16mm French film listing

• Full-length films
• Short-subject films

Films are listed alphabetically by French title.

L'Argent de Poche (Small Change)

François Truffaut's series of sketches on the general theme of the resilience of children turns out to be that rarity: a poetic comedy that's really funny. Truffaut's deadpan, disjointed style is quicker and surer than ever before; the kids seem to be photographed in the act of inventing slapstick. Truffaut's view of childhood innocence has elements of middle- class preciousness, but the jokes make the film worth seeing. 1976. 104 min. Color. Subtitled. Directed by François Truffaut. Cast: Gregory Desmouceaux, Philippe Godman, Claudio Deluca.

Ascenseur pour L'Echafaud (Elevator to the Gallows, a.k.a. Frantic)

A thrilling, suspenseful film and Louis Malle's directorial debut . An executive in love with his employer's wife devises the perfect murder. After killing his boss, he is trapped in an elevator while his mistress wanders the streets of Paris in search of her lover. 1958. 90 min. B/W Subtitled. Directed by Louis Malle. Script: Louis Malle, Roger Nimier, based on a novel by Noel Calef. Cast: Maurice Ronet, Jeanne Moreau, Yori Bertin, Georges Poujouly, Lino Ventura.

L'Atalante

Naturalism and surrealist fantasy blend beautifully in all-time masterpiece about a young couple who begin their life together sailing down the Seine on a barge. This ultimate romantic film anticipated neorealist movement by more than a decade; Vigo died at 29 just as film premiered. 1934. 89 min. B/W Subtitled. Directed by Jean Vigo. Script: Jean Guine, Jean Vigo, Albert Riviera. Cast: Jean Daste, Dita Parlo, Michel Simon, Gilles Margaritis, Louis Lefèvre, Maurice Gilles, Raya Diligent, Renée Blech.

Bande à Part (Bande of Outsiders)

Anna Karina enlists the aid of two male hoods to swipe her aunt's stash, but as usual the supposed plot is only a jumping-off point for Godard's commentary on Hollywood melodramas and other twentieth-century artifacts. Among the more entertaining of the director's output; looks delightfully mellow today.1964. 97 min. B/W subtitled. Directed by Jean-Luc Godard. Script: Jean-Luc Godard, based on FOOL'S GOLD by Dolores Hitchens. Cast: Anna Karina, Sami Frey.

Les Bas-Fonds (The Lower Depths)

Jean Renoir's version of the Maxim Gorky play features those two magnetic poles of French acting: Louis Jouvet as the gambling baron who sinks to living in a flophouse, and Jean Gabin as the thief trying to climb up to a different life. Their scenes together are gems of the French film tradition. The fine cast includes Le Vigan as an actor, Jany Holt as a prostitute with aspirations toward love with sentiment, and Junie Astor, Suzy Prim, and Vladimir Sokoloff. This movie has one of those emblematic moments that people talk about for years afterward: Jouvet, having lost everything, comes away from the gaming tables and can't light his cigarette. This scene was, for the 30s, what Belmondo rubbing his lips in BREATHLESS was for the 60s. 1936. 92 min. B/W Subtitled. Directed by Jean Renoir. Script: Jean Renoir, Charles Spaak, J. Companeez, E. Zamiatine.

La Bataille d'Alger (The Battle of the Algiers)

Like POTEMKIN, this film is an epic in the form of a "created documentary". It's a reconstruction of the events of 1954 to 1957 in the guerrilla war waged by the National Liberation Front against the French authorities, with the oppressed, angry masses as the hero. Pontecorvo created a historical reenactment of the four-year struggle between the Algerian resistance in the Casbah and French paratroopers. This film was banned from France for several years for its sympathetic treatment of the Algerian rebels. 1965. 135 min. B/W Subtitled. Directed by Gillo Pontecorvo. Cast Jean Martin, Yacef Saadi.

