Paste's 100 Best French Films of All Time
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French language cinema covers vast swathes of history, geography and genre. The best French movies aren’t simply the product of a French person working strictly with a French team, they represent film as entelechy—a century of directors rooting around within the source code of this particular form of storytelling, pushing it into realms equally transcendent and horrifying. For its own sake. Because it is right to do so.
If there is anything unifying the films in the following list—besides the French language—it might be that there exists a current of fundamental innovation throughout the many years surveyed. Auteurist visions care of Belgium, Greece, Poland, Denmark, Taiwan, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands and Senegal course through and inform the prelapsarian innards of French cinema, transforming the country into a hub for international film. This is foundational stuff.
With the following we’re trying to provide a primer on French language film from an English-speaking perspective, exploring the schools of thought and exotic taxonomies that have defined what French filmmaking has been since George Méliès first set a moon cackling like a creep in 1902, and what it can be, skin-flaying, cannibalistic Grand Guignol nightmares and all. The Nouvelle Vague—both those of the Left Bank (Agnès Varda, her husband Jacques Demy, Alain Resnais and Chris Marker) and the Cahiers du cinéma crew (Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut and Claude Chabrol)—the erotic French thriller, the mind-bending (and bowel-emptying) horror of the New French Extremity, the colorful musical, the social farce, the sprawling crime film, the experimental vérité, the personal and unflinching documentaries: Even as so many films on this list have irrevocably altered our ideas of what filmmaking can mean, what it can do, so do they exist on the fringes, at the limits, willing to test the boundaries of taste, logic and (in the case of Chantal Akerman) time in order to question and then pull apart the systems and expectations that stagnate art and oppress artists.
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74 new
Amour
2012, in 15 top lists Check -
89 new
Ascenseur pour l'échafaud
1958 — a.k.a. Elevator to the Gallows, in 10 top lists Check -
13 new
Au hasard Balthazar
1966 — a.k.a. Au Hasard Balthazar, in 18 top lists Check -
6 new
Au revoir les enfants
1987 — a.k.a. Au Revoir les Enfants, in 13 top lists Check -
46 new
Bande à part
1964 — a.k.a. Band of Outsiders, in 13 top lists Check -
75 new
Bande de filles
2014 — a.k.a. Girlhood, in 4 top lists Check -
63 new
Les bas-fonds
1936 — a.k.a. The Lower Depths, in 1 top list Check -
42 new
Beau travail
1999, in 15 top lists Check -
36 new
Belle de jour
1967 — a.k.a. Belle de Jour, in 21 top lists Check -
45 new
La belle et la bête
1946 — a.k.a. Beauty and the Beast, in 26 top lists Check -
44 new
À bout de souffle
1960 — a.k.a. Breathless, in 29 top lists Check -
26 new
Caché
2005, in 15 top lists Check -
102 new
La cage aux folles
1978, in 4 top lists Check -
22 new
Le cercle rouge
1970 — a.k.a. The Red Circle, in 11 top lists Check -
100 new
La cérémonie
1995 — a.k.a. La Cérémonie, in 7 top lists Check -
68 new
César
1936, in 5 top lists Check -
41 new
C'est arrivé près de chez vous
1992 — a.k.a. Man Bites Dog, in 12 top lists Check -
78 new
Cet obscur objet du désir
1977 — a.k.a. That Obscure Object of Desire, in 9 top lists Check -
55 new
Le chagrin et la pitié
1969 — a.k.a. The Sorrow and the Pity, in 11 top lists Check -
62 new
Le charme discret de la bourgeoisie
1972 — a.k.a. The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, in 21 top lists Check -
93 new
Un chien andalou
1929 — a.k.a. An Andalusian Dog, in 25 top lists Check -
82 new
Chocolat
1988, in 3 top lists Check -
87 new
La cité des enfants perdus
1995 — a.k.a. The City of Lost Children, in 4 top lists Check -
7 new
Cléo de 5 à 7
1962 — a.k.a. Cleo from 5 to 7, in 15 top lists Check -
69 new
Un conte de Noël
2008 — a.k.a. A Christmas Tale, in 4 top lists Check -
58 new
Le corbeau
1943 — a.k.a. The Raven, in 9 top lists Check -
83 new
Les demoiselles de Rochefort
1967 — a.k.a. The Young Girls of Rochefort, in 12 top lists Check -
57 new
Le dernier métro
1980 — a.k.a. The Last Metro, in 8 top lists Check -
23 new
Les diaboliques
1955 — a.k.a. Diabolique, in 21 top lists Check -
40 new
La double vie de Véronique
1991 — a.k.a. The Double Life of Véronique, in 12 top lists Check -
49 new
Du rififi chez les hommes
1955 — a.k.a. Rififi, in 18 top lists Check -
51 new
Elle
2016, in 5 top lists Check -
65 new
Les enfants du paradis
1945 — a.k.a. Children of Paradise, in 21 top lists Check -
38 new
Évolution
2015 — a.k.a. Evolution, in 1 top list Check -
92 new
Le fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain
2001 — a.k.a. Amélie, in 27 top lists Check -
67 new
Fanny
1932, in 5 top lists Check -
85 new
Finis terrae
1929, in 4 top lists Check -
54 new
Le gamin au vélo
2011 — a.k.a. The Kid with a Bike, in 5 top lists Check -
95 new
Général Idi Amin Dada: Autoportrait
1974 — a.k.a. General Idi Amin Dada: A Self Portrait, in 2 top lists Check -
28 new
Le genou de Claire
1970 — a.k.a. Claire's Knee, in 7 top lists Check -
14 new
Les glaneurs et la glaneuse
2000 — a.k.a. The Gleaners & I, in 13 top lists Check -
53 new
La grande illusion
1937 — a.k.a. The Grand Illusion, in 30 top lists Check -
60 new
Grave
2016 — a.k.a. Raw, in 4 top lists Check -
50 new
La haine
1995 — a.k.a. La Haine, in 15 top lists Check -
15 new
Hiroshima mon amour
1959 — a.k.a. Hiroshima Mon Amour, in 17 top lists Check -
25 new
Histoire(s) du cinéma
1989, in 8 top lists -
48 new
Holy Motors
2012, in 11 top lists Check -
29 new
Jean de Florette
1986, in 8 top lists Check -
19 new
Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du commerce, 1080...
1975, in 12 top lists Check -
4 new
La jetée
1962 — a.k.a. La Jetée, in 19 top lists Check
Last updated on Jan 26, 2019 by Panunzio; source