A Bout de Souffle (1960) (Breathless) is a classic of something, but not everybody can agree what exactly it is a classic example of.
It is New Wave for sure, and although is too postmodern by far to be a genuine film noir, the French (and in this case Jean-Luc Godard, a Suisse) appropriated film noir for their own, and made a virtue of its every trope.
And film noir's every trope is stated in A Bout de Souffle. Trouble is that to appreciate Breathless, and see what is going on, a viewer has to see the picture from a historical context, which requires studying the French New Wave, film theory as a whole, and the lives and attitudes of its contemporaries.
Film enthusiasts loved Godard in the 1960, however. He was revolutionary in his approach, which is why MovieMaker
magazine called him the 4th most influential director of all time - only
behind Welles, Griffith, and Hitchcock!
Breathless is all style, and while the story may be interesting, it's Godard's aesthetics, production modes, subject matters, and
storytelling methods that are what we come for. The whole movie was
shot on a hand-held camera, like many other New Wave pictures, and it was shot by two people (Godard and his cinematographer,
Rouald) on a budget that did not top $50,000, a fraction of what
most pictures cost at the time.
Breathless was also
shot completely on location in Paris, and used new film-making
techniques that would be used by film-making students and then professionals for decades to
come, an example being putting the camera in a mail cart on the Champs Elysees
and following Belmondo and Seberg. Like it or not, Breathless is a pit stop on the world historic tour of not just film noir, but of cinema soi-meme!
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Les Anges du Péché (1943) (Angels from the Street) was the first full-length feature by the self-described Christian-atheist Robert Bresson, and was
made in occupied France after Bresson had done a year in a prison camp.
The movie has a sparse look, and features no flashy
camera-acrobatics or editing tricks.
The story is set in a
convent, Sisters of Bethany, which has the purpose of helping women in prison
rehabilitate. The hero is Anne-Marie, a proud and respectable middle class woman who comes to grief in conflict with the Mother Superior. There are
characters who come to the convent for different reasons and overall, as well as the social, we have an exploration into spiritual matters.
It may not sound it, but Les Anges du Peche is fast, intense and gripping.
The writing, by a Dominican priest, Raymond Bruckberger, is terrific and nearly every line of dialogue is a clustered fist of moral and emotional insights.
The writing, by a Dominican priest, Raymond Bruckberger, is terrific and nearly every line of dialogue is a clustered fist of moral and emotional insights.
On top of that, are other themes, such as conformity selfishness and the powers of redemption, love, jealousy and
resentment and shame.
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Ascenseur pour l'échafaud is known in English as Lift to the Scaffold but is more commonly found these days as Elevator to the Gallows, which is not such a great rendering of the French, especially when you consider that the guillotine was still in use in France at the time, and in fact right up until 1977.
Ascenseur pour l'échafaud stars Jeanne Moreau and Maurice Ronet
as criminal lovers who conceive of a perfect crime which unfortunately
starts to seem less perfect, when Ronet is trapped in an elevator.
Of note is the
film's score, by Miles Davis, and the interaction between the music and the images is also quite novel, as are the repeated suggestions of the city as an alienating influence, with its neon, and constant reference to fashion. This is what the French bring to film noir, a pure cultural and existential sense of loss and alienation - perfect for the immoral foils and foibles of the genre.
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| Elevator to the Gallows / Lift to the Scaffold / Ascenseur pour l'échafaud (1958) |
This thriller, which was the directorial debut of Louis Malle, took a film noir style story, and added realistic lighting and location shooting and presented the characters in a totally soulless fashion that points to an overall failure in relationships, technology and in romance.
Despite all this coldness, Elevator to the Gallows is one of these occasions where you find yourself completely rooting for the villains. This is achieved through the sympathetic portrayal of the adulterous and passionate relationship at the heart of the film and the way the camera focuses closely on Jeanne Moreau's face, which is shown without any cosmetics, a view which was unusual to say the least at the time.
There is a peculair sense throughout Ascenseur pour l'échafaud that technology is also an aspect of the film noir fatality, in the form of the elevator itself, as well as telephones, cameras and automobiles, none of which are likewise to be trusted, and all of which combine to everyone's undoing. On top of this, we see much of the intial action take place in a modern office block, which seems a huge contrast to the dark corners and seedy dives we'd normally associate with the noir canon.
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Le mura di Malapaga (1949) is a Italian / French movie directed by René Clément which stars Jean Gabin as Pierre Arrignon, a French criminal who escapes to Genoa.