La Bête Humaine (The Human Beast)

Locomotive engineer Gabin displays fits of uncontrollable violence against women. When he forms a liaison with the flirtatious wife of a deputy stationmaster, he becomes entangled in a plot to kill the husband. Sublimely atmospheric adaptation of Emile Zola's novel suited the fatalistic mood of Europe in 1938, as the Nazis overran Czechoslovakia. That's Renoir himself in the role of Cabuche. Also known as JUDAS WAS A WOMAN. 1938. 99 min. B/W Subtitled. Directed by Jean Renoir. Script: Jean Renoir, based on the novel by Zola. Cast: Jean Gabin, Simone Simon, Fernand Ledoux, Jean Renoir.

Boudu Sauvé des Eaux (Boudu Saved from Drowning)

Despite the problems of sound recording in 1931, Jean Renoir went out of the studio and shot this film on the streets and along the banks of the Seine, and so it is not only a lovely fable about a bourgeois attempt to reform an early hippie (Michel Simon is the shaggy-bearded tramp who spills wine on the table and wipes his shoes on the bedspread) but a photographic record of an earlier France. A beautifully rhythmed film that makes one nostalgic for the period when it was made. 1932. 88 min. B/W Subtitled. Directed by Jean Renoir. Script: Jean Renoir. Cast: Michel Simon, Charles Granval Marcelle Hainia, Jean Gehret, Max Dalban, Jean Dasté, and Jacques Becker. Cinematography by Marcel Lucien; Not released in the U.S. until 1967.

Casque d'Or (Golden Marie, aka Golden Helmet)

Simone Signoret had her finest role (until ROOM AT THE TOP) as a gigolette with a glorious helmet of golden hair in Jacques Becker's sultry, poetic account of the Paris underworld in 1900. Her performance is a triumph of sensuality: faintly smiling, she is so intensely, ripely physical that she takes command of the screen. Becker introduces a world of cutthroats, apaches, and gun molls, and then subtly evokes an atmosphere that gives meaning and passion (and an overdose of doom) to their rivalries and intrigues. The love scenes between Signoret and Serge Reggiani are unusually simple and tender; perhaps because of this, the grim conclusion is almost insupportably painful. Simone Signoret won the 1952 British Film Academy award for her performance. 1952. 96 min. B/W Subtitled. Directed by Jacques Becker. Script: Jacques Becker, Jacques Companeez. Cast: Simone Signoret, Serge Reggiani.

Un Chien Andalou (An Andalusian Dog)

Even if you're prepared for the famous shock image of the sliced eye, Luis Buñuel's and Salvador Dali's short silent film has the hallucinatory and incendiary effect they sought. Some of the images have great poetic force, and at times they have an erotic humor that one has difficulty explaining, even to oneself. With Pierre Batcheff as the cyclist, Dali as the priest, and Buñuel as the man with the razor. 1928. 17 min. B/W Silent. Directed by Luis Buñuel. Script: Luis Buñuel, Salvador Dali. Cast: Pierre Batcheff, Luis Buñuel.

Cesar

The last film of the Marcel Pagnol trilogy (after MARIUS and FANNY) is named for the pivotal character, played by Raimu. César, the proprietor of a waterfront bar (and the soul of the trilogy) is the father of Marius (Pierre Fresnay) who runs off to sea leaving his fiancée, Fanny (Orane Démazis), pregnant. She marries the kind, middle- aged sailmaker, Panisse (Charpin). In this concluding film, the only one of the three actually directed by Pagnol, Marius and Fanny are, at last, reunited. 1936. 117 min. B/W Subtitled. Directed by Marcel Pagnol. Script: Marcel Pagnol. Cast: Raimu, Pierre Fresnay, Charpin.

Le Corbeau (The Raven)

An ingenious, suspenseful film that details what happens when a series of mysterious poison pen letters begins circulating in a small French town. Quite controversial in its day because it was financed by a Nazi movie company and considered to be anti-French propaganda. It remains a most chilling, entertaining concoction. Also known as THE RAVEN. 1943. 92 min. B/W. Subtitled. Directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot.

Les Diaboliques (Diabolical)

A tyrannical school-master is bumped off by his long-suffering wife and mistress; they dump the body and return home only to be confronted with increasing evidence that they botched the job. Classic chiller builds slowly, surely to final quarter hour that will drive you right up the wall. 1955. 107 min. B/W Subtitled. Directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot. Script: J. Geronimi, Clouzot, R. Masson; based on the novel CELLE QUI N'ETAIT PLUS. Cast: Simone Signoret, Vera Clouzot, Paul Meurisse, Charles Vanel.

