French film photo galley for 1930

French films of the 1930s

Les Misérables (1933)

Victor Hugo’s novel Les Misérables, regarded by many as the most important literary work from France, has provided the source for numerous film, television and theatrical adaptations. Arguably the greatest, most ambitious of these was Raymond Bernard 1933 film, a monumental work which conveys not just the scale of Hugo’s epic novel... [More...]

Madame Bovary (1933)

Although not as well known and as celebrated as Jean Renoir’s subsequent films, Madame Bovary occupies an important part in the director’s film-making career. It is certainly am ambitious film for Renoir to attempt at this stage in his career and his film is faithful to Flaubert’s novel in content and spirit (although the film was far less controversial than the novel when... [More...]

Quatorze Juillet (1933)

René Clair has been described as the most quintessentially French of France’s great film directors, and nowhere is this more apparent than in his poetic elegy to young romance, Quatorze juillet. This film is similar in spirit to Clair’s earlier film Sous les toit de Paris (1930), with its free-flowing narrative and idealised portrayal of ordinary life in Paris... [More...]

Un soir de réveillon (1933)

The main attraction of this somewhat dated operetta is its wonderfully eccentric cast, which includes the delightful Arletty – the future star of Hôtel du nord (1938) and Les Enfants du paradis (1945) - in one of her early film appearances. The plot is a typical 1930s muddle of coincidence and mistaken identities... [More...]

Angèle (1934)

This is the first of Marcel Pagnol’s three ambitious film adaptations of novels by Jean Giono (followed by Regain and La Femme du boulanger). Like many of Pagnol’s films, Angèle presents a romanticised view of life in Provence, reflecting Pagnol’s love for the region perhaps better than the austere reality of the situation... [More...]

Compartiment de dames seules (1934)

Compartiment de dames seules is a sublime example of the kind of vaudeville farce that became prevalent in French cinema after the arrival of sound. Films such as this were often based on well-known stage plays and were hugely popular, allowing a mass audience across the country to appreciate what had previously been accessible only to those living in the main cities (usually Paris)... [More...]

L'Atalante (1934)

At first sight, this would appear to be a pretty run-of-the-mill kind of love story. However, the end result is anything but ordinary, and the film is now almost universally regarded as one of the greatest and most influential French films ever made. This is all the more surprising given the troubled history of the film... [More...]

La Crise est finie (1934)

With the rise of Nazism, director Robert Siodmak left Germany in 1933 and moved to Paris, where he continued his filmmaking career for a few years before settling in Hollywood. La Crise est finie is the second film he made in France, an effervescent musical comedy set against the backdrop of economic depression and political uncertainty... [More...]

Le Bonheur (1934)

Le Bonheur is pretty typical of Marcel L’Herbier’s output in the 1930s, a conventional piece of melodrama intended to showcase the stars of the day, in this case Gaby Morlay and Charles Boyer. The latter was on the verge of a huge film career in Hollywood and so this was to be one of his few significant roles for French cinema... [More...]

Les Bleus de la marine (1934)

This lowbrow farce appears shamelessly unsophisticated even for the standards of the 1930s, but a spirited performance from a very young Fernandel gives it a sense of fun and more than a few good laughs. The direction is clumsy and the comic situations painfully laboured, but some cheerful musical numbers help to make the film palatable... [More...]

Les Nuits moscovites (1934)

With its atmospheric chiaroscuro photography, impressive cast and meticulous attention to period detail (not to mention some stunning montage WWI battle sequences), Les Nuits moscovites has a lot to recommend it. The film was directed by Alexis Granowsky, one of a number of Russian exile filmmakers who worked in France in the 1930s; he is perhaps best known for his 1936 film... [More...]

Volga en flammes (1934)

Volga en flames is a fairly respectable adaptation of one of the greatest works in Russian literature, Aleksandr Pushkin’s “The Captain’s Daughter”, a poetic novel which recounts Pugachev’s Cossack insurrection of 1773/4. The film was directed by Viktor Tourjansky, a Russian cineaste who escaped the Bolshevik Revolution to pursue a very successful filmmaking... [More...]

Bonne chance (1935)

Sacha Guitry’s second sound film, Bonne Chance, makes a stark contrast to his first, Pasteur (a sober biography of the life of Louis Pasteur), and is far more typical of his subsequent films. This is a playful and sometimes irresistibly funny romantic comedy, very much in the style of Ernst Lubitsch’s early American films... [More...]

Golgotha (1935)

One of Julien Duvivier’s most ambitious and controversial films is this character-based adaption of the Gospels of the New Testament, which relates the last few days of Jesus Christ. Lacking the excessive grandeur and pretensions of subsequent productions (particularly those originating from Hollywood), Duvivier’s Golgotha has a quiet understated humility which serves its subject... [More...]

La Bandera (1935)

La Bandera is one of Julien Duvivier’s most memorable films, providing a satisfying and early example of poetic realism, albeit in a setting far removed from contemporary France. Although not nearly as ambitious or daring as the religious epic, Golgotha, which Duvivier made immediately before this film, La Bandera is a worthy film which presages many of the director’s subsequent... [More...]

La Kermesse héroïque (1935)

This enduring classic of French cinema is often cited as director Jacques Feyder’s finest film and it certainly earned him great acclaim on its release in 1935. It was awarded the Grand Prix du Cinéma Français and also a medal by the Societé d’Encouragement à l’Art et l’Industrie... [More...]

Toni (1935)

Jean Renoir’s bold experiment with neo-realism is only partially successful (marred mainly by wooden acting), but it provides an interesting diversion from the artificial studio-based cinema of the time. Filmed largely on location, without background music, and using locals for extras, Toni makes quite a contrast to other films of its period... [More...]

César (1936)

The final instalment in Marcel Pagnol’s famous romantic trilogy provides a fitting conclusion to a remarkable and entertaining series of films. Raimu gives one of his best screen performances as the film’s central character, the café owner César, capable supported by Pagnol’s familiar troupe which includes Pierre Fresnay... [More...]

Club de femmes (1936)

An astonishingly daring film for its time, Club de femmes is a curious combination of Billy Wilder-esque comedy and French romantic melodrama. Although some of the risqué elements of the plot are pretty mundane by today’s standards, there is still a great deal of comedy which should appeal to a modern audience... [More...]

Drôle de drame (1936)

The second film from the Carné-Prévert collaboration, Drôle de drame is an extraordinary mix black comedy and farce, quite unlike anything in French cinema at the time. Although it presents a typically French stereotyped view of the English, the film makes an intelligent satire of the middle classes... [More...]

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