Although not quite in the league of Jacques Becker’s best films, Touchez pas au grisbi
occupies an important placing in French cinema history... [More...]
Jean Becker’s 1953 film
Touchez pas au grisbi allowed actor Jean
Gabin to re-invent his screen persona, becoming the tough patriarchal figure that would
predominate in his post-WWII film career... [More...]
Eddie Constantine stars in this somewhat lacklustre pastiche of film noir and
American-style action/adventure, a formula that was hugely popular in France in the 1950s... [More...]
Jean Gabin and Lino Ventura are reunited for the fourth time in as many years in this
standard 1950s French thriller. The film was based on a novel by the popular série
noir writer Auguste Le Breton... [More...]
For his remarkable cinematic debut, director Louis Malle brought a fresh and original
approach to the film policier, the most popular genre in French cinema of the 1950s... [More...]
Jean Gabin stars in one of his most famous roles, that of Inspector Maigret, in this atmospheric
1950s policier directed by one of France’s most talented directors... [More...]
Cinematic biographies of famous artists are not a rare phenomenon, but few such films
manage to evoke the acute sense of despair and injustice that Montparnasse 19 does... [More...]
Lino Ventura gives one of his legendary tour de force performances in
this intricate mystery-thriller, a compelling film which appears to have
been influenced by both American film noir and the work of Alfred Hitchcock... [More...]
Le Chemin des écoliers
isn’t so much a film as a head-spinning confluence of some of the most
impressive acting talent in French cinema in the late
1950s... [More...]
