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French films Thriller
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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Director Henri Verneuil originally conceived this film as a latter day Gallic western, with lorries replacing horses, and the North African landscape making a plausible substitute for the American mid-west. The resulting film isn’t so much a western as a gripping chase film – at times very reminiscent of H.G...
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Fifty years after Louis Feuillade made his classic Fantômas series, the infamous master criminal returned to French cinema in this colourful action comedy, the first of three new Fantômas films to feature Louis de Funès and Jean Marais. The production team were wary about treading over old ground, so rather than attempt a straightforward remake of the Feuillade films...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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If there had to be just one word to sum up Alphaville¸that word would have to be weird. It is a film that constantly challenges our preconceptions, our expectations, and, as a result, manages to be both deeply disturbing and very funny at the same time. The film begins as what appears to be a pastiche of the American detective movie of the 1950s...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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....
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Possibly the biggest influence on cinema in France of the 1960s (as in most other western countries at the time) was the emergence of television as a competitive threat. To try and stem the gradual decline in cinema audiences, film producers had to fight back in the only way they knew how – by spending more money...
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Although it was originally conceived as a modest, low budget homage to the American gangster film, Pierrot le fou quickly earned a reputation as one of the most important films in French cinema and today is regarded as one of the most revolutionary films ever to have been made. It is a film that defies classification, is both loved and loathed by film enthusiasts...
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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...
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Fahrenheit 451 is a fairly faithful adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s novel of the same name, and conveys the same message about the value of the written word with as much force and conviction. Unfortunately, the film is very badly let down by some pretty major technical and casting problems. This is the first of Truffaut’s two grand forays into science fiction (the second being a...
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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...
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