It is not hard to see why Anatole Litvak’s Mayerling
is widely regarded as one of the greatest of cinematic love stories, a 1930s version
of Romeo and Juliette... [More...]
La Chaleur du sein is a good example of the kind of comic farce which earned Jean
Boyer his reputation as a successful and popular film director of the 1930s and 1940s... [More...]
Towards the end of his successful and highly productive period in France, Robert Siodmak
directed a number of films that presage the great film
noir classics he would go on to make in Hollywood... [More...]
This is a very sombre film which offers an uncompromising depiction of the humiliation
and bitterness that accompanies the end of an actor’s life... [More...]
This is an early example of the kind of thriller-mystery, or "polar", which would become
phenomenally popular in France during the 1950s. It is also one of the earliest
adaptations of a novel by the popular thriller writer... [More...]
This film is a magnificent sortie for director Jacques Becker into the world of high fashion,
in Paris, the centre of the universe of haute couture... [More...]
This compelling portrait of St Vincent de Paul, a strikingly humanist work, features Pierre
Fresnay in arguably his best film performance. The film has the distinction
of being the first French language film to win an... [More...]
Whilst Jean Cocteau is generally best remembered for his extraordinary artistic flights
of fancy (amply illustrated by his 1946 film La
Belle et la bête)... [More...]
Although slow moving, La Vérité sur Bébé Donge offers
a typically Simenonesque dark study about the tragedy of an unfulfilled love... [More...]
Henri-Georges Clouzot followed his masterful and hugely successful suspense thriller
Les Diaboliques (1955) with this perplexing
parody thriller, a far less satisfactory work that proved to be something of a commercial
... [More...]
Un singe en hiver is a gentle comedy which takes a melancholic view of friendship,
nostalgia and drink. It was based on a popular novel by the French writer Antoine
Blondin... [More...]