René Clément is sometimes called the father of French New Wave Cinema, although the directors in the New Wave were younger than Clément, and as it happened, the New Wave had quite a few fathers, and precious few mothers as it was.
Jean Gabin was the leading French male actor of his day and what we have in the Walls of Malapage is a mixture of film noir and neorealism. There are film noir touches everywhere in the form of deep shadows, steel bars, and of course, crimes.
The neorealism must have on the other hand been easy to find in 1949 Genoa. The rubble left behind by WW II was everywhere and people speak of "living in the rubble" or "playing in the rubble" is if this was just part of everyday life, which it doubtless was.
The movie also stars Isa Miranda as Marta, the Italian woman who falls in love with Pierre, but acting honors also go to Vera Talchi, as Cecchina, Marta's daughter.
This film won the Oscar as Best Foreign Language Film in 1950, and was highly praised in its day, although some still argue it hasn't worn well. The screenplay borrows ideas from Pépé le Moko (1937) and despite flaws, captures both Italian neo-realis, and French film noir.
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Bob le Flambeur (1955)
For the lover of film noir and the dedicatee of American cinema, there is Jean-Pierre Melville's 1956 movie Bob le flambeur.
Mai oui, Bob le flambeur is a French film, but in many ways it could barely be more American.
Bob le Flambeur (1955) (Bob the Gambler) has nothing especially original to commend it, but at the same time all these elements were maybe never put together so well.
It's dry, it's slick and it is strangely moral on top of it all, cause Bob is just everyone's daddy, almost. That even includes the viewer, as Bob is hard not ot like, as is his certain Godardian unrealistic comedy.
For many who care about these things, Bob le Flambeur is the movie that genuinely introduced the French
Nouvelle Vague three years before Truffaut's 400 Blows and Godard's Breathless.
The cinematic style is new, but not in any unpleasant and obvious way. Yet it's less
academic, more detached, features jump cuts and hand-held camera shots, has long tracking-shots
and the introspective narration that is so key to film noir.
So despite its advanced age, Bob still feels
like a breath of fresh air and holds a strange bit of
greatness, floating somewhere between comedy and film noir, and doing both very well. Finally, all of this is innate to Jean-Pierre Melville's vision of cinema, art and men, as well as how he wants to tell more of the exciting crime stories that inspired him, stories that cinema has always sought to tell, and which are focal to all-things-noir.
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Casque d'Or (1952)
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| The 'golden helmet' of Signoret's hair. |
Casque d'Or (1952), which you could translate as 'Golden Helmet' if you were desperate to call it something in English, is a film noir tragedy depicting an ill-fated love affair, loosely based on an infamous love triangle between the prostitute Amélie Élie and the gang leaders Manda and Leca, which was the subject of much excited newspaper reporting in France during 1902.
It stars Simone Signoret as Marie 'Casque d'Or', Serge Reggiani as Georges Manda and Claude Dauphin as Félix Leca and tells of obsession, jealousy and desires that cannot be contained.
The criminals have names like Guillaume the Ferret, Pretty Boy Roland, and Ponsard the Headache, as befits this wild underworld romance.
Signoret plays Marie, the moll of an Apache gangster, who meets Manda, an ex-con gone straight, and it's love at first sight for both of them. The pair soon set off a chain-reaction of jealousy, murder, double-crosses, and revenge and yet there is a strange love that shines and shines when Signoret is acting. She's tough and tender and is often bathed in an ethereal light as she plays the ne plus ultra femme fatale who proves bad luck to any man who wants her.
Signoret plays Marie, the moll of an Apache gangster, who meets Manda, an ex-con gone straight, and it's love at first sight for both of them. The pair soon set off a chain-reaction of jealousy, murder, double-crosses, and revenge and yet there is a strange love that shines and shines when Signoret is acting. She's tough and tender and is often bathed in an ethereal light as she plays the ne plus ultra femme fatale who proves bad luck to any man who wants her.
In 1902 the story of 'Casque d'Or' made the headlines
throughout Paris, as two enemy bands of Apaches
Mohicans de Paris, with their customary insignia of caps,
bell-bottom trousers and polka-dotted scarves, took to the streets
that lay between Belleville and Charonne. The object of their
dispute was not territory but a girl called Amélie Hélie, nicknamed
'Casque d'Or', with a stunning, golden-reddish mane. The confrontation
turned into a fullscale pitched battle on Rue des Haies, in which
neither knife blades nor guns were spared.