Bizarre Bizarre (Drôle de Drame)

Dadaist frivolity, with sequences that one giggles over happily for years. Jacques Prévert wrote and Marcel Carné directed this romantic, satirical comedy about the English mania for detective fiction set in Edwardian England. Jean-Louis Barrault is the detective-story reader who decides to commit his own perfect crime by murdering the author (Michel Simon). With Françoise Rosay as Barrault's inamorata (he gathers a bouquet for her by stealing the boutonnieres of men who have been clobbered in the Limehouse alleys); Louis Jouvet as a clergyman; and Jean-Pierre Aumont as a lovesick milkman. 1937. 87 min. B/W Subtitled. Directed by Marcel Carné. Script: Jaques Prevert, from the novel by Storer- Clouston, HIS FIRST OFFENCE. Cast: Michel Simon, Jean-Louis Barrault, Françoise Rosay, Louis Jouvet.

Madame de... (Diamond Earrings)

Captivating classic detailing the events that unravel after fickle Darrieux pawns the earrings presented her by husband Boyer. A knowing look at the effect of living a shallow, meaningless life. Masterfully acted and directed, with dazzling tracking shots. 1953. 105 min. B/W. Directed by Max Ophuls. Cast: Danielle Darieux, Vittorio De Sica, Charles Boyer.

La Fete Espagnol

The subject of the film is the Spanish Civil War. The year is 1936. Volunteers from all over the world group together to fight for their cause on each side. 1961. 90 min. No Subtitles. Directed by Jean-Jacques Vierne. Cast: Peter Von Eych, Dahli Lavi.

Gervaise

A painstaking and rich evocation of mid-19th-century Paris, photographed to suggest Daguerre. René Clément's film deals with the spiritual destruction of Gervaise (Maria Schell), a destruction accomplished by her lover, who deserts her, and her gentle husband, who becomes an uncontrollable drunkard (a memorable performance by François Périer). Gervaise Macquart is the heroine of L'Assommoir, one of the 20 novels in the Rougon-Macquart series. Winner Best Foreign Picture of the Year / N.Y. Critics Award in 1956. 116 min. B/W Subtitled. Directed by René Clément Script: Jean Aurenche, Pierre Bost; based on the novel L'Assommoir by Emile Zola. Cast: Maria Schell, François Perier.

La Grande Illusion (The Grand Illusion)

Renoir's classic treatise on war, focusing on French prisoners during WWI and their cultured German commandant. Beautiful performances enhance an eloquent script (by Renoir and Charles Spaak). 1937. 117 min. B/W Subtitled. Directed by Jean Renoir. Script: Jean Renoir, Charles Spaak. Cast: Jean Gabin, Eric Von Stroheim, Pierre Fresney.

Hiroshima Mon Amour

A breathtaking film. Interweaving sound and image, brutal documentary footage and tender shots of lovemaking, past and present, past and remembered past, city and individual, passion and despair. Alain Resnais creates a breathtaking picture that, like so many great works of art, can never be entirely appreciated or understood. HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR must be felt, combining the soft, loving caresses of two intertwined bodies with the burnt, blistering, peeling flesh of a dying victim of atomic warfare, and the feelings it evokes defy understanding or explanation. 1959. 90 min. B/W Subtitled. Directed by Alain Resnais. Script: Marguerite Duras. Cast: Emmanuele Riva, Eiji Okada, Stella Dassas.

Jenny

Madame Jenny, a middle-aged Parisian woman, is the owner of a fashionable brothel. She tries to hide her profession from her daughter who makes an unexpected visit. One of Marcel Carné's most memorable works. 1936. 90 min. B/W Subtitled. Directed by Marcel Carné. Cast: Françoise Rosay and Lisette Lanvin.

La Jetee (The Pier)

This haunting science fiction film depicts a band of World War II survivors who perform experiments in time travel on a prisoner. Re-made as TWELVE MONKEYS with Bruce Willis. 1962. 29 min. B/W Subtitled. Directed Chris Marker. Cast: Helene Chatelain, Davos Hanish.

