French film photo galley for 1960

French films of the 1960s

Le Caporal épinglé (1962)

Nearing the end of his film-making career, Jean Renoir returned to the subject of his most famous film, La Grande illusion, a powerful study of male conflict and camaraderie, centred around a POW prison break-out during World War I. Based on a novel by Jacques Perret, Le Caporal épinglé is concerned with a similar situation during the Second World War and is the closest that... [More...]

Le Combat dans l'île (1962)

Although less well known than his contemporaries, Alain Cavalier was a contributor to the French New Wave of the early 1960s. A prime example of this is his first full-length film, Le Combat dans l’île, which is a story that covers the traditional themes of love, loyalty and betrayal.... [More...]

Le Doulos (1962)

Le Doulos is a sophisticated policier which shows its roots in classic film noir throughout. The American gangster movies of the 1930s and 1940s had a great appeal to director Jean-Paul Melville and in this film he creates one of the most memorable French film variants of the genre. As in his subsequent film, Le Samourï... [More...]

Le Procès (1962)

Despite all the bad press it has received, Orson Welles’ Le Procès (a.k.a. The Trial) is one of the great cinematrographic achievments of the Twentieth Century. It is a film that has until recently been largely overlooked, probably as a result of the barrage of negative criticism which sunk the film when it was first shown in the mid 1960s... [More...]

Lemmy pour les dames (1962)

The ever-resourceful Lemmy Caution returns for yet another testosterone-surge outing, charming pretty ladies and punching nasty men, just like they used to do in those halcyon days of B-movie mediocrity. The plot is the same unimaginative fodder that followers of the Lemmy Caution series would by this stage have become inured to; it is indeed hard to comprehend exactly why the series once... [More...]

Les Veinards (1962)

Much of this episodic comic film feels dated even by the standards of the early 1960s, and its all-star billing is largely wasted on the lacklustre material contrived by Jean Girault and his cohorts. Only the first segment of the film stands up to a second viewing, thanks mainly to the spirited contributions from François Perrier (a great dramatic actor in a rare comic role) and the... [More...]

Procès de Jeanne d'Arc (1962)

This depiction of the Joan of Arc story is typical of Robert Bresson’s austere style of cinema, stripping the story to its bare bones and concentrating far more on the nature of the human ordeal than historical detail. In stark contrast to Dreyer’s La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc (1928), the film is far more restrained in its use of cinematographic technique to paint Joan as... [More...]

Un singe en hiver (1962)

Un singe en hiver is a gentle comedy which takes a melancholic view of friendship, nostalgia and drink. It was based on a popular novel by the French writer Antoine Blondin. The film’s classic status stems mainly from Verneuil’s inspired decision to cast Jean Gabin and Jean-Paul Belmondo, the iconic standard-bearers for two different generations of French cinema... [More...]

Vie privée (1962)

Brigitte Bardot hadn’t quite reached the highpoint of her career when she agreed to make this film with high profile New Wave film director Louis Malle. Even so, the pressure of being a living icon was obviously beginning to get to France’s sex goddess and Vie privée is as much an attempt by Bardot to come to terms with her celebrity as anything else... [More...]

Vivre sa vie (1962)

One of the most significant films of the French New Wave, Vivre sa vie is quintessentially Jean-Luc Godard at his best. The approach used in this film is quite different to his earlier films. Here, we have twelve tableaux – distinct episodes which illustrate the unfolding life of the tragic Nana. It is an approach which works well... [More...]

La Carrière de Suzanne (1963)

In the second of his Six contes moraux, Eric Rohmer paints an all too believable portrait of adolescent vice and vulnerability whilst pursuing the central linking theme of a moral dilemma concerning love and desire. Here, the central character Bertrand is no more than a spotty youth, dependent on his parents for money and a total no-hoper when it comes to the opposite sex... [More...]

Chair de poule (1963)

With this respectable adaptation of a well-known James Hadley Chase thriller novel, Julien Duvivier offers a credible homage to the American B-movie and manages to impose on the genre his own distinctive style. This is true film noir, in which the director’s pessimistic streak (apparent in most of his post-World War Two films) is at its most acute... [More...]

Judex (1963)

French cinema of the mid-1960s saw something of a revival of interest in the old Louis Feuillade thriller serials of the 1910s. Feuillade’s criminal mastermind Fantômas came back for a second round of murderous mayhem, and a certain amount of mirth, in a series of three films directed by André Hunebelle and starring Jean Marais and Louis de Funès... [More...]

La Baie des anges (1963)

Jacques Demy followed his first full length-film, Lola (1961) with this comparatively anodyne tale of love and obsession in the gambling halls of Nice, a far more conventional kind of film for the time, but still unmistakably New Wave in its look and feel. La Baie des anges is a noticeably darker, more ironic, film than Lola ... [More...]

La Cuisine au beurre (1963)

Two French comic legends, Fernandel and Bourvil, are united in this light comic farce, assuming their real life names for the parts they play in the film. Although less successful than the Bourvil-de Funès pairing in later films, the casting works well, Fernandel’s easy-going personality sparring Bourvil’s hyperactivity and vulnerable sensitivity to great comic effect... [More...]

Landru (1963)

One of Claude Chabrol’s most bizarre films, Landru is an extraordinary off-the-wall black comedy which allows the director to combine his flair for comedy and thriller to create something which is both original and surprisingly entertaining. Compared with Chabrol’s conventional thrillers, the mood of this film is light... [More...]

Le Bon roi Dagobert (1963)

Although nearing the end of his remarkable film career, comic actor Fernandel still had what it took to enliven a lacklustre comedy and draw a large cinema audience. Le Bon roi Dagobert is a schoolboy’s comic book reinterpretation of history, in much the same vein as the earlier Fernandel offering François Premier (1937)... [More...]

Le Joli mai (1963)

What is extraordinary about this documentary is that it is inspired by a belief that France in May 1962 had passed a watershed, and that that dating of the watershed has proved historically accurate. For the first time since 1914 (with the exception of a brief interval in the 20s), France in May 1962 was a country living at peace... [More...]

Le Petit soldat (1963)

Jean-Luc Godard’s second full-length film after the ground-breaking and highly praised À bout de souffle was Le Petit soldat, his first political film, centred around the Algerian conflict. His direct approach, which included some potentially inflammatory rhetoric and a disturbing torture scene, was too much for the censors and the film... [More...]

Le Voyage à Biarritz (1963)

This engaging comedy appears to have been tailor-made for Fernandel, allowing the popular comic actor to turn in one of his most sympathetic and convincing performances. It is one of a handful of films featuring the horse-faced comedian which has stood the test of time, thanks to a decent script and some good production values... [More...]

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