To the inquisitive public prosecutors Manda stated during his trial:
Condemned to deportation and hard labour, Manda for life, and Leca for eight years, the two men met on the island of Saint-Martin-de-Ré, while 'Casque d'Or' turned for solace to the world of entertainment and the company of wealthier men. However, one of Leca's faithful followers had been thinking hard about revenge and stabbed her one night in the establishment where she sang.
Although she survived, she could no longer perform as a singer and it is only thanks to her portrayal here by the legendary Simone Signoret that she has not fallen into oblivion.
The real Amélie Hélie ended by marrying an ordinary workman and died forgotten on 16 April 1933. She was buried in the cemetery of Bagnolet.
To the inquisitive public prosecutors Manda stated during his trial:
"We fought each other, the Corsican and myself, because we love the same girl. We are crazy about her. Don't you know what it is to love a girl?"
Condemned to deportation and hard labour, Manda for life, and Leca for eight years, the two men met on the island of Saint-Martin-de-Ré, while 'Casque d'Or' turned for solace to the world of entertainment and the company of wealthier men. However, one of Leca's faithful followers had been thinking hard about revenge and stabbed her one night in the establishment where she sang.
Although she survived, she could no longer perform as a singer and it is only thanks to her portrayal here by the legendary Simone Signoret that she has not fallen into oblivion.
The real Amélie Hélie ended by marrying an ordinary workman and died forgotten on 16 April 1933. She was buried in the cemetery of Bagnolet.
Pierrot Le Fou (1965)
Pierrot le Fou was booed when it premiered at the Venice Film Festival and shortly afterwards, it was similarly unsuccessful at the box office when it was released in Paris in 1966.
With hindsight, the film now looks like Jean-Luc Godard’s farewell blast to the part of his career whcih was madcap and romantic.
Symbol-oriented and more surreal than any crime film should be, Pierrot le Fou does however rely on many of the tropes of film noir to cut its path. If you think the neo-noir genre is big enough to absorb these idiosyncracies, then add this to your list of essential French Film Noir.
It might be comedy, it might be high art, and it might just be purely libertine film-making, but either way it has to be high on any list of French neo-noir, because it tips its hat to just about everything, in as silly a fashion as it can.
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Plein Soleil (1959)
Also known as "Purple Noon" , Plein Soleil is an unmistakably classy precursor to the films of Chabrol, and does what French crime films do the best ... it pays.
Alain Delon and Maurice Ronnet play an exciting duo of cruelty in a story that we all know better now after Anthony Minghella remade it as The Talented Mr Ripley.
But Minghella did not have Alain Delon on set, with his beauty and inviting eyes, and good as it is, The Talented Mr Ripley doesn't truly disturb, seeking only to entertain and present a standard-issue morality that can never be fully anti-heroic, no matter what Matt Damon tries.
The two films are worth seeing back to back, most strikingly for the amorality run amok in the former. Finally there's a lack of anything gimmicky in Plein Soleil, just beautiful backdrops and photography, there to contrast the inner evils of the cast, and the deep unhappiness that can only arise when you get two men and one woman alone on a yacht in the middle of nowhere. For that, see also "Knife in the Water" (1962) and of course, "Dead Calm" (1989)
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Le Salaire de la Peur (1953)
The Wages of Fear, along with Les Diaboliques, may have earned Henri-Georges Clouzot the reputation as a kind "French Hitchcock."
Properly, Clouzot's capacity to sustain suspense may have exceeded
Hitchcock's, as in this truckload of dynamite inching its way over a deadly mountain.
Le Salaire de la Peur may also be more than simple French film noir. It's a reeking bandana of a film, it's cruel, suspensful and anti-capitalist, and includes tension-fraught passages of the purest cinema, replete with greed, pride and a white-knuckle ride in a medley of claustrophobic relationships.
All in all Wages of Fear has an atypical setting, but still a distilled and harrowing odyssey of flawed masculinity, as it inches its two trucks loaded with nitro-glycerine over a tortuous terrain of plot twists and sordidness. The subject is fear, both real and manufactured, and despite the tension, the fascinating long set up scenes are just as good, and push the needle towards the 'downbeat' end of narrative.
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Le Samouraї (1967)
Le Samouraї a 1967 neo-noir French classic, expresses a certain loneliness, a certain male loneliness at that, and is perhaps a lonely person's dream of Hollywood crime cinema, with the various accoutrements intact, such as the trench coat and the smoky card games.