Le Journal d'un Curé de Campagne (Diary of a Country Priest)

Robert Bresson's masterly adaptation of the Georges Bernanos novel about the suffering of a young priest (Claude Laydu) whose faith is neither understood nor accepted by his parishioners. A film of great purity and, at the end, a Bach-like intensity. The dialogue and the passages read from the diary are taken directly from the novel, though while you're watching you feel as if you were seeing a silent movie. (It's the effect of the expressive images and the general austerity.) This is one of the few modern works in any art form that help one to understand the religious life - which for this useless young man is a terrible one, yet with moments of holiness. 1950. 110 min. B/W Subtitled. Directed by Robert Bresson. Cast: Claude Layu, Armand Guibert.

Judex

Judex is a mysterious and magical crime-fighter set on avenging the cruel misdeeds of a ruthless banker. A wonderful homage to the original silent classic. 1963. 100 min. B/W Subtitled. Directed by Georges Franju. Cast: Channing Pollack.

La Kermess Heroique (Carnival in Flanders)

It is a day in 1616; a Spanish regiment comes to a town in occupied Flanders. The cowardly burghers hide, but their charming ladies meet the challenge, and in the morning the Spaniards depart, poorer in worldly goods, richer in experience. Jacques Feyder directed this classic comedy in the styles of Bruegel and Boccaccio. From a script by Charles Spaak. With Françoise Rosay, Louis Jouvet, Jean Murat, Alerme, Micheline Cheirel. Designed by Lazare Meerson; cinematography by Harry Stradling. 1935. 95 min. B/W Subtitled. Directed by Jacques Feyder. Cast: Francoise Rosay, Jean Muret .

Marius

The first film of the celebrated Marcel Pagnol trilogy, famous for its dialogue and characterization, and for the rich humanity Raimu brought to the role of César, the Marseilles café owner. In the film, the life along the harbor centers on this café. The story involves César's son, Marius (the elegant Pierre Fresnay), who longs to go to sea, though he loves Fanny (Orane Démazis). Produced and written by Pagnol. In French. 1931. 125 min. B/W Subtitled. Directed by Alexander Korda. Cast: Raimu, Pierre Fresnay Orane Démazis.

Masculin-Feminin

Jean-Luc Godard's graceful, intuitive examination of the courtship rites of "the children of Marx and Coca-Cola." The boy, a pop revolutionary (Jean-Pierre Léaud), is full of doubts and questions. The girl (Chantal Goya) is a yé-yé singer with a thin, reedy little voice; her face is haunting just because it's so empty-she seems alive only when she's looking in the mirror toying with her hair. The film, a combination of journalistic sketches, love lyrics, and satire, is about the differing attitudes of the sexes toward love and war in an atmosphere of total and easy disbelief, when government policies are accepted with the same contempt as TV commercials. 1966. 103 min. B/W Subtitled. Directed by Jean-Luc Godard. Cast: Jean-Pierre Léaud, Chantal Goya.

Le Millon

René Clair at his exquisite best; no one else has ever been able to make a comedy move with such delicate, dreamlike inevitability. René Lefèvre plays the poor, young painter who has a winning lottery ticket, only he hasn't quite got it; it was in the pocket of a coat that got sold to a secondhand shop. The entire film, which Clair adapted from a stage musical, is the hero's chase after the ticket, with his creditors, his girl (Annabella), his friends, and the police chasing after him. (The sequence in the opera house is clearly the inspiration for a sequence in A NIGHT AT THE OPERA.) This movie is lyrical, choreographic, giddy. It's the best French musical of its period. The cinematography is by Georges Périnal; the art direction is by Lazare Meerson. 1931. 89 min. B/W Subtitled. Directed by René Clair. Cast: René Lefèvre, Annabella.

Mayerling

This beautifully made version of the legendary tragic love of Archduke Rudolf, heir apparent to the Hapsburg Empire, for the young Maria Vetsera is one of the most memorable of all French romantic movies. (Several less effective versions followed.) Anatole Litvak directed with far more delicacy than he showed in his later work, and the doomed lovers are played by Charles Boyer and Danielle Darrieux. Boyer hangs a cigarette on his Hapsburg lip and grabs a girl's leg and the movie takes off. In this account Rudolf is a dissolute voluptuary redeemed by his love for the innocent Vetsera-and the young Darrieux is so sexy and lovely in the role that you can just about believe it all. The affair ended abruptly in 1889, at Mayerling, the royal hunting lodge in the Vienna woods. 1937. 95 min. B/W Subtitled. Directed by Anatole Litvak. Cast: Charles Boyer, Danielle Darrieux.

