French film photo galley for 1960

French films of the 1960s

Indomptable Angélique (1967)

This, the fourth installement in the five-part series of films based on the Angélique stories of Anne et Serge Golon very nearly never came about. Frightened of being typecast in the role of the Marquise des Anges, Michèle Mercier announced, once filming had been completed on the preceding film, Angélique et le roy... [More...]

La Chinoise (1967)

True fans of the director Jean-Luc Godard broadly divide into two categories: those who say that his career ended with La Chinoise; and those who insist (with an evil glint in their eyes) that this film marked the start of his career. Admittedly, there are those who rate all of Godard’s work as being consistently brilliant... [More...]

La Collectionneuse (1967)

Eric Rohmer’s third film in his series of Six Contes Moraux is similar in style to the first two shorter films (La Boulangère de monceau and La Carrière de Susanne). All three films involve a great deal of improvisation (this film more so) and excessive use of voice over to centre the narrative around the principal protagonist... [More...]

La Mariée était en Noir (1967)

In the mid-1950s, few film directors made a greater impression on the controversial young critics on the French film review paper Les Cahiers du cinéma than a certain Alfred Hitchcock. Indeed, it was largely down to these influential critics that Hitchcock achieved the recognition he deserved in his lifetime; few critics elsewhere took him seriously at the time... [More...]

La Route de Corinthe (1967)

More a divertissement than a bon cru, La Route de Corinthe is one of Claude Chabrol’s less successful attempts at a parody of the spy thriller. An attractive cast and an even more attractive location offer some consolation for the uneven comedy and implausible, drawn out storyline, which appears to have been lifted wholesale from a sub-standard Tintin adventure... [More...]

Le Grand Meaulnes (1967)

I first saw this wonderful film in 1971 in London. As a very impressionable and probably quite lonely young man I left the Mayfair arthouse with my first tears for 10 years. I saw it again on TV a couple of years later and was even more moved because I knew what was... [More...]

Le Scandale (1967)

After the commercial failure of his early films – notably L’oeil du malin (1963) and Landru (1963) – director Claude Chabrol found himself straitjacketed into making commercial films that would attract a sizeable cinema audience. The period 1964 to 1966 is not Chabrol’s greatest – it included such lowbrow fare as Le Tigre aime la chair fraiche (1964)... [More...]

Le Vieil homme et l'enfant (1967)

Rated by François Truffaut as one of the best films about the Nazi Occupation of France, L’Vieil homme et l’enfant marks a spectacular cinematic debut for the young film director Claude Berri, his first full-length film (and arguably his best film). Drawing on his own wartime experiences, Berri skilfully narrates a warm and touching tale of friendship between an old man... [More...]

Le Voleur (1967)

Sadly underrated, Le Voleur is one of Louis Malle’s most attractive films, an entertaining and beautifully crafted comedy which gleefully satirises the attitudes of the nouveaux riches. It affords Jean-Paul Belmondo one of his most substantial roles, one which allows the actor to give one of his most credible and likeable performances... [More...]

Le Samouraï (1967)

That Le Samouri should be widely regarded as a classic policier is mainly down to three ingredients: Delon, Melville and Decae, a recipe that can hardly fail to please. Alain Delon is brilliantly cast as the solitary hit-man – implacable, emotionless, yet with a moral irony running through his performance. Few other actors have the charisma and subtlety to play a character that... [More...]

Les Grandes vacances (1967)

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... [More...]

Les Demoiselles de Rochefort (1967)

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... [More...]

Les Risques du métier (1967)

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... [More...]

Mouchette (1967)

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... [More...]

Oscar (1967)

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... [More...]

Playtime (1967)

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... [More...]

Week End (1967)

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... [More...]

Adieu l'ami (1968)

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... [More...]

Angélique et le sultan (1968)

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... [More...]

Baisers volés (1968)

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... [More...]

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