It's reverse romance, a world where murder is just a habit, where the amoral underbelly pumps a lazy and ugly feed of inverted honour, and the film making is deliberately bleak.
In a philosophical capacity, this could only be French noir, and only French noir would even try to achieve these cool moments, the slow burn and the methodical precision of everything, all as grey as could be, opting for 'skilled direction' instead of emotion, Jean-Pierre Melville has seen a fistful of film noir and knows which buttons to press.
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Thérèse Raquin (1953)
Lead actress, Simone Signoret, may be better known from Les Diaboliques, made a year after this film. But she plays a similar conflicted strong type of woman in a sordid world in this grim drama Thérèse Raquin (1953).
It is based on a novel by Emile Zola and is still a kind of The Postman Always Rings Twice type of affair.
The plot is familiar anyway: Thérèse is disgusted by her wimpy husband and so has an
affair instead with a violent trucker.
Eventually the two decide to
kill the hapless husband but a witness begins blackmailing them as a result. The sordid business of love 'n' murder continues, and the lead lady decides she might not be totally immune to murder, and its charms.
The filming and the location work is of the first quality, and the plot is slow by modern standards, but this is French film noir. It's slow Euro-style melodrama, with a fearsome focus on the psychological damnation of its characters.
Marcel Carné really does tap into the mechanics of American film noir and the Postman Always Rings Twice and Double Indemnity bending elements of the story are clear borrows.
More French Film Noir
Du Rififi Chez Les Hommes (1955)
After he was blacklisted from Hollywood, Jules Dassin made his way to France where he was asked to direct Rififi.
He shot Rififi with a low budget, without a star cast, and with the production staff working for low wages. And the film earned Dassin the award for Best Direcor at the 1955 Cannes Film Festival and is still acclaimed by all in the know as one of the greatest works in French film noir.
He shot Rififi with a low budget, without a star cast, and with the production staff working for low wages. And the film earned Dassin the award for Best Direcor at the 1955 Cannes Film Festival and is still acclaimed by all in the know as one of the greatest works in French film noir.
An entire quarter of the film's running time is spent on the most memorable and the most silent heist in all of movie history.
Although this robbery only took up 10 pages of the 150 page novel Dassin was directing, Dassin was so disgusted by the novel's racist themes, and not knowing how to shoot the necrophilia, he opted to make a virtue of the long heist scene and made a thing of beauty, as well as cinema history.
Although this robbery only took up 10 pages of the 150 page novel Dassin was directing, Dassin was so disgusted by the novel's racist themes, and not knowing how to shoot the necrophilia, he opted to make a virtue of the long heist scene and made a thing of beauty, as well as cinema history.
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| Jean Servais as Tony "le Stéphanois" - a gangster who recently returned from serving five years in prison for jewel theft. The eldest member in on the heist, in Jules Dassin's Du Rififi Chez Les Hommes (1955) |
Goupi Mains Rouges (1943)
Goupi Main Rouges by Jacques Becker, also known as "It Happened at the Inn" and "Goupi Red Hands" offers more of the qualities of a farce than it does a true French film noir.
Some of it is indeed pure oddity, or at least it might seem that way to audiences who're not used to provincially set pseudo-comic and theatrical family mysteries.
There isn't much genuine complexity to the mystery either, as a fractious family of generally failing old farts attempt to establish who killed the elderly woman who headed up the clan.
There is a general lack of sophistication that is both charming and at times, tiring. And for collectors of these things, there is a starring role from Robert Le Vigan, best friend with disgraced WW2 collabo and celebrated novelist, Louis Ferdinand Celine.
"Le Vig" was not only a collaborator with the Nazis during the occupation, buit he openly expressed fascist attitudes, and was sentenced to forced labour for ten years in 1946. Released on parole after three years working in a camp, Le Vigan absconded to Spain, and then Argentina, dying there in poverty in October 1972.
Voici à quoi ressemble un vrai fasciste
So even if it's not top drawer French film noir, perhaps the very presence of Le Vigan offers a deeper darkness than might otherwise be felt.
It does make you wonder why director Jacques Becker would work with him at all, but it may have been for commercial reasons, as German distributors began to take over film release in Occupied France, and movie making doubtless became a hard political and personal tussle for many.
Becker himself joined the Comité de libération du cinéma français and later directed several great French film noirs, including Casque d'or (1952), the influential gangster film Touchez pas au grisbi (1954), and the amazing prison escape drama Le Trou (1959).
