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French films Musical
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In common with many of his contemporaries of the late 1920s, director René Clair was apprehensive over the transition from silent to sound cinema, and this is apparent in his first sound film, Sous les toit de Paris. Although the film has a number of scenes with recorded dialogue, it is essentially a silent film to which sound elements have been added in a rather tentative and somewhat...
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René Clair’s musical farce À nous la liberté was one of the early triumphs of sound cinema and has retained its status as one of the all-time greats of French cinema. The famous production line scenes were the inspiration for Chaplin’s masterpiece, Modern Times and the film contains many equally memorable sequences which doubtless influenced a generation of...
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Rated as René Clair’s comic masterpiece, the original template for the Hollywood musicals, and one of the best of the early sound films, Le Million is by any account an astonishing piece of cinema that lives up to its reputation. Even seventy years on, the film is bursting with energy and freshness and has a great deal to entertain a modern cinema audience...
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The main attraction of this somewhat dated operetta is its wonderfully eccentric cast, which includes the delightful Arletty – the future star of Hôtel du nord (1938) and Les Enfants du paradis (1945) - in one of her early film appearances. The plot is a typical 1930s muddle of coincidence and mistaken identities...
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With the rise of Nazism, director Robert Siodmak left Germany in 1933 and moved to Paris, where he continued his filmmaking career for a few years before settling in Hollywood. La Crise est finie is the second film he made in France, an effervescent musical comedy set against the backdrop of economic depression and political uncertainty...
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La Belle meunière is Marcel Pagnol’s heartfelt tribute to the work of Franz Schubert, a composer he greatly admired. It has not only the distinction of being Pagnol’s sole colour film but also the only film made with the revolutionary Roux Color system, invented by the brothers Lucien and Armand Roux...
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Film musicals are a rare phenomenon in French cinema, with only a few such films (for example, René Clair’s Le Million) bearing comparison with their American counterparts. Of those French films which are nominally classified as musicals most are anything but, with the music often lazily inserted into the narrative as a cheap time-filler...
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Andalousie is a film version of one of a number of popular operettas starring the Spanish popular music idol of the late 1940s, Luis Mariano. Although the film now looks somewhat dated and unsophisticated, it was hugely successful in its day, and its blend of comedy, romantic drama and music is not unappealing. Extensive location filming...
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One of Fernandel’s better comic outings, Honoré de Marseille is tailor-made for the horse-faced comedian and gives him ample opportunity to regale us with his talent for no-nonsense, inoffensive comedy. There are some very funny jokes, and a wonderful piece of slapstick with Francis Blanche. A number of cheerful musical numbers sung by the film’s star also add greatly to...
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Jacques Demy’s most famous film, Les parapluies de Cherbourg is one of the most beautiful, and captivating romantic films ever made, a monument to ruined happiness and devastated hopes. Through music, colour and stunning photography, Demy creates a dream world where love and regret are as real as sunshine and raindrops...
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The film musical has enjoyed an enduring popularity in American cinema, certainly until the late 1960s, but has been less well represented in European cinema. This is a shame, because the few film musicals which have been made by European directors are, generally, on a par with anything produced by Hollywood and, in some cases...
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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...
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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...
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Genial ce film !!! Chante du debut a la fin, il m’a beaucoup emu je l’ai vu dix fois. J’adore deja les comedies musicales mais tout le temps chante encore plus genial !!! Dans la meme veine que les parapluies de cherbourg (du meme realisateur Jacques Demy), les dialogues chantes style vous ne pourriez pas me preter votre brosse a chaussure...
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The relationship between times past and present is a recurrent theme in Alain Resnais’ cinema. Whereas his earlier films adopt an abstract, often bewildering, approach, his later films, and La Vie est un roman is a prime example of this, opt for the more direct path. In this particular film, past and present are represented by two completely separate story strands...
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On connaît la chanson marked Alain Resnais’ triumphal return to mainstream French cinema in the late 1990s. The film, hugely popular in France, is wedded in the familiar Resnais themes of time, place and memory, but his approach here is much lighter and more accessible than in his earlier, more abstract works such as L’année dernière à Marienbad...
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With this outrageous mélange of murder mystery à la Agatha Christie and camp pastiche of 1950s Hollywood musical, François Ozon proves that he is not just one of France’s most versatile film directors. The film amply shows that he is also well on the way to becoming one of the most high profile and talented directors of his generation...
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How strange that one of the great innovators of French cinema, Alain Resnais, should spend the twilight years of his career making musical comedies. Pas sur las bouche is a straight film adaptation of a largely forgotten French operetta from the 1920s and presumably hopes to capitalise on the success of Resnais’ previous musical offering...
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This first film from writer-journalist Yann Moix is based on his best-selling novel and is most likely to become a cult classic – if only because of its gloriously kitsch 1970s feel and its association with one of France’s great singing icons. Claude François was one of the biggest pop singers of his day (the 1960s and 1970s)...
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Not for the first time, director Christophe Honoré challenges our assumptions and expectations with a film that is breathtakingly original in both its subject and its format. Les Chansons d’amour is a stirring portrayal of love lost and found in the most romantic city on Earth, yet filmed in a low-key way that suggests a profound sense of melancholia and angst...
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