French film photo galley for Crime/Thriller

French films Crime/Thriller

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...]

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...]

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...]

Les Tontons flingueurs (1963)

What was originally envisaged as a serious gangster thriller ended up as a classy comedy thriller, the first in what would become a popular sub-genre in French cinema in the late 1960s. The main reason why this brand of comedy works particularly well in Les tontons flingueurs is because it does appear so out of place. Before this film... [More...]

Bande à part (1964)

Jean-Luc Godard’s cheeky homage to the low-budget American thriller genre is not one of his better works but it is a playful and entertaining reworking of a familiar theme. As would be expected of the subversive film director, the plot is just about the least important ingredient of the film, and its rewards stem mainly from the bizarre interactions of the three lead characters... [More...]

La Grande frousse (1964)

One of the most memorable of Jean-Pierre Mocky’s anarchic film comedies, La Grande frousse benefits from an exceptional "big name" cast, which is headed by Bourvil, a popular and much-loved comic actor. An eccentric black comedy, there are some similarities with the British “Ealing comedies” of the 1950s... [More...]

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...]

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...]

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...]

Du mou dans la gâchette (1966)

Du mou dans la gâchette is one of a seemingly endless series of very silly gangster thrillers made in France in the 1960s, which sought to capitalise on the success of films such as Les Tontons flingueurs (1963) and Les Barbouzes (1964). Like many films of its ilk, this one is seriously handicapped by a sub-mediocre screenplay that has fewer laughs than a Trappist monk convention and... [More...]

Le Deuxième souffle (1966)

The familiar Jean-Pierre Melville themes of honour, loyalty and redemption underpin this hard-edged policier which sees the formidable pairing of Lino Ventura and Paul Meurisse, two redoutable heavyweights of French cinema of the 1950s and ’60s, the Golden Age of the French film noir. Although it is similar to many of Melville’s other films (most noticeably Le Samouraï... [More...]

Made in U.S.A. (1966)

Having pretty well deconstructed the American crime thriller in Pierrot le fou, Jean-Luc Godard goes even further with his next policier outing, driving the genre to its absolute limits of abstraction and, in doing so, effectively ending his career as a mainstream film director. Guns, gore and gangsters are just some of the familiar film noir trappings which are woven... [More...]

Fantômas contre Scotland Yard (1967)

The third instalment in the 1960s series of Fantômas films sees Louis de Funès and Jean Marais united for the final time in the by now familiar blend of slapstick comedy and crime thriller. Although marginally better than the previous two films in a number of areas (notably the plot and the direction), there is little in the way of new material and the kitsch comic strip formula... [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...]

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 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...]

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