Pickpocket (1959)
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pickpocketposter.jpg |
Simply one of the most compelling French films of all time, largely thanks to the performance of Martin Lasalle, and the way Robert Bresson photographs him.
It's hard to stop watching in fact, and Bresson's camera spends the entire film glaring at the nervous young man, which gives this essential Fremch Film Noir its essential existential mood.
It's not what you'd call despair, and not exactly emptiness either.
It's a little of both perhaps, with a strictly sober and formal style, and questions of moral and philosophical moment casually drawn throughout.
To some people, Robert Bresson's masterpieces appear pedestrian; some complain films like Pickpocket are too paradoxical and that in this case the anti-hero seems appalled and yet drawn to his criminal profession; others despair at the lingering camera shots of closed and opening and closing doors.
When a character is so devoid of apparent emotion as the character in Pickpocket, however, we become super-sensitive to his
most subtle mannerisms. It's so pronounced that you are excited when
you notice an eye movement or a blink.
The ultimate success is that Pickpocket presents compulsion, and self-examination, as seen in Michel's diary and his film noir style voice over.
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| Emotionless French Film Noir with Robert Bresson's 'PICKPOCKET' (1959) |
It's a special flavour of film, this French style noir, offering male loneliness and anguish, in public spaces.
The plot, if there even is one is threadbare, but at the beginning, and even before the opening credits, Bresson stresses that this is not crime thriller and explains that he seeks, through image and sound, to express the nightmare of a young man led by weakness to adventure in stealing, for which he was not destined to escape ...
Tirez Sur La Pianiste is as laidback as Charlie himself most of the time. But it is not bereft of delights, and captures all sorts of ambience, in the name of noir.
Creepy, that is the word. French film noir can be creepier than any Amercian version, and if noir is the ultimate genre-grinder, then the ultimate genre which must grind up and get into noir, is horror.
Horror grinding into film noir isn't done so well stateside, and the film noir horror blend was never right perfected in the States. But it's done well in France, that's a certainty.
The clinic of Dr. Génessier (P. Brasseur) is in a remote mansion where Christiane (Scob) is treated to the skin of women who are benumbed and made victim of a macabre surgical operation. In a hidden operating room in the basement of his house, Génessier removes the facial skin and transplants it on Christiane's face. Bit it doesn't appwar to stay.
Shadows and maziness frighten but offer the film its film noir chops, and nothing could be more pitilessly displayed than some of the razor cuts shown. 'Les yeux sans visage' remains for more than that however, as it is a place of its own, its own horror realm, an imaginary phantasmagoric place of its own suspense and shocking details, an alchemy of horror and allegoric noir whereby horror films also change at the same time . . .
Dark and bizarre. And unnervingly long.
The plot, if there even is one is threadbare, but at the beginning, and even before the opening credits, Bresson stresses that this is not crime thriller and explains that he seeks, through image and sound, to express the nightmare of a young man led by weakness to adventure in stealing, for which he was not destined to escape ...
Tirez Sur La Pianiste (1960)
Tirez Sur La Pianiste (1960) and better known as Shoot the Piano Player, is surefire French film noir, from none other than Francois Truffaut.
Francois Truffaut was a film critic for the magazine Cahiers du cinéma.
After his debut, Les Quatre Cents Coups, which was a coming of age tale, Truffaut took a completely different subject
matter for this second feature.
The source novel is Down There, a
US pulp fiction production by David Goodis. Its a tale of
crime set in seedy locations with a graceless kind of plot, but the way the filmmakers use this source makes Tirez Sur Le Pianiste
the film it is.
Charles Aznavour is the passive, indifferent anti-hero, ineffective in either solving or preventing crime. The heart of the film goes back to his character Charlie's past where he was a classical concert pianist. A vignette explains to us why Charlie is in the pits now.
Charles Aznavour is the passive, indifferent anti-hero, ineffective in either solving or preventing crime. The heart of the film goes back to his character Charlie's past where he was a classical concert pianist. A vignette explains to us why Charlie is in the pits now.
Nicole Berger as Thérèse Saroyan, Charlie's wife owns this part of the film. This section also features a beautiful sequence where the camera chooses to follow a female
violinist from the door of an apartment and out into the courtyard. Why? There is no answer.
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Touchez Pas Au Grisbi (1954)
Also known as "Honour Among Thieves" and "Gangsters in Pyjamas" Touchez Pas Au Grisbi (1954) is one of the great pleasures of French film noir cinema.
