then
on.
At Gaumont, Louis Feuillade was achieving comparable success with his
phenomenally popular thriller serials: Fantômas, Les
Vampires and Judex.
In the years preceding the First World War, France was the dominant
player in the film production industry, with America lagging some way
behind. The outbreak of war in 1914 was to change this
forever. A shortage of film stock led the government to impose an
embargo on commercial filmmaking in France throughout the duration of
the war, and this allowed the Americans to steal a march on the
international film market. By 1919, the French film industry was
in a sorry state, with French films contributing less than 20 per cent
to box office receipts (most of the rest was supplied by American
films).
Best of the 1910s...
Best of the 1910s...
The Age of Silence (1920-1929)
Historical dramas and literary adaptations were the most important
genres of the 1920s, and films became more visually daring and longer,
partly through the need to compete with American imports. Henri
Fescourt's Les Misérables (1925)
and Monte Cristo (1929) are typical
of the decade's French period blockbusters. Alberto Cavalcanti,
Jacques Feyder, Raymond Bernard and Louis Delluc were four other
filmmakers of this period who were to have a lasting impact. The
great Danish cineaste Carl Theodor Dreyer contributed one of the most
important French films: La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc
(1928). Luis Buñuel made his directing debut in
collaboration with Salvador Dalí with his surreal short Un
chien andalou (1929), one of the weirdest films ever
made. Despite this abundance of talent, French cinema was still
under threat from the Hollywood behemoth, so the government introduced
a quota system in 1928 which restricted the number of foreign films
that could be shown in cinemas across France.
Best of the 1920s...
Best of the 1920s...
The Age of Giants (1930-1939)
Throughout the 1930s, cinema provided a welcome escape from the
economic and political realities of the day and often mirrored the
changing political climate in France. Renoir's Le Crime de Monsieur Lange
(1936) and Duvivier's La Belle équipe (1936)
reflected the misplaced optimism in the Front Populaire, whilst the
poetic realist dramas of Marcel Carné and Jean Grémillion
(Le Quai des brumes, Le
Jour se lève and Gueule
d'amour) evoked the darkening mood as Fascism took root in
Europe and the continent drifted ever closer towards war.
Renoir's La Bête Humaine (1938)
and Duvivier's Pépé le Moko (1937)
were just as pessimistic and appear to prefigure American film noir -
both films cemented the popularity of the actor Jean Gabin. In
1939, Jean Renoir released his magnum opus, La
Règle du jeu, a scathing satire on France's class
system that is now considered one of the all-time greats of French
cinema.
Light relief was provided by no shortage of frivolous comedies, many
featuring the ever-popular vaudevillian Fernandel, who would dominate
mainstream French comedy for the next three decades. Other actors
to find stardom in this golden age were: Arletty, Louis Jouvet, Jules
Berry, Harry Baur, Michel Simon, Michèle Morgan, Danielle
Darrieux, Raimu, Pierre Brasseur, Charles Boyer and Pierre
Fresnay. To compete with the ever-present threat of Hollywood,
French and German film companies increasingly pooled their resources
(in spite of the widening political gulf between the two countries), so
that many films made in this era were Franco-German
co-productions. Between 1920 and 1938, the number of cinema
tickets sold in France had risen from 150 million to 450 million.
French cinema was on a roll. Then came World War II.
Best of the 1930s...
Best of the 1930s...
The Years of Darkness (1940-1948)
The year that followed the liberation of France by the Allies in 1944
marked the beginning of a period of extreme post-war austerity in
France. With film stock and electricity severely rationed,
filmmaking rapidly fell into decline, and 1944 marked the nadir of
France's film output: around twenty full-length films in total.
The hardship was to endure for several more years, but in spite of this
the French film industry soon managed to get itself back on its
feet. 1946 was dominated by two hugely successful films, Jean
Dréville's La Cage aux rossignols (later
remade as Les Choristes in 2004) and Les Enfants du paradis, the
most ambitious of Marcel Carné's masterpieces (and a fair
contender for the greatest French film ever). This was also the
year that saw the release of Jean Cocteau's hauntingly poetic La Belle et la bête
(1946), one of the most influential of all French films.
René Clément and Jean-Pierre Melville paid homage to the
efforts of the French resistance, with their films La Bataille du rail (1946) and Le Silence de la mer (1947),
supporting the De Gaulle myth that France had been a nation of
resistance during the occupation - a myth that was not debunked until
the 1970s, partly through Marcel Ophüls's controversial
documentary Le Chagrin et la pitié.
