Jean-Luc Godard
Breathless
PG
France, 1960
Genre: Crime, Drama, Thriller
Language: French, English
Director: Jean-Luc Godard
Starring: Jean Seberg, Jean-Paul Belmondo
What's it about?
One of the go-to films people will tell you to watch to experience the French New Wave, Godard’s bold visual style is captured in this film about small-time crook, Michel Poiccard (Jean-Paul Belmondo). He impulsively steals a car, shoots one of the policemen chasing him and flees. He goes back to Paris and meets up with his love interest, American student, Patricia (Jean Seberg) and succeeds in seducing her again. He convinces her to go to Italy with him. But the police have discovered the murderer’s identity and are on his trail.
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[link title="French Film Classics: Breathless" url="node/949"]
Alphaville
M
Italy, France, 1965
Genre: Drama, Mystery, Science Fiction
Language: French
Director: Jean-Luc Godard
Starring: Anna Karina, Jean-Pierre Léaud, Eddie Constantine
What's it about?
Godard blended the genres of dystopian science fiction and film noir to bring us this French New Wave classic. Lemmy Caution (Eddie Constantine) is an American private-eye, who is sent to Alphaville, a futuristic city on another planet, ruled by an evil scientist named Von Braun, who has outlawed love and self-expression through his sentient computer system, Alpha 60. His aim is to find a missing agent, capture or kill the tyrannical leader and destroy the dictatorial system.
Pierrot le Fou a.k.a Crazy Pete
M
France, Italy, 1965
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance
Language: French, English, Italian
Director: Jean-Luc Godard
Starring: Anna Karina, Samuel Fuller, Jean-Paul Belmondo
What's it about?
Stars from Breathless and Alphaville, Jean-Paul Belmondo and Anna Karina team up in this romantic road movie which was Godard’s tenth feature film. Ferdinand, fed up with the bourgeois life, escapes boring society and travels from Paris to the Mediterranean Sea with babysitter and ex-lover Marianne, a girl who is being chased by hit-men from Algeria. They lead an unorthodox life, always on the run, in this strikingly colourful and animated film.
Contempt
PG
France, Italy, 1963
Genre: Drama
Language: French, English, German, Italian
Director: Jean-Luc Godard
Starring: Fritz Lang, Michel Piccoli, Brigette Bardot, Jack Palance
What's it about?
If you haven’t seen this film, you may have seen stills of the incredible architecture featured in its location, Casa Malaparte in Capri. The composition and cinematography are iconic, with people still travelling to Capri to create their own moment on top of the Casa and the surrounding landscape. Scriptwriter Paul is trying to set up a film production of Homer’s The Odyssey in Rome with an American producer (Jack Palance) and directed by the German filmmaker Fritz Lang (playing himself). His relationship with his wife Camille (Bridget Bardot) disintegrates during the movie production as she spends time with the producer. Keep an eye out for Ulysses parallels and also with Godard and his own wife Anna Karina when Bardot features in a black Karina-style bob.
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Agnès Varda
Cléo from 5 to 7
PG
France, Italy, 1962
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Language: French
Director: Agnès Varda
Starring: Corinne Marchand, Antoine Bourseillier, Dominique Davray
What's it about?
Varda’s sublime, unexpected and intimate film brings a female eye to the streets of Paris and the French New Wave. We follow Florence, a singer, better known by her stage name Cléo, from 5pm while she waits to hear the results of a medical test to see if she has cancer. We follow her around the city waiting anxiously with her, as she talks about morality and despair, goes shopping, to cafés and rehearsals until 7pm when she receives her diagnosis.
Varda’s sublime, unexpected and intimate film brings a female eye to the streets of Paris and the French New Wave. We follow Florence, a singer, better known by her stage name Cléo, from 5pm while she waits to hear the results of a medical test to see if she has cancer. We follow her around the city waiting anxiously with her, as she talks about morality and despair, goes shopping, to cafés and rehearsals until 7pm when she receives her diagnosis.
Lion’s Love (… And Lies)
PG
France, USA, 1969
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Language: French, English
Director: Agnès Varda
Starring: Viva, James Rado, Gerome Ragni
What's it about?
