Despite being a somewhat lacklustre melodrama (typifying the blandness of French cinema
immediately after the Liberation), Étoile sans lumière retains a
certain interest value with enthusiasts of cinema... [More...]
Les Portes de la nuit marked the beginning of
a dramatic decline in the fortunes of its director Marcel Carné. Prior to
and during World War II... [More...]
(1946) and Occupe-toi
d’Amélie (1949), Claude Autant-Lara established himself as one of France’s
leading directors of quality films in the 1940s... [More...]
Probably one of the most harrowing two and half hours of cinema, Le salaire de la peur
is not a film for the squeamish – or the sentimental. It is director Henri-Georges
Clouzot’s undisputed masterpiece and... [More...]
War-time heroes reduced to mercenary activities in some remote colonial backwater.
The desperation of a passionate woman to escape a loveless marriage and find some meaning
in her life... [More...]
The scope of this film and its scale are breathtaking – but the end result is only partially
successful. Even in his formidable epic of the 1920s... [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...]
The stylish ambiguity and other-worldliness, achieved through some stunning photography,
in Resnais’ early films would appear inappropriate for a political thriller... [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...]
André Delvaux directed this haunting mélange of dream and reality, his second
full-length film after his acclaimed L’Homme au
crâne rasé (1966)... [More...]
Yves Montand shows great promise as a comic performer in this entertaining farce from
Philippe de Broca. As is fairly typical of popular French comedies of this
period... [More...]
Winner of two oscars in 1969 (for best foreign picture, best editing) and awards at Cannes
(the jury prize and best actor for Trintignant), Z is the film that took
1969 by storm... [More...]
