For his remarkable cinematic debut, director Louis Malle brought a fresh and original
approach to the film policier, the most popular genre in French cinema of the 1950s... [More...]
One of Claude Chabrol’s most bizarre films, Landru is an extraordinary
off-the-wall black comedy which allows the director to combine his flair for comedy and
thriller to create something which is both original... [More...]
Costa-Gavras made his directoral debut with this fast-moving, convoluted but magnificently
assembled crime thriller. The film reflects the director’s interest for American
film noir and... [More...]
In the mid-1950s, few film directors made a greater impression on the
controversial young critics on the French film review paper Les Cahiers du cinéma than a
certain Alfred Hitchcock... [More...]
Rated by François Truffaut as one of the best films about the Nazi Occupation of
France, L’Vieil homme et l’enfant marks a spectacular
cinematic debut for the young film director Claude Berri... [More...]
Sadly underrated, Le Voleur is one of Louis Malle’s
most attractive films, an entertaining and beautifully crafted comedy which gleefully
satirises the attitudes of the nouveaux riches... [More...]
Winner of two oscars in 1969 (for best foreign picture, best editing) and awards at Cannes
(the jury prize and best actor for Trintignant), Z is the film that took
1969 by storm... [More...]
Marcel Carné’s penultimate fictional film is a superlative
example of the kind of gritty political thriller that would become
highly popular in France in the mid to late 1970s... [More...]
Les Mariés de l’an II is typical of the ebullient and witty period drama
which French cinema has been consistently good at producing for many decades... [More...]
Although intended as an off-the-wall comedy, L’Aventure, c’est l’aventure does
offer a pretty accurate reflection of the kind of political upheavals which were taking
place in France when it was being... [More...]
Une belle fille comme moi is François Truffaut’s first and only sortie
into black comedy, a film that is in marked contrast to his earlier films... [More...]
With this stylish thriller, Philippe Labro takes some carefully judged swipes at his own
profession, that of journalism, whilst referencing some major topical concerns –
including corruption in politics and industry... [More...]
Les Gaspards is without
question one of the weirdest French film comedies ever made; it is
perhaps best described as an LSD-inspired reinterpretation of The Borrowers... [More...]
This high budget, fast moving action thriller typifies the kind of film that was hugely
popular in France in the mid- 1970s. Peur sur la ville epitomises the
crime thriller or ’polar’ of that decade... [More...]
Another exquisitely composed portrait of mid-life crisis from Claude Sautet, Mado is
an absorbing work which engages the spectator by solidly locking onto the personal traumas
of its well-drawn characters... [More...]