Varda’s 1969 film may take on a bit more of the Andy Warhol aesthetic than the French New Wave with this Hollywood-set documentary/drama starring Warhol muse Viva. Based on the play The Beard, we follow three actors, Viva, Jim and Jerry, who live and love together in a rented house in the Hollywood hills, when a director (Shirley Clarke) comes from New York to make a movie about actors and Hollywood.
Jacques Demy
The Young Girls of Rochefort
PG
France, 1967
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Musical
Language: French, English
Director: Jacques Demy
Starring: Catherine Deneuve, George Chakiris, Françoise Dorléac, Gene Kelly
What's it about?
You want colour? Jacques Demy is bringing you the most wondrous pastel! Twins Delphine (Catherine Deneuve) and Solange (Françoise Dorléac) long for the big-city life and leave their small seaside town of Rochefort in search of romance. Hired as carnival singers, one falls for an American musician, while the other must search for her ideal partner. This musical is beautiful and magical with an incredible supporting cast of George Chakiris, Michel Piccoli, Jacques Perrin and Gene Kelly joining the real-life sisters.
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg
PG
France, 1964
Genre: Drama, Musical, Romance
Language: French, English
Director: Jacques Demy
Starring: Catherine Deneuve, Nino Castelnuovo, Anne Vernon
What's it about?
The iconic visual opening credits are just the beginning in this stunning unorthodox musical. Geneviève Emery (Catherine Deneuve), who works in her mother’s umbrella boutique, is separated from her lover, young mechanic Guy (Nino Castelnuovo) when he is drafted to serve in the Algerian War. Unlike the big musical numbers audiences are used to from the golden age of Hollywood, the film’s dialogue is entirely sung. The film won the Palme d’Or at the 1964 Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for 5 Academy Awards.
Lola
PG
France, Italy, 1961
Genre: Drama, Romance
Language: French, English
Director: Jacques Demy
Starring: Anouk Aimée, Marc Michel, Jacques Harden
What's it about?
Demy’s directorial debut has been described as a musical without music. The film stars the captivating Anouk Aimée in the title role. Roland (Marc Michel) is young and bored in the seaside town of Nantes until he meets with his former girlfriend Lola. Now a cabaret dancer and single mother, he soon finds himself falling in love with her again, but Lola is preoccupied with her former lover Michel (Jacques Harden) and also dodging the affections of American sailor, Frankie (Alan Scott). Perhaps not as widely spoken about as his colourful musicals, Demy is no less captivating in black and white.
François Truffaut
Jules and Jim
M
France, 1962
Genre: Drama, Romance
Language: French, German
Director: François Truffaut
Starring: Henri Serre, Oskar Werner, Jeanne Moreau
What's it about?
A captivating, romantic and tragic love triangle sits at the centre of Truffaut’s highly praised French New Wave masterpiece. A painfully moving story based on Henri-Pierre Roché’s semi-autobiographical novel the film chronicles the friendship between friends Jules (Oskar Werner) and Jim (Henri Serre) and their mutual obsession with the alluring and charismatic, Catherine (Jeanne Moreau) over 25 years.
A captivating, romantic and tragic love triangle sits at the centre of Truffaut’s highly praised French New Wave masterpiece. A painfully moving story based on Henri-Pierre Roché’s semi-autobiographical novel the film chronicles the friendship between friends Jules (Oskar Werner) and Jim (Henri Serre) and their mutual obsession with the alluring and charismatic, Catherine (Jeanne Moreau) over 25 years.
The 400 Blows
PG
France, 1959
Genre: Crime, Drama, Thriller
Language: French
Director: François Truffaut
Starring: Jean-Pierre Léaud, Albert Rémy, Claire Maurier
What's it about?
Truffaut’s first feature is a coming-of-age story that follows 14-year-old Antoine Doinel (Jean-Pierre Léaud) who, when left to his own devices, finds himself delving into a life of petty crime, but finds comfort at the cinema. Antoine’s adventures were based on the director’s own adolescence, making this his most personal film.