1946 also marked the first Festival de Cannes, which has become one of
the world's leading film festivals, and the foundation of the Centre
National de la Cinématographie (CNC), created with the twin
goals of preserving French cinema of the past and supporting cinema of
the future.
It wasn't all good news, however. As part of the 1946 Blum-Byrnes
agreement between France and America (which cleared part of the debt
France owed the United States after WWII), French cinemas were obliged
to screen a far higher quantity of American films. With Hollywood in
a much healthier state than its French counterpart (and with a huge
back catalogue of films to sell to Europe), it was inevitable that
France would soon be deluged by American movies. By the 1950s,
the French were addicted to all things American and appeared generally
unconcerned that their own film industry was going down the
pan. The government attempted to stem the rot in 1948 by
introducing a tax on each cinema ticket to support the industry; later,
the Minister of Culture André Malraux raised the level of
financial aid available to filmmakers and, to this
day, French cinema remains heavily dependent on state support.
Best of the 1940s...
Best of the 1940s...
A Perfect Shade of Grey (1949-1959)
Robert Bresson, Jean-Pierre Melville, Jacques Becker and Jacques Tati
were four other filmmakers active in the 1950s who conformed to
Truffaut's idea of the film auteur. After a few commercial films
which he later disowned, Bresson forged his own idiosyncratic style with
a series of increasingly austere dramas which usually have a moral or
spiritual dimension: Journal d'un curé de campagne
(1951), Un condamné à mort s'est
échappé (1956), Mouchette
(1967). A devotee of American film noir, Melville carved out his
own niche in the 1960s and early 1970s in the gangster milieu, the
abiding theme of his work being the necessity to adhere to a code of
honour, whether you are a cop or a hoodlum. Melville not only
gave us a superb series of crime films, including: Le
Doulos (1962), Le Samouraï (1967) and Le
Cercle rouge (1970); he also delivered the definitive
wartime resistance film: L'Armée des ombres
(1969).
Although he made just a handful of films, Jacques Tati proved to be a
worthy successor to Chaplin and Keaton with his comic masterpieces Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot
(1953), Mon oncle (1958) and Playtime
(1967). Jacques Becker, one-time assistant to Jean Renoir,
could be mistaken for the missing link between la
qualité française and la Nouvelle Vague, through such
films as Casque d'or (1952), Touchez pas au grisbi (1954)
and his late masterpiece Le Trou (1960).
Henri-Georges Clouzot is another filmmaker who appears to lie between
the two camps, best known today for his two superlative suspense
thrillers Le Salaire de la peur (1953)
and Les Diaboliques (1955).
In 1959, Georges Franju (co-founder of the Cinématheque
Française) directed Les Yeux sans visage, one
of the most lyrical and chilling of all horror films (a genre
that is virtually overlooked in France).
Roger Vadim also deserves some recognition for jabbing a shot of
modernity into French cinema with Et Dieu... créa la femme
(1956), the film that made Brigitte Bardot into an international sex
goddess. The 1950s was not quite such a dull decade as it is
often portrayed. Amidst the grey, there was the occasional splash
of colour, the faint glimmerings of the revolution that was to come.
Best of the 1950s...
Best of the 1950s...
The New Wave (1959-1969)
Whilst the term 'Nouvelle Vague' is now often restricted to Truffaut and
his buddies on the Cahiers du cinéma, it was originally coined
to describe the huge influx of French filmmakers (around 200) that came
onto the scene in the late 1950s, early 1960s. To the above
mentioned five, we can also add: Louis Malle, Alain Resnais,
Agnès Varda, Chris Marker, Jacques Demy, Jean Eustache, Alain
Cavalier, Claude Sautet, Costa-Gavras, Claude Lelouch and Maurice
Pialat - all of whom would have a significant impact and help to
establish the film d'auteur as a major strand of French cinema.
Malle gave us three of France's most insightful film portraits of
childhood and adolescence with Le Souffle au coeur (1971), Lacombe
Lucien (1974) and Au revoir, les enfants (1987);
Resnais explored the relationship between time and memory more fully
and imaginatively than any other filmmaker, with such films as Hiroshima mon amour (1959), L'Année dernière à
Marienbad (1961) and Muriel (1963); and Demy crafted
two of the greatest film musicals ever: Les Parapluies de Cherbourg
(1964) and Les Demoiselles de Rochefort (1967).