If you're looking for a solid French film nour to recommend to your colleagues, this will be your best bet.
Jacques Becker gave us a lot of French film noir, including "Casque d'or" and"Le Trou".
In
"Touchez pas au grisbi" we find all we can ask for from French film noir, including black-and-white cinematography, evocative, romantic
atmosphere, brilliant script, stunning excellence of the actors' job and a tough, hard-boiled gangster-story, swift
pace and action blended with a psychological design.
ALORS!! The movie is above all a story of friendship and honor. It hits us with two aged gangsters close to retirement: Max (Jean Gabin), smart and clever, and Riton (Rene Dary), naive and rash,
ALORS!! The movie is above all a story of friendship and honor. It hits us with two aged gangsters close to retirement: Max (Jean Gabin), smart and clever, and Riton (Rene Dary), naive and rash,
So yes there is quite a normal gangster story, but Jacques Becker places unexpected explosions of violence. And there's also Gabin's trade-mark scene, when he slaps
everybody, men and women as well. LOL.
Grisbi is one of the best of French film noirs, and it never ever fails. It is a movie that is good for all
tastes, which maybe can't be said for Becker's other cinematic works, including his film noirs.
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Trans-Europ-Express 1966
You will be unlikely to be fully prepared for Trans-Europ-Express (1966).
Unlikely to be prepared for the beards, and there will be other shocks.
You'll get the message soon, that this film noir is played for comedy.
"A movie producer, director and assistant take the
Trans-Europ-Express from Paris to Antwerp. They get the idea for a movie
about a drug smuggler on their train and visualize it while taping the
script."
Director Alain Robbe-Grillet isn't the most straightforward of filmmakers to watch, it can be challenging for some, to sit down to a whole boxed set or season of his work.
But if you just want to say you've seen one of Robbe-Grillet's movies, and you like film noir, then this could be a safe bet.
It is first a story within a story and bien sur, a film within a
film. The author and his friends take a train ride and begin to work on their
film. As the story appears the characters take on their own existence and reality becomes inverted and
the characters and actors weave their own story as author becomes audience.
Some find this movie immensely enjoyable, and its crisp black and white helps. It is not established whether Trans-Europ Express is noir or not, but there would be no Trans-Europ Express (1966), were there not film noir, and French film noir neither, for this movie to plunder.
Some find this movie immensely enjoyable, and its crisp black and white helps. It is not established whether Trans-Europ Express is noir or not, but there would be no Trans-Europ Express (1966), were there not film noir, and French film noir neither, for this movie to plunder.
This film uses this song, MY BABY SHOT ME DOWN, which Quentin Tarantino also uses:
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Le Trou (1959)
The Hole, or Le Trou, is an intense movie, made with masses of concentration, and demanding that of its viewers.
It's the French film noir of quiet stoicism, permeated by tough men, by no means set to mourn their dire destiny or ask for the viewer's sympathy.
Le Trou is also not exactly a prison movie, and despite being set in prison, it can't quite be classed along side the likes of Brute Force.
There's no music except for the final cast and
credits but the soundtrack resembles some kind of
musique concrete with its relentless thumps, whispers and screams, the creaking of the doors and the waters in the
sewer and the final cacophony
Jacques Becker's on for some pure
manly friendship and it seems that a certain misogyny is infiltrating
Becker's worl. During the whole running time we only
see one young girl (Catherine Spaak) behind a grille, for a very short
while. Everything about this serious noir is hard-assed, and viewers are advised that this ingenious portrait of human interaction and cooperation will leave them stunned.
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Un Condamné a Mort s’est Échappé (1956)
A Man Escaped is one of the deepest of all the French film noir, and is pure Bresson. Pure and lovely Bresson, gorgeously, distinctly bare and above all, Bresson. You can say all sorts about this ultimate prison movie, this ultimate French film noir, this ultimate essay in sound techniques in cinema.
An war movie portraying the final days and months of a
convicted French officer trying to escape from a German Prison and a
pending execution during World War 2.
For the most of the film viewers observe Lieutenant Fontaine (François Leterrier) come to terms with the fact that he is going to be shot very soon and that no one other than himself is going to come to his rescue.
For the most of the film viewers observe Lieutenant Fontaine (François Leterrier) come to terms with the fact that he is going to be shot very soon and that no one other than himself is going to come to his rescue.
It's all painstaking in fact, and the ritual-like preparation for the escape is wrenching in its calm severity, and the emotions, the doubt, the doubt and all the morally
exacting examinations just make A Man Escaped the best fun most transcendent
cinema you can pack in of an evening.
