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French films of the 1950s
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Towards the end of the 1950s, French cinema had, to a large extent, become stale and predictable, consisting mainly of American-inspired thrillers, stodgy historical dramas, twee melodramas and uninspired low-budget comedies. This particular applecart of lukewarm mediocrity was on the verge of being kicked over and trodden into the ground by a new generation of filmmaker which was determined...
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This good-humoured wartime comedy was directed by Christian-Jaque, who is probably best known for his historical adventure films Fanfan la Tulipe (1952) and La Tulipe noire (1964). Producer Raoul Lévy initially offered the directing job to Roger Vadim, but he declined when Martine Carol turned down the leading role and was replaced by Brigitte Bardot...
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It’s hard to believe but Edouard Molinaro, the director of such classic comedies as La Cage aux folles (1978), Hibernatus (1969) and L’Emmerdeur (1973) first cut his teeth as a director with anodyne crime dramas such as this. Des femmes disparaissent is a typical French 1950s thriller, an all too obvious imitation of the American gangster movie...
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Jean-Pierre Melville was the French director who was most successful in transposing the American film noir genre to European cinema, and Deux hommes dans Manhattan is the film which shows its American roots most clearly. The film is set in New York, the dialogue is half English, half French, and most of the cast (excluding the lead characters) are American actors...
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Having escaped from a prison in the South of France, three convicts waste no time finding a boat that will take them to a foreign country. Albert Fourbieux, Serge and Kopetsky have just twelve hours to procure the money and passports that will allow them to make good their escape. The only problem is that it is the 14th of July and the whole village is immersed in the customary celebrations...
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In Brussels, Vicky is the owner of a boat-cabaret, Ration K, which she refuses to sell to her rival, an Italian gangster named Bug. Vicky herself belongs to a gang who are preparing to rob a bank. Bug sees Vicky as a potentially useful partner in his operations and sets out to sabotage her part in the robbery......
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One of the lesser works from Hungarian filmmaker Géza von Radványi, Ein Engel auf Erden is an absurd fantasy comedy that is memorable only for its cast, which includes some of the best loved actors in French cinema – most of whom were at an early stage in their career. At the time she made this film...
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This is an exceptional film, marking Alain Resnais’ debut as a film director, after a decade of producing eye-opening short documentaries. Indeed, Hiroshima mon amour started out as a documentary about the reconstruction of Hiroshima, and the first fifteen minutes of the film uses documentary footage to great effect to set the scene...
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The Smolny Institute at St Petersburg provides a refuge for the daughters of noble families who have fallen on hard times. One of the pupils is Katia Dolgorouki, a girl with a bad reputation who keeps a photograph of Tsar Alexander I under her pillow. When the photograph is found, she insists that she was given it by the Tsar himself when he once visited her family...
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Eric Rohmer’s first full length film is this tragicomic tale of one man’s spiral descent into poverty and isolation. Whilst the film shows Rohmer’s inexperience as a filmmaker too clearly and also suffers from some quite obvious flaws – most notably the awkward references to astrology and preordained fate...
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La Femme et le Pantin is Julien Duvivier’s spirited but ultimately doomed attempt to update Pierre Louÿs’s raunchy erotic novel of 1898. It is a minor footnote in the career of the great director but illustrates his determination to try to keep up with the times and defy his critics,...
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A few years after their successful collaboration on La Traversée de Paris (1956), director Claude Autant-Lara and the popular comic actor Bourvil worked together on this light-hearted farce, based on a best-selling novel by Marcel Aymé. One of Autant-Lara’s more cheerful films, La Jument verte benefits from an exceptionally talented cast...
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Worn down by the troublesome behaviour of his rebellious son François, Maître Gérane, a well-known lawyer, has him interned in a psychiatric hospital. The two doctors who treat the wild young man cannot agree on the best way to treat him – Dr Varmont favours a classical treatment, whilst Dr Emery prefers a modern approach...
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A comparatively obscure entry in the Buñuel canon, La Fièvre monte à El Pao certainly does not show the director at his best. Despite some memorable moments (most notably the film’s final five minutes) and commendable acting (particularly from an exceptional María Félix), the film is ponderous and lacking in drama and tension...
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This is a moving tale about one man’s unceasing initiative and stoical determination to regain his freedom in the face of overwhelming odds – clearly a metaphor for France’s struggle for freedom during the Nazi Occupation. That man is played by Fernandel, one of the true legends of French cinema, better known for his comic roles...
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Le Chemin des écoliers isn’t so much a film as a head-spinning confluence of some of the most impressive acting talent in French cinema in the late 1950s. Established stars Bourvil and Françoise Arnoul find themselves in the midst of a veritable cavalcade of up-and-coming talent, in the form of Lino Ventura...
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Former gangster and secret services operative, Paul Lamiani is now a respected married man who owns a restaurant. One day, he is contacted by the his former employers in the DST and asked to get in touch with his friend Marcel, who is implicated in the theft of some highly sensitive documents. Paul has no choice but to retrieve the stolen documents...
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After their great success as Don Damillo and Peppone in the Don Camillo films of the 1950s, Fernandel and Gino Cervi are reunited in this unadventurous little comedy. Although there are a couple of very funny sequences in this film – notably the routine with the jinxed block of ice – it is by and large a pretty damp offering...
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Popular French comic performer Darry Cowl stars in this routine 1950s comedy, which is really just a series of uninspired sketches cobbled together into a full-length film. It’s pretty anodyne stuff, but some of the visual gags work rather well and there’s a decent turn from the almost mythic comedian Francis Blanche....
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Jean Renoir’s first collaboration with French Television yielded this quirky yet faithful adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic novel, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. In contrast to previous cinematic adaptations of that novel, Renoir sets the story in a contemporary setting (France of the 1950s) and manages to make the good doctor (renamed Cordelier) more...
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