Simone Signoret gives a notable performance in this atmospheric French film noir, which
was directed by her husband at the time, Yves Allégret... [More...]
Through a series of dove-tailing love vignettes, Max Ophüls offers us an enchanting
film replete with some of the greatest acting talent French cinema has known... [More...]
With Manèges, director Yves Allégret paints his most cynical and
intensely pessimistic picture of human nature. A gullible husband is manipulated
by his unscrupulous social climbing wife and then morally... [More...]
Arguably Jacques Becker’s best and most famous film, Casque d’Or illustrates perhaps
more than any of his films his unique conception of film-making.
Becquer’s main preoccupation is to capture through... [More...]
Thérèse Raquin is one of the few films made by Marcel Carné
after World War II which has the stature of his earlier triumphs. With its tale
of doomed love in an atmosphere-laden setting... [More...]
Les Diaboliques is considered by many to be the most suspenseful thriller ever
made, easily in the same league as Hitchcock’s better films. Although the film begins
quite slowly and innocently... [More...]
What is extraordinary about this documentary is that it is inspired by
a belief that France in May 1962 had passed a watershed, and that that
dating of the watershed has proved historically accurate... [More...]
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... [More...]
By the time he came to make Paris
brûle-t-il?, René Clément was one of the most
highly regarded film directors in France. Two of his films had
won Oscars in the Best Foreign Language Film category... [More...]
In this film, director Jean-Pierre Melville draws on his own war-time experiences to paint
a vivid and realistic picture of life in the French Resistance during the Second World
War... [More...]
Costa-Gavras followed his hugely successful film Z with L’Aveu, the second
of what was to become a series of critically acclaimed political thrillers... [More...]
