French film photo galley for 1960

French films of the 1960s

Les Barbouzes (1964)

After the huge success of Les Tontons flingueurs, an outrageously funny parody of the gangster film, the director-writer team Georges Lautner and Michel Audiard repeated their winning formula with Les Barbouzes. This film, which is every bit as entertaining as Les Tontons flingueurs, makes an unrestrained yet intelligent parody of the spy thriller genre... [More...]

Les Félins (1964)

After their successful first collaboration on Plein soleil (1960), director René Clément, actor Alain Delon and cinematographer Henri Decae were reunited for a similar kind of slick psychological thriller. Whilst Les Félins is generally less artistically appealing than that earlier film, it is not without is charms... [More...]

Les Parapluies de Cherbourg (1964)

Jacques Demy’s most famous film, Les parapluies de Cherbourg is one of the most beautiful, and captivating romantic films ever made, a monument to ruined happiness and devastated hopes. Through music, colour and stunning photography, Demy creates a dream world where love and regret are as real as sunshine and raindrops... [More...]

Une femme mariée (1964)

Originally titled La Femme mariée, this controversial film from one of the leading lights of the French New Wave was banned by the censor for its sexually explicit scenes. The film was released a few months after its ban, with a few cuts and retitled Une femme mariée, and proved surprisingly successful, no doubt benefiting from the brouhaha caused by the censor.... [More...]

Week-end à Zuydcoote (1964)

Based on the award winning novel by Robert Merle, Week-end à Zuydcoote provides a harrowingly realistic portrayal of one of the darker episodes in World War II – the retreat and decimation of the English and French troops at Dunkirk in 1940. Whereas most war films depict glory and victory, this one is about defeat and loss... [More...]

Alphaville (1965)

If there had to be just one word to sum up Alphaville¸that word would have to be weird. It is a film that constantly challenges our preconceptions, our expectations, and, as a result, manages to be both deeply disturbing and very funny at the same time. The film begins as what appears to be a pastiche of the American detective movie of the 1950s... [More...]

Compartiment tueurs (1965)

Costa-Gavras made his directoral debut with this fast-moving, convoluted but magnificently assembled crime thriller. The film reflects the director’s interest for American film noir and, thanks largely to an impressive cast, is one of his most entertaining films. Compartiment tueurs is certainly a far more accessible than the heavy political thrillers which would earn Costa-Gavras his... [More...]

Don Camillo en Russie (1965)

Fernandel appears for the last time in this fifth episode in the long-running Don Camillo saga. Ill-health prevented the actor from reprising the role for yet another film, which is probably just as well as the series had well and truly run out of steam by this time. Only the pleasing on-screen rapport between Fernandel and his co-star Gino Cervi prevents this entry in the series from being... [More...]

Fantômas se déchaîne (1965)

The second of the 1960s Fantômas films reunites stars Louis de Funès and Jean Marais in what is essentially a parody of the spy movie, with Marais playing both the good guy (Fandor) and the villain (Fantômas). De Funès’s son Olivier also makes his screen debut, playing the part of Hélène’s younger brother... [More...]

L'Arme à gauche (1965)

Although his first action thriller, Classe tous risques, was ill-received by both critics and cinema goers, director Claude Sautet persevered a made a second film in the same genre, again with Lino Ventura in the lead role. That film, L’Arme à gauche, proved an even bigger flop than its predecessor and was the last film of its kind which Sautet made... [More...]

La Métamorphose des cloportes (1965)

La Métamorphose des cloportes is a typically French comedy policier of the kind that was very popular in the mid-1960s. After the success of Georges Lautner’s 1963 film Les Tontons flingueurs, other directors were keen to exploit the popularity of the comedy-thriller genre, and La Métamorphose des cloportes is perhaps one of the best of examples of its kind.... [More...]

Le Bonheur (1965)

Agnès Varda’s third film (and her first colour film) provoked something of a scandal when it was first released in France, at the height of the sexual revolution in the mid-1960s. What was so shocking about the film was not so much its subject but the way in which Varda approaches it, in a way that suggests a kind of moral equivalence between love in a stable marriage and love... [More...]

Le Corniaud (1965)

Possibly the biggest influence on cinema in France of the 1960s (as in most other western countries at the time) was the emergence of television as a competitive threat. To try and stem the gradual decline in cinema audiences, film producers had to fight back in the only way they knew how – by spending more money... [More...]

Le Tonnerre de Dieu (1965)

Although scarcely remembered today, when it was released in 1965, Le Tonnerre de Dieu was an amazing success, and one of the most popular films made in France up to that point. Although the story is pretty anodyne, even by the standards of the 1960s, it has a characteristic French charm and sincerity which even today’s audience should find enjoyable... [More...]

Merveilleuse Angélique (1965)

The second instalment in the series of five Angélique films directed by Bernard Borderie and starring Michèle Mercier is a creditable successor to the first. Its blend of historic realism, eroticism and sentimentality is the stuff of trashy seaside paperbacks, but given the production values we expect of French historical drama... [More...]

Paris vu par... (1965)

By the mid-1960s, there were signs that the French New Wave had all but run its course. Its leading lights – François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Jacques Rivette and Claude Chabrol, had each suffered major box office failures in the preceding years and it looked as if their innovative approach to filmmaking had exhausted its novelty value... [More...]

Pierrot le fou (1965)

Although it was originally conceived as a modest, low budget homage to the American gangster film, Pierrot le fou quickly earned a reputation as one of the most important films in French cinema and today is regarded as one of the most revolutionary films ever to have been made. It is a film that defies classification, is both loved and loathed by film enthusiasts... [More...]

Simón del desierto (1965)

This film has its origins in the story of St Simon Stylites, who is reputed to have spent 37 years on a pillar preaching Christianity to pilgrims until his death in 459 AD. Luis Buñuel uses the story as the basis for one his most amusing and cynical attacks on religion, in a film which is easily recognisable as a forerunner of the 1979 Monty Python film... [More...]

Trois chambres à Manhattan (1965)

Although clearly a comparatively minor work when set along side Marcel Carné’s earlier masterpieces, Trois chambres à Manhattan is nonetheless a striking piece of 1960s cinema – a sombre, melancholic study of solitude and yearning set, for the most part, in the forbidding barren streets of New York City... [More...]

Viva Maria! (1965)

Viva María! is a striking contrast – both in scale and mood – to Louis Malle’s previous film, the spatially confined, intensely melancholic Feu Follet (1963). A riotous adventure comedy, with lavish period costumes and an exotic location, Viva María! looks much more like the work of one Malle’s contemporaries... [More...]

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