|
|
French films Fantasy
|
In this early short film, Georges Méliès uses his extraordinary range of talents to create a work of art which is both entertaining and, for its time, a huge technical achievement. This is Méliès’ first attempt at making a film with the narrative structure of a play and should be considered as the earliest example of the kind of plotted film we are familiar...
[More...]
|
|
Georges Méliès’ most famous film, Le Voyage dans la lune, is perhaps the best example of his remarkable imagination, artistic genius and talent as a film-maker. Not only did he write, direct and produce the film, he also had a hand in designing the sets and costumes. Although it may appear naïve and fanciful by today’s standards...
[More...]
|
|
In this hilarious short film, Georges Méliès shows his talent both as a lithe comic performer and as a master of the cinematic art of his day. Méliès uses the technique of multiple exposure (which he invented and used repeatedly in his films) almost to its limit – exposing the film no less than seven times to allow himself to appear seven times in the same...
[More...]
|
|
For this, one of his later films, Georges Méliès revisits the career that earned his reputation before he turned to filmmaking, that of the stage conjuror. Much of the film is taken up with an elaborate conjuring trick, with Méliès (playing the part of the diabolical lodger) pulling an improbable assortment of large objects out of a small travelling bag...
[More...]
|
|
El Dorado was one of first popular successes for the avant-garde French director Marcel L’Herbier, who went on to make some of the finest films of the silent era (most famously his 1929 masterpiece, L’Argent). Despite its comparative obscurity, El Dorado is a mesmerising work and ought to be considered as one of the best examples of early French cinema...
[More...]
|
|
This extraordinary early film from director René Clair was originally made to fill an interval between two acts of Francis Picabia’s new ballet, Relâche, at the Théâtre des Champs- Elysées in Paris in 1924. Picabia famously wrote a synopsis for the film on one sheet of note paper, headed Maxim’s (the famous Parisian restaurant)...
[More...]
|
|
Of the small handful of films which the great surrealist artist Man Ray made in the 1920s, Emak-Bakia is arguably the one which adheres most closely to the principles of Dadaist surrealism. It is also perhaps the most baffling of Man Ray’s films, involving some of his most extraordinary abstract visual imagery, with far less recognisable images than his other films...
[More...]
|
|
A significant film from the Surrealist movement of the 1920s, directed by Man Ray, L’Étoile de mer is a perplexing and haunting short film, which bears more than a passing resemblance to Buñuel’s Un chien Andalou. Inspired by a poem from Robert Desnos, the film contrasts the beauty of a starfish with that of a lost sweetheart...
[More...]
|
|
For many film enthusiasts, Jean Epstein’s La chute de la maison Usher represents the pinnacle of artistic achievement in European cinema of the 1920s. Epstein was already an accomplished film-maker by the time he came to make this film, having distinguished himself for his bold experimental techniques in such films as La Glace à trois faces (1927)...
[More...]
|
|
A likely candidate for the most bewildering film in the history of cinema, La Coquille et le clergyman was the product of two mutually incompatible creative talents of the 1920s – the writer Antonin Artaud and the feminist Germaine Dulac. Coming a year before Buñuel’s Un chien andalou (1929), La Coquille et le clergyman must have come as a shock to the censors and any...
[More...]
|
|
The most well-known film from the great surrealist artist Man Ray, Les Mystères du château de Dé is a hauntingly evocative poem to the transitory nature of life and a reminder of the role that chance plays in the grand scheme of things. The film includes some memorable surrealist touches (including the opening shot of the dice in the mannequin’s hands and the fact...
[More...]
|
|
Through a series of disturbing and perplexing images in which the banal encounters the bizarre, Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí propel us through their nightmare world of surrealist fantasy. A film which Buñuel’s insisted defied rational explanation both captivates and shocks its audience. It is a world of pure imagination and creative genius...
[More...]
|
|
After their first collaboration on Un chien andalou, Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali attempted to make an equally daring film in which surrealism and anti-bourgeois sentiment are combined to shocking effect. However, appalled by Buñuel’s anti-religious ideas, Dali abandoned the project at an early stage and Buñuel went on to make his first solo film...
[More...]
|
|
This is Jean Cocteau’s first full-length film and his most abstract, showing a strong influence from Dali and Bunuel. His intention was to explore the inner self of a poet, to portray the torment of a soul torn between the search for artistic fulfilment and the pressures and artifices of an external reality. Despite the primitiveness of the film making...
[More...]
|
|
Les Visiteurs du soir is one of a series of undisputed masterpieces which came out of the fruitful collaboration between director Marcel Carné and screenwriter Jacques Prévert. The film was hailed as a major cinematographic achievement upon its release in 1942 and was one of the most popular films made under the Nazi Occupation...
[More...]
|
|
One of the most chilling fantasy horror films made in France, La Main du diable is basically just an ingenious variation on the famous Faust legend. In this version, Faust is a struggling artist (Pierre Fresnay) who buys success at the expense of his soul, and the Devil is represented by an odious Vichy-style civil servant (Palau)...
[More...]
|
|
With its unsettling mix of neo-realistic photography and fairy-tale like settings, La Fiancée des ténèbres is an impressive example of the fantasy genre in French cinema of the 1940s. Although little known, it is an extraordinary work of cinema, which employs techniques that make it feel and appear quite different to the majority of films from this period...
[More...]
|
|
This is one of the most important films in the history of cinema. By pushing film technology to its creative limits and avoiding sentimentality, Jean Cocteau succeeds in creating a film that is both visually entrancing and emotionally rewarding, whilst re-telling a familiar tale in a fresh and innovative way. The most striking thing about this film is the visual imagery...
[More...]
|
|
In this film, which can best be described as visual poetry, Jean Cocteau retells the familiar tale of Orpheus and Eurydice, but in a original and fascinating way. Death is represented by an alluring princess in a tight-fitting black dress, chauffered in a Rolls Royce limousine and served by leather-clad motorcyclists. The afterlife is a vista of decaying buildings beneath a pall of starless...
[More...]
|
|
Juliette ou La clef des songes is probably Marcel Carné’s most underrated and misunderstood film, but it deserves to be rated as one of his most inspired and poetic. The film was conceived in 1940, but could not be made at the time because of fears over Nazi censorship. After the success of La Marie du port in 1949...
[More...]
|
© filmsdefrance.com 2009