A Nous la Liberte

René Clair's imaginative social satire on the mechanization of modern life. Beautifully made, the picture has sets by Lazare Meerson, and Georges Périnal's cinematography has a simplified, formal perfection. The whole film is paced to Georges Auric's memorable score, one of the earliest (yet best) film scores ever written. Clair's directing demonstrates that sound pictures can be as fluid as silents were, and this picture is rightly considered a classic. A NOUS LA LIBERTE was obviously the source of some of the ideas in Chaplin's 1936 MODERN TIMES; the producing company filed suit against Chaplin for copyright infringement, but Clair had the suit dropped, saying that "All of us flow" from Chaplin, and "I am honored if he was inspired by my film." 1931. 95 min. B/W Subtitled. Directed by René Clair. Script: René Clair. Cast: Raymond Cory, Henri Marchand, Rolla France, Paul Olivier.

Orphee (Orpheus)

A masterpiece of magical filmmaking. Though it is a narrative treatment of the legend of Orpheus in a modern Parisian setting, this film, written and directed by Jean Cocteau, is as inventive and as enigmatic as a dream. Orpheus (Jean Marais), the successful poet who is envied and despised by younger poets, needs to renew himself; he tries to push beyond the limits of human experience, to reach the unknowable, the mystery beyond morality. Dark, troubled, passionate Maria Casarés is his Death. Attended by her roaring motorcyclists, the hooded messengers of death, she is mystery incarnate. The jazzy modern milieu has urgency, and Cocteau uses emblems and images of the then recent Nazi period and merges them with more primitive images of fear as, indeed, they are merged in the modern consciousness. 1949. 95 min. B/W Subtitled. Directed by Jean Cocteau. Cast: Jean Marais, Maria Casarés.

Panique (Panic)

Julien Duvivier's psychological thriller is a devastatingly effective job of visual storytelling. Michel Simon is the stranger in a Paris suburb who is framed for murder; Viviane Romance and her lover, Paul Bernard, are the ones who frame him. The sordid, intriguingly nasty movie, taken, inevitably, from a Simenon novel, has some pretensions toward being a parable of sadistic injustice; on that level, it can't be taken very seriously. But in terms of how the sequences are planned, and how they build, it's an unusual, near-perfect piece of film craftsmanship. 1946. 87 min. B/W Subtitled. Directed by Julien Duvivier. Cast Michel Simon, Vivian Romance.

Une Partie de Campagne (A Day in the Country)

Jean Renoir's 37-minute film from a de Maupassant story is one of the two or three greatest short-story films ever made; a lyric tragedy that ranks with his finest work. Visually, it recaptures the Impressionist period; in tone, it accomplishes a transformation from light nostalgic comedy to despair. In the late 1800's a merchant (Gabriello) takes his family for an outing on the banks of the Marne; there, his wife (Jeanne Marken) and his innocent young daughter (Sylvia Bataille) are seduced, the one delightedly, the other tremblingly, like a captured bird. Renoir himself plays the role of an innkeeper. Cinematography by Claude Renoir and Jean Bourgoin; music by Kosma. 1936. 37 min. B/W subtitled. Directed by Jean Renoir. Cast: Sylvia Bataille, Georges Darnoux.

La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc The Passion of Joan of Arc

One of the greatest of all movies. The director, Carl Dreyer, based the script on the trial records, and the testimony appears to be given for the first time. (Cocteau wrote that this film "seems like an historical document from an era in which the cinema didn't exist.") As the five grueling cross- examinations follow each other, Dreyer turns the camera on the faces of Joan and the judges, and in giant close-ups he reveals his interpretation of their emotions. In this enlargement Joan and her persecutors are shockingly fleshy, isolated with their sweat, warts, spittle, and tears, and (as no one used makeup) with startlingly individual contours, features, and skin. Falconetti's Joan may be the finest performance ever recorded on film. 1928. 60 min. B/W Silent. Directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer. Cast: Marie Falconetty, Eugene Sylvain, Antonin Artaud.

