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French films of the 1960s
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After a string of box office hits (not least of which were the early “ Gendarmes” films) director Jean Girault and comic actor Louis de Funès found further success with Les Grandes vacances, a typical 1960s farce which is mainly concerned with that French national pastime of sending up the English. The film has little in the way of intellectual merit...
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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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The film that launched the film career of the popular singer Jacques Brel is all but forgotten today, which is a shame because it as relevant today as it was when it was first released. Convincing performances from both Brel (who is a revelation in this, his first major acting role) and the child actresses who play the alleged rape victims ensure the audience is constantly unsure whom to...
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Robert Bresson’s most pessimistic film, and also his most controversial, is a bleak picture of a young woman’s irreversible descent into misery and self-destruction. The familiar Bresson themes of faith, martyrdom and redemption are present, but these emerge from a much grimmer tale than his other films, and the effect is both moving and profoundly shocking...
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Based on a hugely popular stage play, which ran for over 600 performances in Paris (and which also starred Louis de Funès), Oscar is a good example of the kind of comic farce which has always delighted French cinema audiences. Although the plot is excruciatingly complicated in places, the film is generally well-written and offers some brilliant comic moments...
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The film that torpedoed Jacques Tati’s filmmaking career, effectively marginalising one of France’s most inventive and daring film directors, Playtime is now almost universally considered to be a cinematic masterpiece and a work of immense creative vision. With its ambitious sets and striking cinematography...
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Robert Collomb is a well-known reporter who takes advantage of his many travels throughout the world to pursue numerous sentimental adventures. Robert’s wife Catherine is aware of her husband’s infidelities, but she still loves him and has no intention of seeking a divorce. One day, Robert falls for a young American...
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A film lost in the cosmos and A film found on the scrap-heap are the opening captions to what would be Jean-Luc Godard’s most virulent assault on contemporary French society. An Odyssey in anarchy would be an equally fitting epithet, for what Godard paints is a deeply disturbing picture of a world that is in the process of disintegration as the forces of capitalism and socialist revolution...
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Two cinematic icons of the 1960s – Alain Delon and Charles Bronson – join forces in this stylish French thriller which, despite some glaring plot weaknesses, isn’t a bad example of its genre. The film pays homage to classic noir thriller in a number of ways – most obviously with a tense middle section which...
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Alexandre has a happy life, living by himself with his dog. As the saying goes, 'Being a Bachelor is Being a Sultan'. He doesn't have women to bother him, nor any other person to be responsible for. Some may consider him an anti-social person, as he likes to stay at home, relying on his dog to do his shopping. He meets up with his friends for a good time once in a while...
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The fifth and final instalment in the Angélique film saga is, despite some impressive production values, clearly the weakest. It lacks the warm sentimentality of the earlier films and seems overly preoccupied with shocking its audience with scenes of graphic violence. Michèle Mercier has far less to do in this film and the actress looks frankly fed up with the part...
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Six years after Antoine Doinel appeared in the Antoine et Colette segment of the compendium film L’Amour à vingt ans, François Truffaut felt the time was right to resurrect his famous alter ego, who first saw the light of day in Les Quatre cents coups. By this time, Jean-Pierre Léaud, the young actor who played Antoine in these two earlier films...
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Intended as a colourful adaptation of Jean-Claude Forest’s comic books of the 1960s, Barbarella has since acquired a reputation as very possibly the most gloriously over-the-top science fiction film in cinema history. The mere fact that the film never lets up for a moment but continues to take itself seriously right up until the closing credits...
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Having lived a sheltered childhood, in which his sole companion was his tutor Camille, Benjamin reaches adolescence with no knowledge of the outside world or the sins and passions that afflict mortal men. Aged 17, he goes to live with his aunt and uncle, libertine aristocrats who inhabit a grand château and who have known nothing of his austere life...
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Julien Duvivier ended his long and distinguished film career with this taut psychological thriller, a popular genre and an unashamedly populist kind of film. Alain Delon, the hottest young actor in France at the time, is cast in the lead role, exploiting his obvious sex appeal and talent for playing tough macho yet sympathetic heroes....
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This is an early work from the controversial Polish filmmaker Walerian Borowczyk, a surreal fantasy which coldly satirises the state-controlling regimes of Eastern Europe. As in many of Borowczyk’s other films, the film has very strong erotic and sensual undertones, although there is surprisingly no explicit eroticism in the film itself...
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Segment William Wilson (by Louis Malle): In Italy in the 19th century, a young officer named William Wilson is driven to confess to a priest that he has had evil feelings since before he can remember. When he was a child, he tortured his classmates, and now the same vicious feelings take hold of him whenever he is playing cards...
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François Holin, known to his friend as Ho, loses his licence as a racing driver after an accident which resulted in the death of his partner. Unemployed, he finds works as a chauffeur for a band of gangsters, hoping that he can keep this from his girlfriend Benedite, a cover girl. In the course of a car robbery which goes horribly wrong...
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Maurice Pialat’s first full-length film, L’Enfance nue is a remarkably effective piece of social realist drama featuring a disturbed young boy failing to integrate with the world around him. The film is almost a re-make of François Truffaut’s celebrated Les 400 coups (1959), but takes a far more realist line...
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In this film, director Gilles Grangier attempts a happy marriage of the two genres that most define his career: the popular comic farce and the classic French crime-thriller. The union doesn’t quite work and although the film has some pretty lavish production values it is very much a hit and miss affair. Not all of the jokes are in the places you’d expect to find them...
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