French film photo galley for Comedy/Thriller

French films Comedy/Thriller

Le Grand restaurant (1966)

Le Grand restaurant is an entertaining and lively action comedy starring popular French comic actor Louis de Funès. The film comes from de Funès’ “golden period”, which includes La Grande Vadrouille (1966) and the Fantômas and Gendarme series. Although the plot and dialogue are less satisfactory than some of de Funès’ other films... [More...]

Fantômas contre Scotland Yard (1967)

The third instalment in the 1960s series of Fantômas films sees Louis de Funès and Jean Marais united for the final time in the by now familiar blend of slapstick comedy and crime thriller. Although marginally better than the previous two films in a number of areas (notably the plot and the direction), there is little in the way of new material and the kitsch comic strip formula... [More...]

La Mariée était en Noir (1967)

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. Indeed, it was largely down to these influential critics that Hitchcock achieved the recognition he deserved in his lifetime; few critics elsewhere took him seriously at the time... [More...]

La Route de Corinthe (1967)

More a divertissement than a bon cru, La Route de Corinthe is one of Claude Chabrol’s less successful attempts at a parody of the spy thriller. An attractive cast and an even more attractive location offer some consolation for the uneven comedy and implausible, drawn out storyline, which appears to have been lifted wholesale from a sub-standard Tintin adventure... [More...]

L'Homme à la Buick (1968)

In this film, director Gilles Grangier attempts a happy marriage of the two genres that most define his career: the popular comic farce and the classic French crime-thriller. The union doesn’t quite work and although the film has some pretty lavish production values it is very much a hit and miss affair. Not all of the jokes are in the places you’d expect to find them... [More...]

Le Cerveau (1969)

After the immense success of Le Corniaud (1964) and La Grande vadrouille (1966) – two of the most popular films ever made in France – director Gérard Oury had great ambitions for his next film. With a colossal budget of 24 million francs, Le Cerveau was conceived as gutsy blockbuster parody of the American heist thriller... [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...]

Out 1: Nolie me Tangere (1971)

Out 1 is like a more avant-garde Thomas Pynchon, or Honoré de Balzac on drugs. A true piece of art, it’s unpredictable, a darkly epic tragedy one moment, and a hysterically unsettling comedy the next. This pantheon of a film creates it’s own trippy, jagged landscape, laws and time. Its symbolic insanity creates a confusing... [More...]

L'Aventure, c'est l'aventure (1972)

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 made. The aftershocks of May ’68 were still shaping public attitudes, with power gradually shifting away from the political and managerial elite into the hands of ordinary... [More...]

Le Grand blond avec une chaussure noire (1972)

This popular and entertaining comedy thriller established Pierre Richard as one of France’s leading comic actors in the 1970s, and his character, François Perrin, would reappear a number of times in other films over the following decade. The film’s screenplay was written by Francis Veber, who went on to win acclaim for his further scripting and directoral work... [More...]

L'Emmerdeur (1973)

The popular Belgian singer Jacques Brel stars along side Lino Ventura – the great hard man of French cinema – in this unique, totally bizarre black comedy. The film was adapted from a popular stage play by Francis Veber and directed by Edouard Molinaro. The same director-writer team would achieve even greater success in 1978 with the almost legendary hit La Cage aux folles... [More...]

Le Retour du grand blond (1974)

After the enormous success of Le Grand blond avec une chaussure noire (1972), director Yves Robert and screenwriter Francis Veber would have been mad not to have made a sequel. Sure enough, two years later Pierre Richard – alias “le grand blond” – returned to delight audiences in probably his best-loved role... [More...]

Nuits rouges (1974)

Georges Franju’s last film for the cinema was to be his second homage to the silent Louis Feuillade crime serials of the 1910s – the first being his inspired remake of Judex in 1963. Nuits rouges is a curious cinematic beast that owes as much to the adolescent American fantasy-thriller serials of the 1940s and 1960s as it does to Feuillade... [More...]

Il faut vivre dangereusement (1975)

Il faut vivre dangereusement is a well-intentioned parody of the American film noir thriller, although, with its Grand Guignol killings, endless bedroom antics and surfeit of unsubtle erotica it has a distinctly French feel to it. This was the one and only full length film to be directed by Claude Makovski, based on a novel by Raymond Marlot with a screenplay co-authored by Nelly Kaplan... [More...]

Le Locataire (1976)

Following Repulsion (1965) and Rosemary’s Baby (1968), Roman Polanski completed his masterful trilogy of social isolation and paranoia with The Tenant (Le Locataire) in 1974. In essence, all three films tell the same story – that of a seemingly well-balanced individual, a loner, who is driven to insanity through an increasing fear of those around him or her... [More...]

Tendre poulet (1978)

The inspired pairing of Annie Girardot and Philippe Noiret, two of the most familiar French actors of the 1970s, makes Tendre poulet one of director Philippe de Broca’s more entertaining and memorable films. Michel Audiard’s dialogue isn’t perhaps as sharp and as witty as in his earlier films, but his script strikes an appropriate balance between comedy and hard-edged thriller... [More...]

Inspecteur la Bavure (1980)

This respectable comedy policier from director Claude Zidi provides ample opportunity for the comic genius Coluche to show his talents as both an actor and a comedian. Widely regarded as one of Coluche’s better films, it has both the gloss of an early 1980s French thriller and some raucous comedy, giving it great entertainment value... [More...]

Le Guignolo (1980)

After the commercial success of Flic ou voyou (1978), director Georges Lautner and actor Jean-Paul Belmondo were reunited in their next film, Le Guignolo (along with most of the cast and production team of their previous film). This time, Lautner had the advantage of a considerably greater budget and practically no constraints on the film’s scenario or location... [More...]

Est-ce bien raisonnable? (1981)

Compared with some of Georges Lautner’s better known films, Est-ce bien raisonnable? must rate as a pretty minor work, lacking the biting wit, energy and sense of fun of Lautner’s earlier achievements. However, some spirited performances from a talented cast just about make this an attractive and mildly entertaining film... [More...]

Les Fantômes du chapelier (1982)

In this exemplary adaptation of a Georges Simenon novel, director Claude Chabrol creates possibly his darkest and most introspective work, in which he explores some of his favourite themes – most notably the idea of a deadly threat hiding beneath a mask of bourgeois respectability. The film is set in a small Breton village where it appears to rain continually and where the hours of... [More...]

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