A short history of French cinema

France did not invent moving pictures alone; inventors in the United States, Britain and Germany were working on the same problems in the 1890s. But it was in Paris, on 28 December 1895, that Louis and Auguste Lumière first projected films to a paying public, in a basement room of the Grand Café on the Boulevard des Capucines. That evening is usually taken as the birth of cinema as a public show, and France has had a central place in film history ever since.

The pioneers (1895-1914)

The Lumière films were short, single shots of real life: workers leaving a factory, a train arriving at a station, a baby being fed. Georges Méliès, a stage magician, saw something else in the camera. From 1896 he made hundreds of trick films in his glass studio at Montreuil, with disappearances, transformations and fantastic voyages, the most famous being Le Voyage dans la Lune (1902).

Two companies turned films into an industry. Pathé and Gaumont made films, built cameras, ran cinemas and opened offices around the world, and before the First World War French films dominated world screens. Alice Guy, at Gaumont, was one of the first film directors of either sex. Max Linder became the first international comic star. Louis Feuillade invented the crime serial with Fantômas (1913-1914) and Les Vampires (1915-1916).

War and the avant-garde (1914-1929)

The First World War emptied the studios and opened the world market to Hollywood, which French cinema never regained. In its place came ambition of another kind. In the 1920s critics and filmmakers such as Louis Delluc, Abel Gance, Marcel L'Herbier, Jean Epstein and Germaine Dulac treated cinema as an art, experimenting with rhythm, superimposition and the moving camera. Gance's Napoléon (1927) and L'Herbier's L'Argent (1928) are the high points. The surrealists, René Clair's Entr'acte and Luis Buñuel's Un chien andalou added a taste for provocation. More in the best French films of the 1920s.

Sound and poetic realism (1930-1939)

Sound arrived in 1929-1930. After a period of filmed theatre, the 1930s became a golden age. Jean Renoir made La Grande Illusion and La Règle du jeu; Jean Vigo made L'Atalante before dying at 29. Marcel Carné and the poet Jacques Prévert, Julien Duvivier and others created poetic realism, dark romantic stories in ports and backstreets, usually starring Jean Gabin, such as Le Quai des brumes and Pépé le Moko. Marcel Pagnol filmed Provence, and René Clair made musical comedies. See the best French films of the 1930s.

The Occupation (1940-1944)

After the defeat of June 1940, American films were banned and a German-controlled company, Continental Films, produced films in Paris. Jewish artists were barred from working, and many fled or hid. Directors avoided the present and turned to the past and to fantasy. Yet the period gave France Les Enfants du paradis, shot in 1943-1944, and Clouzot's Le Corbeau. After the Liberation, some artists were punished for working with the occupiers.

The postwar years (1945-1958)

The 1950s were prosperous. The studios produced polished literary adaptations and costume films with stars such as Gérard Philipe and Martine Carol. At the same time Henri-Georges Clouzot made Le Salaire de la peur and Les Diaboliques, Robert Bresson developed his austere style with Un condamné à mort s'est échappé, Jacques Tati created Monsieur Hulot and Jacques Becker made Casque d'or. Meanwhile, in the magazine Cahiers du cinéma, founded in 1951, a group of young critics attacked the "cinema of quality" and praised Hollywood directors such as Hitchcock and Howard Hawks as true authors.

The New Wave (1959-1968)

In 1959 those critics began making films. François Truffaut's Les Quatre Cents Coups won a prize at Cannes and Jean-Luc Godard's À bout de souffle appeared the next year. Claude Chabrol, Éric Rohmer and Jacques Rivette followed, alongside directors close to them such as Agnès Varda, Alain Resnais and Jacques Demy. They shot cheaply on location with light cameras and young actors, and told personal stories with great freedom. Their influence spread around the world. The same decade also saw Jean-Pierre Melville's crime films, such as Le Samouraï, and huge popular comedies with Louis de Funès. See the best French films of the 1960s.

After 1968

The events of May 1968, which shut down the Cannes festival, pushed some directors towards political cinema. In the 1970s popular cinema was dominated by policiers with Alain Delon and Jean-Paul Belmondo, while Jean Eustache, Maurice Pialat and Bertrand Blier brought a rawer tone. The 1980s brought lavish heritage films, such as Jean de Florette, and the stylish cinéma du look of Jean-Jacques Beineix, Luc Besson and Leos Carax.

French cinema today

A system of public support built up since 1946 and funded partly by a tax on cinema tickets has helped France keep one of the strongest film industries in the world, with French films regularly taking a large share of the domestic box office. Mathieu Kassovitz's La Haine, the films of Jacques Audiard, Claire Denis and Céline Sciamma, and international hits such as Amélie and Intouchables have kept French cinema visible abroad. In the 2020s, Julia Ducournau's Titane and Justine Triet's Anatomie d'une chute both won the Palme d'Or.

To explore it film by film, start with the 100 best French films, or choose a decade from the list at the bottom of this page.