Lelouch's vibrant and self-consciously arty Un homme et une femme (1966)
evokes the spirit of the mid-1960s better than any other film and is
probably the most famous French film of them all, better known under
the title A Man and a Woman.
In parallel with this burgeoning auteur component to French cinema,
France's mainstream cinema also underwent something of a revitalisation
in the 1960s, partly through the need to compete with television,
partly through the influence of its bigger American cousin. The
two genres that became particularly important in this decade (and the
next) were comedies and thrillers. Director Gérard Oury
notched up a series of massive box office hits in the '60s and '70s
with his blockbuster comedies starring the comic geniuses Louis de
Funès and Bourvil. La Grande vadrouille, Oury's
biggest success, drew an audience of 17.3 million, making it the most
popular French film ever, until it was overtaken by Dany Boon's Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis, 42 years
later. The comedy-thriller enjoyed considerable success in the
1960s, particularly the collaborations of director Georges Lautner and
Michel Audiard, best represented by Les
Tontons flingueurs (1963) and Ne nous fâchons
(1966). The crime-thriller (film policier) became ever more
popular under the stewardship of such directors as Jacques Deray,
Jean-Pierre Melville, Henri Verneuil and José Giovanni,
highlights being Le Pacha (1968), Le
Samourai (1968) and Le Clan des Siciliens (1969).
Best of the 1960s...
Best of the 1960s...
Polars and Politics (1970-1979)
The 1970s also saw an increasing politicisation of cinema in France,
with many filmmakers (notably Costa-Gavras, Yves Boisset and Pierre
Schoendoerffer) eager to make reference to the political scandals and
crises of the day. The conspiracy thriller (or néo-polar)
became one of the most popular genres of the late 1970s, feeding on an
increasing public suspicion of politicians and big business, a fine
example being Boisset's Le Juge Fayard dit Le Sheriff (1977).
José Giovanni's Deux hommes dans la ville
(1973) and Michel Drach's Le Pull-over rouge (1979) each
argued a powerful case for the abolition of the death penalty in
France. The truth about the Occupation and France's complicity in the
Holocaust was beginning to be exposed - through such films as Michel
Mitrani's Les Guichets du Louvre (1974)
and Joseph Losey's Monsieur Klein (1976).
Some filmmakers were even brave enough to broach the taboo subject of
the Algerian War, although their efforts were largely frustrated by the
French military and the government - Yves Boisset's R.A.S.
(1973) and Laurent Heynemann's La Question (1977) opened a
very nasty can of worms.
Best of the 1970s...
Best of the 1970s...
The Fall and Rise of French Cinema (1980-1999)
Whilst there was certainly no shortage of talent in the film making
business, cinema audiences in France continued to show a steady decline
through the 1970s, thanks largely to competition from television and
the worsening economic situation. By the early 1980s, French
cinema was entering another dangerous phase and drastic measures had to
be taken to keep the industry afloat. In 1988 the French
government introduced legislation that severely limited the number of
films that could be broadcast on television (no films could be shown on
the free to air channels on Wednesday, Friday or Saturday).
Television became one of the main sources of revenue for French cinema,
particularly the leading subscription channel Canal+, which ploughs
around a fifth of its revenue back into filmmaking. Cinema
audiences reached their lowest point in France in 1992, with just 116
million tickets sold, but showed a marked recovery (to 170 million) by
1998.
Even though the 1980s is often characterised as a rocky period for
French cinema, it was punctuated by some notable successes. The
decade began well with some fresh blood provided by Luc Besson,
Jean-Jacques Beineix and Leos Carax, whose cinéma du look provided a
glossy makeover to some genres that badly needed it. Whilst
Beineix and Carax both failed to live up to their promise - with Diva
(1981) and Mauvais sang (1986)
respectively - Besson, the director of the hit Subway
(1985), went on to become one of the most successful French film
producers of his generation, achieving a string of box office hits with
such popular fare as his Taxi films. Francis
Veber's La Chèvre (1981) and
Claude Berri's Jean de Florette (1986) both
attracted audiences in excess of seven million; in 1988, Luc Besson's Le
Grand Bleu and Jean-Jacques Annaud's L'Ours
both had audiences of nine million; and the hit of the decade was
Coline Serreau's Trois hommes et un couffin
(1985), which sold 10 million tickets in France and was remade in
America as Three Men and a Baby.
Bertrand Blier courted controversy whilst attracting large audiences
with his iconoclastic and often surreal comedies, such as Trop belle pour toi
(1989). Meanwhile, Patrice Leconte made the transition from
mainstream success (Les Bronzés) to art
house acclaim with his sensual Georges Simenon adaptation Monsieur
Hire (1989).
