French film photo galley for 1970

French films of the 1970s

Borsalino (1970)

Borsalino, one of the most lavish French thrillers of the 1970s, sees rival actors Jean-Paul Belmondo and Alain Delon (at the time, the two most popular actors in France) sharing the limelight. The pairing works surprisingly well, Delon’s feline coolness and brooding introspection making the perfect complement to Belmondo’s warmth and amiability... [More...]

Dernier domicile connu (1970)

A classic of the French policier genre, Dernier domicile connu, is the third film directed by José Giovanni, one that paints a sombre and disturbing portrait of police methods and gangster activity in the early 70s. Giovanni had scripted several notable French crime dramas, including Jacques Becker’s Le Trou (1960) (based on his first novel) and Jacques Deray’s Du rififi à Tokyo... [More...]

Domicile conjugale (1970)

Domicile conjugal is the fourth, and arguably the most humorous, installment in François Truffaut’s semi-autobiographical Antoine Doinel cycle of films. It follows directly on from the previous film in the series, Baisers volés, with Jean-Pierre Léaud once more reprising the role of Truffaut’s hapless but loveable altar ego... [More...]

Heureux qui comme Ulysse (1970)

Star of French cinema for four decades, the great comic actor Fernandel finally bows out with grace in this poignant if slightly sentimental comedy-drama, which is based on an American novel. With its beautiful Provençal setting and naturalistic performances, Heureux qui comme Ulysse captures the spirit and mood of the films of a director Fernandel worked with early on his career... [More...]

L'Aveu (1970)

Costa-Gavras followed his hugely successful film Z with L’Aveu, the second of what was to become a series of critically acclaimed political thrillers. L’Aveu was based on the novel by Arthur London which recounted his own experiences of detention by the USSR state police. The film, like the novel, offers a shocking and vivid portrayal of the brutal methods used by the police during... [More...]

L'Homme orchestre (1970)

Iconic comic actor Louis de Funès stars in this spirited but flawed attempt to make a French musical comedy in the American style. The great comedian appears alongside his son, Olivier, and a host of beautiful dancers, but their combined talents are wasted thanks to some uninspired direction and a script that is unimaginably weak... [More...]

La Horse (1970)

Whilst much of the last decade of Jean Gabin’s career is generally pretty lacklustre there are a few films in which the actor distinguishes himself with some pretty remarkable performances. Foremost of these is La Horse, in which Gabin plays a character who is very much close to his own heart, a patriarchal landowner who is anchored in the ways of the past... [More...]

La Maison des Bories (1970)

La Maison des Bories is a beautifully filmed study in loneliness and temptation from Jacques Doniol-Valcroze, one of the lesser known figures of the French New Wave. The Provençal setting and narrative simplicity make this a moving visual poem, offering a powerful evocation of human desire and the need for love.... [More...]

La Rupture (1970)

Judging by the end result, hallucinogenic drugs probably had a part to play with the conception and realisation of La Rupture, one of Claude Chabrol’s weirder films. It is one of those oddities which fall somewhere in the uncharted territory between psychological thriller and "theatre of the absurd" black comedy, and consequently has you wetting yourself for two entirely different reasons... [More...]

Le Cercle rouge (1970)

Jean-Pierre Melville’s penultimate film is an unashamed, no holds barred homage to the American film noir detective thriller of the 1940s. Despite the simplicity of its plot and the characteristic minimalism of its style, Le Cercle rouge is conceivably Melville’s most sophisticated, most compelling, most perfect film... [More...]

Le Cri du cormoran, le soir au-dessus des jonques (1970)

In the pantheon of successful French screenwriters, Michel Audiard deserves a prominent position. He wrote the dialogue for some of the most popular mainstream French film films of the 1960s and 1970s – classics such as Un taxi pour Tobrouk (1960) and Les Tontons flingueurs (1963). Although he is best known as a writer... [More...]

Le Genou de Claire (1970)

The fifth of Rohmer’s six Moral Tales closely parallels the preceding tale Ma nuit chez Maud as it portrays a man who is betrothed to one woman but is tempted by another. In Le Genou de Claire, the central character Jérôme regards love almost as an intellectual exercise which he reckons he has totally mastered... [More...]

Le Mur de l'Atlantique (1970)

After the staggering success of the 1966 film La Grande Vadrouille, the production team of Le Mur de l’Atlantique were clearly hoping to repeat the success with the winning formula of Bourvil and an outlandish comic farce set at the time of the Nazi occupation. Unfortunately, despite some memorable comic moments, this film is little more than a pale imitation of that earlier film... [More...]

Le Boucher (1970)

Le boucher is an early and splendid example of the kind of gentle but engrossing thriller which would become the mainstay of Claude Chabrol’s film work. The director’s skills are very much in evidence in this film. The film begins with a charming and perceptive portrayal of provincial life, reminiscent of scenes from Chabrol’s earlier film... [More...]

Peau d'âne (1970)

Generally, fairy tales and live action cinema are two things which are best kept well apart, the marriage of the two being something which few would ever want to experience whilst stone-cold sober and without the comforting palliative afforded by a kilo of hallucinogenic drugs. Jacques Demy’s 1970 musical fantasy... [More...]

Tristana (1970)

Although it runs along very similar lines to Buñuel’s earlier masterpieces, Viridiana (1961) and Belle de jour (1967), Tristana is far less striking in its anti-establishment rhetoric and use of surrealist imagery. Although the film is often overlooked, it is certainly an impressive work of cinema, addressing the familiar Buñuelesque themes of a moral decline and middle-class... [More...]

Juste avant la nuit (1971)

Juste avant la nuit is another meticulously crafted psychological drama from Claude Chabrol. It is one of his darkest, most introspective works, one which explores a recurring theme in his cinema: the all-consuming need for a criminal to expunge his guilt once he has committed a crime. The irony of this film is that a perfect crime has been committed and the perpetrator would have got way... [More...]

La Salamandre (1971)

Despite being made on a modern budget and with what was, even at that time, pretty crude technology, La Salamandre stands as a landmark European film. It comes from a time when the Swiss film industry was beginning to gain international interest for the first time, thanks to the emergence of a wave of talented young directors... [More...]

La Veuve Couderc (1971)

Simone Signoret and Alain Delon – two of the most celebrated actors in French cinema – are brought together in this unsettling melodrama, a respectable adaptation of a Georges Simenon novel which explores the possibility of love between a man and a woman from two different generations and wildly contrasting backgrounds... [More...]

La Décade prodigieuse (1971)

La Decade prodigieuse is not the most well-oiled of Claude Chabrol’s thrillers, and coming after such excellent examples of the genre as Le Boucher (1969) et Que la bête meure (1969), it is something of a let down. Whilst the director succeeds in sustaining an aura of grim menace – for which the often weird cinematography is largely responsible... [More...]

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