Pepe le Moko

Superb entertainment. A classic romantic melodrama of the 30s, and one of the most compelling of all the fatalistic French screen romances directed by Julien Duvivier and starring Jean Gabin as the gangster who finds love but can't find his freedom. No one who saw PEPE is likely to forget the scene in which the homesick-for-Paris Gabin looks at a Métro ticket and recites the names of the stations. 1936. 90 min. B/W Subtitled. Directed by Julien Duvivier. Cast: Jean Gabin, Mireille Balin.

Le Plaiser

Three short stories by Guy de Maupassant relate the joy and irony of romance. In "Le Masque," an elderly man recovers his youth with the aid of a magic mask; in "Le Maison Tellier," a bevy of prostitutes embarks on their annual holiday in the countryside; in "Le Modèle," a free- living artist weds a model after she cripples herself in a failed suicide attempt. Lush production with fluid camera and baroque set decoration, Ophüls' trademarks. Coscripted by Ophüls and Jacques Natanson. 1952. 101 min. B/W Subtitled. Directed by Max Ophüls. Cast: Claude Dauphin, Gaby Morlay.

Poil de Carrote (Carrot head)

Julien Duvivier established his mastery of the sound film with this remake of his 1925 silent about the desperate estrangement of a young red-headed boy. Harry Baur plays the father and skinny, little Robert Lynen is the boy who tries to hang himself. Their performances are delicate and psychologically complex, but the film achieves its lyric intensity largely through the rhythmic use of imagery. (There's none of the didactic dialogue that might have marred an American film of the period, with a doctor or analyst explaining that the mother felt unloved and so she rejected the child, and so on.) Here, Duvivier isn't the masterly entertainer that he became a few years later; this film is more exploratory, more searching. From a novel by Jules Renard, adapted by the director. 1939. 86 min. B/W. Subtitled. Directed by Julien Duvivier. Cast: Harry Baur, Catherine Fonteney.

Les Portes de la Nuit (The Gates of Night)

A bleak view of the post-war world of black marketeers, fascist collaborators, and former resistance fighters. Amid this gloomy atmosphere two lovers realize they are doomed. 1946. 106 min. B/W. No subtitles. Directed by Marcel Carné. Cast: Pierre Brasseur, Yves Montand.

A Propos de Nice (On the Subject of Nice)

A lyrical avant-garde film with a sarcastic bite. Images of rich, vacationing Parisians contrast with shots of poverty and degradation. Trick photography and fast motion add to the texture of the film. Filmed in collaboration with Russian cinematographer Boris Kaufman, the film emerged as a Soviet-style parody/commentary on the injustice of the French class structure. 1930. 28 min. B/W. Directed by Jean Vigo. Silent. Script: Jean Vigo.

La Regle du Jeu (The Rules of the Game)

Perhaps the most influential of all French films, and one of the most richly entertaining. Jean Renoir's legendary butchered and then restored masterpiece is a farce about a large houseparty, gathered for a hunt, where the servants and masters begin to chase and shoot each other. The party at the country château is a tragicomic world in motion; ironically, once the whole mechanism is spinning the man who begins at the center of it, the romantic aviator (Roland Toutain), is flicked off. The script, by Renoir, assisted by Carl Koch, was derived from Alfred de Musset's LES CAPRICES DE MARIANNE. 1939. 110 min. B/W. Subtitled. Directed by Jean Renoir. Script: Jean Renoir, Carl Koch. Cast: Marcel Dalio, Nora Gregor, Roland Toutain, Jean Renoir, Mila Parely.