With increased sources of funding available to filmmakers and an
improving economic outlook, French cinema experienced a dramatic
reversal of fortunes in the 1990s. Régis Wargnier's Indochine
(1992) not only won an Oscar, it was also a box office winner, although
its audience of three million appears modest compared with the 14
million achieved by the Jean Reno comedy Les
Visiteurs (1993) and the 9 million for Claude Zidi's Astérix et Obélix contre
César (1999). Once again, success in commercial
cinema was accompanied by a renewed vigour in the film d'auteur (art
house) sector. Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro had a foot in
both camps with their stylish fantasies such as Delicatessen
(1991), whilst films such as Mathieu Kassovitz's La Haine
(1995), Bertrand Tavernier's Ça commence aujourd'hui
(1999) and Olivier Assayas's L'Eau froide (1994) engaged
with important social issues of the day - racism, immigration, youth
alienation and the worsening fragmentation of French society.
Some films, notably Robert Guédiguian's Marius et Jeannette (1997),
manage to combine social commentary with old-fashioned
romanticism. This trend for greater realism and political
awareness would continue into the next decade. Cinema was no
longer just an art form and entertainment medium; it had become a
powerful means of political expression.
Best of the 1990s...
Best of the 1990s...
The Age of the Auteur (2000-)
The 2000s was a particularly successful decade for French cinema, a tsunami of new talent bringing a rich diversity of styles and themes on a scale that had never been seen before. Thanks to recent technological developments in filmmaking technology, it has never been easier to become a filmmaker, and a large proportion of films made in France are by first time film directors, without whom French cinema would be a much less exciting place. Jean-Pierre Jeunet's Le Fabuleux destin d'Amélie (2001) was not only a hit in France, launching the career of actress Audrey Tautou, it also had a massive international impact, boosting the profile of French cinema around the world. Jacques Audiard's De battre mon coeur s'est arrêté (2005) and Un prophète (2009) redefined the post noir thriller and were both critically acclaimed and box office hits. In 2008, Dany Boon's comedy Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis became the most successful French film ever with its audience of 20.5 million, just short of the 20.7 million achieved by James Cameron's Titanic (1997), which still holds the record for the largest cinema audience size in France. Among the many talented filmmakers to illuminate this glorious decade are: André Téchiné (Les Témoins, 2007), Arnaud Desplechin (Un conte de Noël, 2008), Claire Denis (35 rhums, 2009), François Ozon (8 femmes, 2002), Jerôme Bonnell (Chignon d'Olga, 2002), Xavier Giannoli (À l'origine, 2009), Benoît Jacquot (À tout de suite, 2004), Lucas Belvaux (Cavale, 2002), Christophe Honoré (Les Chansons d'amour, 2007) and Patrice Chéreau (Son frère, 2003).Best of the 2000s...
So far, the 2010s show as much promise as the decade before.
Xavier Beauvois's Des hommes et des dieux took
the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival and was the biggest critical
hit of 2010, although this success was soon eclipsed by Michel
Hazanavicius's The Artist, a black-and-white
silent tribute to the Golden Age of Hollywood that won five Oscars and
was a massive worldwide hit in 2011. In France, the most popular
film of 2011 was Intouchables, a politically
incorrect but touching buddy comedy from Olivier Nakache and Eric Toledano,
which had an audience of 19.4 million, the second most successful
French film to date. 2012 was marked by some surprising comebacks
from directors whom we thought we had heard the last of, from Leos Carax
(Holy Motors), Alain Resnais (Vous n'avez encore rien vu) and
Christophe Ruggia (Dans la tourmente), to name
just three.
Best of the 2010s...
Best of the 2010s...
Social and political themes continue to impinge heavily on the auteur
sector, reflecting increasing public concern in France over the present
economic crisis and the country's growing immigration problems.
Meanwhile, mainstream cinema provides a healthy counterbalance,
offering escapism through crowd-pleasing comedies and adrenalin-pumping
thrillers. Despite all the other distractions our multimedia age
offers us, French cinema is coping remarkably well - in 2011 the number
of cinema tickets sold in France was at its highest level since
1966. The French cinema juggernaut may have had a few skids in
its time but there is still plenty of mileage left in it. The
country that invented cinema and has made it an enduring cultural
phenomenon will doubtless be in the vanguard of the filmmaking industry
for some time to come. Vive le
cinéma français.
© James Travers 2012
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