Of all Bresson's films, this is the one
that will make you start to say his name with awe. You will distil all the gravity and thematic aspects of this movie into a fantastically effective
suspense mechanism, as you pause before you utter his name to anyone else:
"Bresson . . . "
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Les Yeux Sans Visage (1959)
Horror grinding into film noir isn't done so well stateside, and the film noir horror blend was never right perfected in the States. But it's done well in France, that's a certainty.
The clinic of Dr. Génessier (P. Brasseur) is in a remote mansion where Christiane (Scob) is treated to the skin of women who are benumbed and made victim of a macabre surgical operation. In a hidden operating room in the basement of his house, Génessier removes the facial skin and transplants it on Christiane's face. Bit it doesn't appwar to stay.
Shadows and maziness frighten but offer the film its film noir chops, and nothing could be more pitilessly displayed than some of the razor cuts shown. 'Les yeux sans visage' remains for more than that however, as it is a place of its own, its own horror realm, an imaginary phantasmagoric place of its own suspense and shocking details, an alchemy of horror and allegoric noir whereby horror films also change at the same time . . .
Dark and bizarre. And unnervingly long.
Le Corbeau (1943)
Le Corbeau (1943), in English known as The Raven is set in a paranoid French village called St. Robin, and is malicious and twisted fun.
A series of poison-pen letters, all signed "The Raven"– has activated the villagers' most wicked and weakened sides into spying, whispering and finger-pointing.
A series of poison-pen letters, all signed "The Raven"– has activated the villagers' most wicked and weakened sides into spying, whispering and finger-pointing.
Worse, when Le Corbeau was released in Nazi occupied France in 1943 , and done so by a German
production company, it wasn't
welcomed that warmly. Its unflattering portrait of the French bourgeoisie, in fact,
was considered by many as being virtually treasonous.
At first sight, the movie which depicts the malign minds lurking in the French provinces, seems like a simple
whodunit. But the true colours of this French film noir, are black, black and black again. Misanthropy is the ultimate flavour here.
Le Corbeau was different from the more traditional 'Occupation' movies which rolled along the lines of Carné's "les visiteurs du soir" or
Jean Delannoy/Jean Cocteau's "l'éternel retour"
After liberation, Clouzot became one of many artists to suffer from accusations of collaboration, simply because his vision of humanity was perecived by those unable to look too far, as a vision of France. It was 1947
before HG Clouzot was allowed to direct again but anyone who knows his subsequent work will testify that not only were more masterpieces to follow, but his venom did not ever dry up.
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Dédée d'Anvers (1948)
Dédée d'Anvers (Dédée of Antwerp) is an unmissable slice of post-war French film noir, up to its neck in misery and with tensions, bullying and poverty galore.
There are questions regarding whether Dédée d'Anvers is a late example of French poetic realism, as it goes out of its way to solidly portray the lives of the desperate port rats who make up Dédée's desperate life.
Or whether it is noir, a style the French did just as well as the US did.
Dédée d'Anvers is bleak, even for a film noir, and is the opposite of the post-war optimism that was in 1948, already finding its way into British cinema. It is worthwhile contrasting how British and Amercian films portary some of the less-refined examples of its characters' lives, esepcially the prostitution and violence. The prostitution is not hinted at but openly described, and the violence is frank and extended in parts, notably in a street fight which hugely excites Simone Signoret's character, the prostitute Dédée. She is never happier, it seems, than when watching men hurting and killing each other. And the street fight is brutal!
The black and white misery is completed by rolling shots of the bleakest of bleak ports, and some of the action is staged there too. The final effect is captivating: ultimately Dédée d'Anvers shows a very attractive woman within miserable surroundings, including a bullying household attached to a pretty seedy sailors' bar in a declining port. The language adds to the scenery, and Dédée d'Anvers has scenes in English, Flemish, German, Italian and of course French, suggesting that painful mix.
Finally, Dédée d'Anvers has one of the grimmest, blackest, hardest, meanest and merciless endings in all film noir. There's nothing like it.
And if your fantasies involve cigarette smoking, of which there is a lot oin film noir, is hard to beat in that department also.
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Deux Hommes dans Manhattan (1959)
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| The ONLY Film Noir You'll Ever Need! |
Two Men in Manhattan is one of the most 'noir' films going.