Du Rififi Chez les Hommes (Rififi Spells Trouble)

A quartet of thieves breaks into a jewelry store, and for a tense half-hour we watch as they work, silently. It is like a highly skilled documentary on how to disconnect a burglar alarm and open a safe. It is thoroughly engrossing, because we see the criminals as craftsmen, and we celebrate their teamwork, their finesse, their triumph. Ironically, we find ourselves sympathizing with their honest exhaustion after their dishonest labor. >From then on, this movie, made in France, by the American director, Jules Dassin, follows the tradition of SCARFACE, PUBLIC ENEMY, and THE ASPHALT JUNGLE (and of MACBETH before them), bringing the tragic, trapped figures (now symbols of our own antisocial impulses) to a cadaverous finish. 1956. 115 min. B/W. Subtitled. Directed by Jules Dassin. Script: René Wheeler, Jules Dassin, Auguste le Breton. Cast: Jean Sercais, Carl Mohner, Robert Manuel, Marie Sabouret, Janine Darcy, Claude Sylvain, Perlo Vita (Jules Dassin), Robert Hossein.

Le Salaire de la Peur (The Wages of Fear)

An existential thriller. The most original and shocking French melodrama of the 50's. The opening sequence shows a verminous South American village and the Europeans trapped in it; they will risk everything for the money to get out. An oil well 300 miles away has caught fire, and the oil company offers four of them $2,000 each to drive two trucks loaded with nitroglycerine (to explode out the fire) over primitive roads. When you can be blown up at any moment, only a fool believes that character determines fate. If this isn't a parable of man's position in the modern world, it's at least an illustration of it. Henri-Georges Clouzot directed his own adaptation of Georges Arnaud's novel. Awarded the GOLDEN PALM at Cannes.1953. 138 min. B/W. Subtitled. Directed by Henri- Georges Clouzot, Script: Henri-Georges Clouzot, Jerome Geronimi; based on the novel by Georges Arnaud. Cast: Yves Montand, Charles Vanel, Vera Clouzot, Peter van Eyck, Folco Lulli.

Sang d'un Poete (Blood of a Poet)

Jean Cocteau's first film is an enigmatic account of a poet's dreams, ecstasies and obsession with the unknown, composed in four illogical, timeless sequences that happen in the instant that a chimney topples. The first time you see this film, you're likely to find it silly, static, absurd, and you may feel cheated after having heard so much about it. But, though it may seem to have no depth, you're not likely to forget it; it has a suggestiveness unlike any other film. Music by Georges Auric. Cinematography by Georges Périnal. 1930. 58 min. B/W Subtitled. Directed by Jean Cocteau. Script: Jean Cocteau. Cast: Lee Miller, Pauline Carton, Odette Talazac, Jean Desbordes, Enrique Rivero.

Sous les Toits de Paris (Under the roofs of Paris)

René Clair's first sound film was one of the first imaginative approaches to the musical as a film form. Clair keeps dialogue to a minimum and uses music and sound effects to create a carefree, poetic style. More lyric, less comic, than his other films of this period, it tells the story of two inseparable friends and the girl they both love. With Albert Préjean as the street singer. In French. 1930. 92 min. B/W. Subtitled. Directed by René Clair. Script: René Clair, based on a musical comedy by Georges Berr and Guillemaud. Cast: René Lefevre, Annabella, Louis Allibert, Wanda Greville, Paul Olivier, Odette Talazac, Raymond Cordy.

Terrain Vague

Carné's protagonists are often symbols of the times. In the 1960's, he describes a group of young adolescents on the outskirts of society whose leader is Dan, a beautiful girl dressed like a boy. They gather at an abandoned factory to act out their rituals and to dream of the future. A new boy who just escaped from an institution for delinquents is accepted into the group, but he pressures them into taking a wrong direction with cruel results. 1960. 90 min. B/W. No subtitles. Directed by Marcel Carné. Script: Marcel Carné and Henri Francois-Rey, based on the novel TOMBOY, by Hal Elson. Cast: Roland Lesaffre, Danielle Gaubert, Jean-Louis Bras, Maurice Caffarelli.

Tirez sur le Pianiste (Shoot the Piano Player)

Atmospheric early Truffaut gem. Aznavour is marvelous as a former concert pianist who traded in his fame and now plays in run-down Parisian cafes. His ambitious girlfriend wants him to resume his career, but he gets involved with gangsters and murder instead. This film, more than any other, reflects the influence of Hollywood low-budget melodramas on Truffaut and his cinematic style. 1960. 80 min. B/W. Subtitled. Directed by François Truffaut. Script: Marcel Moussy, Francois Truffaut, based on the novel DOWN THERE, by David Goodis. Cast: Charles Aznavour, Maria Dubois, Nicole Berger, Michèle Mercier.

