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French films Thriller
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After his three year suspension following the storm that his earlier film, Le Corbeau , unleashed, Clouzot returned to French cinema with a magnificently crafted detective thriller, Quai des Orfèvres. Strong characterisation, tight plotting and moody photography are the strongest traits in Clouzot’s cinema...
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Although the crime thriller had not yet achieved the popularity in France which it would in the following decade, the 1940s was really where the genre had its origins. At the time few French films attained the calibre of the American film noir classics which film directors were keen to emulate, but a few have stood the test of time and remain excellent examples of the early crime thriller...
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(1946) and Occupe-toi d’Amélie (1949), Claude Autant-Lara established himself as one of France’s leading directors of quality films in the 1940s. His films not only won the approval of the critics but most proved to be popular commercial successes. Here was a director who had made his mark and was looking forward to a hugely successful film-making career...
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The enormous success of La Môme vert-de-gris (1953) made Lemmy Caution’s return to the big screen inevitable. Sure enough, within a matter of months, Eddie Constantine reprised the role of the famous FBI agent in this, the second of what was to be a greatly loved series of French films over the following decade...
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The previously unknown Eddie Constantine became an overnight star in France when La Môme vert-de-gris was released in 1953, one of the most popular films of that year. The French cinemagoer’s appetite for all things American, in particular noirish gangster films, was rewarded by this tongue-in-cheek pastiche of the B-movie genre...
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Probably one of the most harrowing two and half hours of cinema, Le salaire de la peur is not a film for the squeamish – or the sentimental. It is director Henri-Georges Clouzot’s undisputed masterpiece and unquestionably one of the great triumphs of French cinema. Yet it is not a comfortable film, and even having such a familiar face as Yves Montand as a lead character does little...
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Although not quite in the league of Jacques Becker’s best films, Touchez pas au grisbi occupies an important placing in French cinema history. Firstly, it firmly re-established Jean Gabin as a leading figure in French cinema after his temporary decline into near-obscurity during the 1940s. More significantly, it established the crime thriller as a major genre in French cinema...
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Whilst lacking the sombre hard-edged impact of some of Melville’s latter gangster films, Bob le flambeur is an impressive early outing for the director in his most successful genre. The sense of tension and suspense is there, as in all of Melville’s thrillers, but somehow this is a much lighter, more relaxed approach...
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The main interest value of this lightweight French thriller probably lies in its impressive cast list. Jean Gabin is on fine form and exudes charm and charisma, having managed a spectacular come-back with Jean Becker’s Touchez pas au Grisbi two years earlier. His co-star is none other than Jeanne Moreau, who would soon become one of the icons of French cinema...
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Le Port du désir is a film which was clearly influenced by contemporary American film noir and has much in common with another worthy example of French film noir, Du rififi chez les hommes (directed by Jules Dassin), which was released the same year. What is striking about both of these two films, and what sets them apart from the vast majority of noir-influenced French crime-thrillers...
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Les Diaboliques is considered by many to be the most suspenseful thriller ever made, easily in the same league as Hitchcock’s better films. Although the film begins quite slowly and innocently, it very quickly becomes thoroughly compelling, to the point that the viewer dare not take his eyes off the screen for a second...
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War-time heroes reduced to mercenary activities in some remote colonial backwater. The desperation of a passionate woman to escape a loveless marriage and find some meaning in her life. A tale of lost idealism, ruthless greed, hopeless dreams... These are the ingredients which make up Yves Ciampi’s compelling film...
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Jean Becker’s 1953 film Touchez pas au grisbi allowed actor Jean Gabin to re-invent his screen persona, becoming the tough patriarchal figure that would predominate in his post-WWII film career. In Razzia sur la Chnouf, Gabin appears to reprise the role he played in Grisbi , playing opposite Lino Ventura who also starred in that earlier film...
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One of the few films of the film noir genre which can genuinely be described as a masterpiece, Du rififi chez les hommes occupies a pivotal position in French cinema history. It was the first truly successful attempt to import the American film noir genre into French cinema and it provided the template for numerous other films...
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A satisfying blend of melodrama, film noir and suspense thriller, Voici le temps des assassins is amongst Julien Duvivier’s best films. When he was a film critic, François Truffaut cited the film as the director’s best work. It is interesting to compare this film, and others of this period, with Duvivier’s earlier films from the 1930s...
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Eddie Constantine stars in this somewhat lacklustre pastiche of film noir and American-style action/adventure, a formula that was hugely popular in France in the 1950s. Having played the redoubtable FBI agent Lemmy Caution in a dozen or so similar films, Eddie Constantine became one of the biggest stars in French cinema...
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The 1950s was when French film noir was in its heyday. The genre was both remarkably popular in France and occupied a dominant place in French cinema of this decade. Jusqu’au dernier is one film which epitomises the best and the worst of the French film noir, an almost slavish pastiche of the American gangster film...
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In this liberal adaptation of a James Hadley Chase novel, director Julien Duvivier and screenwriter René Barjavel sought to emulate the style of the American and British comedy thrillers, which were then very popular in France. The film’s comic element relies almost entirely on its star, the incomparable Fernandel...
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Jean Gabin and Lino Ventura are reunited for the fourth time in as many years in this standard 1950s French thriller. The film was based on a novel by the popular série noir writer Auguste Le Breton, whose works were frequently adapated for French cinema. The characters, the scenario and the dialogue is all familiar stuff...
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This fairly standard crime thriller Yves Allégret has an exceptional cast, including Edwige Feuillère and Jean Servais. A young Alain Delon distinguishes himself in his first film role, playing the kind of character he would become most associated with in the following few decades....
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