Everything concerning every trope in what we now identify as film noir is contained within. There are hoods in long coats and hats, there are guns, dames, night clubs and deals with the devil. Deux Hommes dans Manhattan looks and feels like hommage and that is what it is. It's Jean-Pierre Melville's hommage to all the cinema he loves.
Everything concerning every trope in what we now identify as film noir is contained within. There are hoods in long coats and hats, there are guns, dames, night clubs and deals with the devil. Deux Hommes dans Manhattan looks and feels like hommage and that is what it is. It's Jean-Pierre Melville's hommage to all the cinema he loves.
The great thing about this is that Melville condenses noir, for all to see. It's stunning, even if you do not know what is going on. And that is likely if you are watching it in V.O. (version originale = French!), as there are not many subtitled opportunities to see this glorious work, these days.
Which is a pity, as there is depth and joy, and a deep well of thought from which springs this tale of gangsterism and mystery.
"Nothing seems real. You don't exist. I must wake up," says the failed
suicidal actress, as she is pressed into revealing the whereabouts of her lover, missing UN diplomat,
womaniser and Resistance hero Fevre-Berthier. This is by all standards also a most realistic film, and shot around and about the bright-neon signs of New York, it is at the same time a pure
dream, separating its
characters into silhouettes and fragments, as they walk, drive, drive and walk in an echo-heavy, empty and silent city, blasted from time to time by angry squalls of jazz; Deux Hommes dans Manhattan might be the only film noir you'll ever need.
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Le Deuxième Souffle (1966)
Jean-Pierre Melville was the most devoted follower of American film noir in the entire history
of French cinema, and as such he features many, many times in these articles about French film noir.
It's not that one or two of his movies could or should be picked. Jean-Pierre Melville just continued to make French film noir, again and again.
It's not that one or two of his movies could or should be picked. Jean-Pierre Melville just continued to make French film noir, again and again.
Le Deuxième Souffle (1966) is maybe not Melville's most popular film, and that may be down to the length, and the fact that it gets exceptionally detailed at times. The time flies however, and because it is icy and angst, the action, even when things seem static, is quite gripping.
It is both an adorable and some would say quintessential 1960s hesit film, and gangster film, and a combination thereof. About three quarters of the way through it turns tail again and follows one of the gangsters as he tries to prove that he
hasn't been a police informer. As with other of Melville's
gangster vs police movies you sometimes begin to wonder if he's really dealing with the issue of wartime
resistance to the German occupation.
The pace is what you'd expect, by which I mean too slow for some. But not for fans of French film noir, for whom the rewards await. Great tension in the 'men in rooms with guns' scenes, the tense waiting for the door to open or the blow to strike; the planning and lingering, and the mena streets, punctuated here by an exceptionally well shot heist scene, on a high, southern French plateau.
We'll leave you with some stills to give you a flavour of this amazing spectacle:
The pace is what you'd expect, by which I mean too slow for some. But not for fans of French film noir, for whom the rewards await. Great tension in the 'men in rooms with guns' scenes, the tense waiting for the door to open or the blow to strike; the planning and lingering, and the mena streets, punctuated here by an exceptionally well shot heist scene, on a high, southern French plateau.
We'll leave you with some stills to give you a flavour of this amazing spectacle:
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Les Diaboliques (1954)
Heavy with evil, Les Diaboliques (1954) is one of the most popular French films of all time. And it is also one of the best known French film noirs.
There is a side of film noir that is about close relationships, dark happenings within families, paranoia, murder amd claustrophobia.
The family unit in Les Diaboliques is the provinical school, and the darkness abounds in the classic French femme fatale figure - Nicole Horner, as immortally characterised by Simone Signoret.
There is a side of film noir that is about close relationships, dark happenings within families, paranoia, murder amd claustrophobia.
The family unit in Les Diaboliques is the provinical school, and the darkness abounds in the classic French femme fatale figure - Nicole Horner, as immortally characterised by Simone Signoret.
One of the world's films that has truly stood the test of time, Les Diaboliques a wicked murder mysetry that is always a good night in, or out. Directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot, whose Le Corbeau (1943) heads up this page, Les Diaboliques has all the tension and drama you'd expect. Without giving anything away, this is probably the best psychological thriller of all time, and is a complete suspense package.
What more hyperbole to be added? None! Not just for the fan of French film noir, Les Diaboliques is Clouzot's gift to the lovers of thrillers, teling as it does an amazing sequence of events that just gets scarier and more fascinating. Suspense galore. (IMDB link)
