French film photo galley for 1970

French films of the 1970s

La Folie des grandeurs (1971)

After the staggering success of Le Corniaud (1964) and La Grande Vadrouille (1966), director Gérard Oury was eager to make a third film featuring the surprisingly popular pairing of Bourvil and Louis de Funès. Starting with a Victor Hugo play entitled Ruy Blas, he and his co-screenwriter Danièle Thompson developed a comic-historical film set in sixteenth century Spain... [More...]

Le Casse (1971)

Director Henri Verneuil followed his huge successful policier Le Clan des Siciliens (1969) with another film of the same genre, albeit one in a somewhat lighter vein. The film stars two iconic actors of the time – Jean-Paul Belmondo and Omar Sharif – and had a colossal budget of 15 million French francs, making it one of the biggest French films of the year... [More...]

Le Chat (1971)

This poignant film portrays the remnants of a long dead relationship visibly disintegrating alongside the debris of a faded, long past society. One of the most brutal films about married life ever made in France, this is a deeply disturbing film, laden with a pall of pessimism which is only briefly lifted in the final moments of the film... [More...]

Le Souffle au coeur (1971)

This is a perceptive and moving – indeed provocative – film exploring a young teenage boy’s sexual awakening. It captures the anxieties, the optimism, the frustrations, of a teenager’s passage to manhood, in a way that must strike a chord with anyone who has lived through those turbulent years of adolescence... [More...]

Les Assassins de l'ordre (1971)

Marcel Carné’s penultimate fictional film is a superlative example of the kind of gritty political thriller that would become highly popular in France in the mid to late 1970s. This néo-polar, popularised by such highly regarded directors as Yves Boisset and José Giovanni, reflected failings in the French judicial and political system at the time... [More...]

Les Bidasses en folie (1971)

After their success of their first film, La Grande java(1969), the musical quintet known as The Charlots bounced back with more of the same – madcap slapstick and hippy antics revolving around a meagre plot. Whilst some of the jokes are painfully laboured and a little predictable, many are truly inventive and very funny... [More...]

Les Mariés de l'an II (1971)

Les Mariés de l’an II is typical of the ebullient and witty period drama which French cinema has been consistently good at producing for many decades. As would be expected from Jean-Paul Rappeneau, the director of the 1990s hit Cyrano de Bergerac, this is an intelligent, good humoured romp which capitalises on its historical setting to great effect... [More...]

Les Deux Anglaises et le continent (1971)

This is one of Truffaut’s most intense and sombre films about romantic love. He made the film a short while after actress Catherine Deneuve put an end to their two-year long love affair. As a consequence, the film is marked by the director’s personal touch to an extent probably not seen since his first long film... [More...]

Max et les ferrailleurs (1971)

In both content and style, Max et les ferrailleurs makes a striking contrast with Claude Sautet’s previous film – the dreamlike, emotionally charged and poetic Les Choses de la vie (1969). On the surface, the film resembles a traditional policier, a genre which was still very much beloved by French cinema audiences in the 1970s... [More...]

Out 1: Nolie me Tangere (1971)

Out 1 is like a more avant-garde Thomas Pynchon, or Honoré de Balzac on drugs. A true piece of art, it’s unpredictable, a darkly epic tragedy one moment, and a hysterically unsettling comedy the next. This pantheon of a film creates it’s own trippy, jagged landscape, laws and time. Its symbolic insanity creates a confusing... [More...]

Sur un arbre perché (1971)

A film that looks as if it was written exclusively for Louis de Funes – indeed, it is difficult to imagine anyone else playing his role in this film – Sur un arbre perché is a typical early 1970s tongue-in-cheek satirical comedy. Although there are a few intensely funny moments, the limitations of setting a story in a car on a tree are all too evident... [More...]

L'Amour l'après-midi (1972)

Eric Rohmer brings his series of six moral tales to a close with L’Amour l’après-midi , a charming romantic comedy which is as much a conventional bourgeois satire as a characteristically Rohmeresque portrait of temptation and desire. Somewhat lighter in tone (and also less intellectual) than the previous five tales in the Six Contes Moraux series... [More...]

César et Rosalie (1972)

With its memorable dream-like photography and impassioned acting performances, César et Rosalie – quite possibly Claude Sautet’s best film – is a haunting evocation of the pain and faltering uncertainty of love. The story of an irreconciable love triangle is told with a conflicting combination of poetry and realism... [More...]

État de siège (1972)

In a similar vein to Costa-Gavras’ earlier films, Z and L’Aveu, État de siège is a stylishly filmed political thriller making a bold statement about abuse of power by governments in a politically repressed country. Although it is not named as such in the film, Costa-Gavras’ target here is Uruguay (although the film was shot in Chile)... [More...]

L'Attentat (1972)

This polished political thriller earned critical acclaim for director Yves Boisset and stands as one of his best films, in spite of its complex plot and ambiguous political context. The scenario was based closely on the infamous Ben Barka affair, in which the Moroccan leader was “disappeared” in mysterious circumstances in Paris in 1965... [More...]

L'Aventure, c'est l'aventure (1972)

Although intended as an off-the-wall comedy, L’Aventure, c’est l’aventure does offer a pretty accurate reflection of the kind of political upheavals which were taking place in France when it was being made. The aftershocks of May ’68 were still shaping public attitudes, with power gradually shifting away from the political and managerial elite into the hands of ordinary... [More...]

La Scoumoune (1972)

Anyone who had previously seen Jean Becker’s 1961 film Un nommé la Rocca could be forgiven for having a strong sense of déjà vu when watching this film. La scoumoune is effectively a re-make of that film, which itself was based on José Giovanni’s own novel L’Excommunié... [More...]

Le Charme discret de la bourgeoisie (1972)

This is a totally off the wall but brilliantly funny comment on bourgeois life in France of the early 1970s. As in his earlier film, Belle du jour, director Luis Bunuel mingles reality and fantasy to the point that, in the end, we cannot distinguish the two. Using Russian doll-like dreams within dreams and surreal, often disturbing... [More...]

Le Grand blond avec une chaussure noire (1972)

This popular and entertaining comedy thriller established Pierre Richard as one of France’s leading comic actors in the 1970s, and his character, François Perrin, would reappear a number of times in other films over the following decade. The film’s screenplay was written by Francis Veber, who went on to win acclaim for his further scripting and directoral work... [More...]

Les Fous du stade (1972)

The group of talented comedy musicians known as Les Charlots were at the height of their popularity in France when they returned to cinema screens in their third – and arguably best – of their films, Les Fous du stade. Following the success of La Grande Java and Les Bidasses en folie, the amiable group had arrived at a winning formula of surreal visual gags and madcap storylines... [More...]

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