Toni

An Italian quarry worker (Charless Blavette) lives with (Celia Montalvan), but falls in love with farm girl (Jenny Helia), who in turn is wooed away by a swaggering foreman (Max Dalban). Renoir co-scripted this simple, touching drama, which he filmed in a style that influenced the Italian Neorealist movement of the 1940s. 1934. 90 min. B/W. Subtitled. Directed by Jean Renoir. Script: Carl Einstein, Jean Renoir; from an idea by J. Levert. Cast: Charles Blavette, Edouard Delmont, Max Dalban, Jenny Helia, Andrex, Celia Montalvan, Kovachevitch, Bozzi.

Les Tricheurs

This film is a candid study of a group of young Parisians rebelling against traditional values. They dance to American jazz at reckless parties. As a result of their amoral nonchalance, many of the characters are plunged into ruin. One of Carne's later efforts, the film's subject matter appears to be precursor to the themes addressed by the New Wave film makers. 1958. 117 min. B/W. No Subtitles. Directed by Marcel Carné. Script: Marcel Carné, James Sigurs. Cast: Pascal Petit, Andrea Parisy, Jacques Charrier, Laurent Terzieff, Roland Lesaffre.

Trois Chambres a Manhattan (Three Beds in Manhattan)

Adapted from Georges Simenon's novel Three Beds in Manhattan. This is one of Carné's later films, partially shot on location in New York. This is the story of two cynical outcasts who fall in love. 1965. 105 min. B/W. French, no subtitles. Directed by Marcel Carné. Cast: Annie Girardot, Maurice Ronet and Rolland Lesaffre.

Les Vacances de M. Hulot (Mr. Hulot's Holiday)

People are at their most desperate when they are working at enjoying themselves; it is Jacques Tati's peculiar comic triumph to have caught the ghastliness of a summer vacation at the beach. Fortunately, his technique is light and dry slapstick; the chronicle of human foibles and frustrations never sinks to the moist or the lovable. As director, co-author, and star, Tati is sparse, eccentric, quick. It is not until afterward, with the sweet, nostalgic music lingering, that these misadventures may take on a certain depth and poignancy. Won the Golden Palm at Cannes. 1953. 96 min. B/W. Directed by Jacques Tati. Script: Jacques Tati, Henri Marquet. Cast: Jacques Tati, Nathalie Pascaud, Louis Perrault, Michelle Rolla, Suzy Willy, André Dubois.

Vivre Sa Vie (Her Life to Live)

A complex, fascinating 12-chapter portrait of a prostitute (Karina, who was then wed to Godard), told in documentary style. The films takes a probing look at the manner in which women and men view one another, and is a celluloid valentine to Karina, upon whose mere presence Godard seems to be transfixed. One of his richest and strongest early films. 1963. 85 min. B/W. Subtitled. Directed by Jean-Luc Godard. Cast: Anna Karina.

Volpone

Although not well known, Maurice Tourneur was considered a peer of D.W. Griffith. His evocative style and imagination are evident in this drama of a wealthy Levantine shop owner who feigns a fatal illness to test the sincerity of his friends. 1953. 85 min. B/W. Subtitled. Directed by Maurice Tourneur. Script: Jules Romains, Stefan Zweig, from the play by Ben Johnson. Cast: Harry Bar and Louis Jouvet.

Zero de Conduite (Zero for Conduct)

A semi-autobiographical film often considered to be Vigo's masterpiece, sympathetically portrays a group of youths as they return from a holiday to a stifling boarding school. The students rebel against the school's regime. This film, like Vigo's other original works, was immediately banned. For reasons never fully understood, the French government automatically applied political significance to the script, and considered the students' revolt to be a metaphor for revolution. 1933. 44 min. B/W. Subtitled. Directed by Jean Vigo. Script: Jean Vigo. Cast: Jean Daste, Louis Lefevre, Gilbert Pruchon, Coco Goldstein, Gerard de Bedarieux, Robert le Flon.