French Cinema - an appreciation

Well with the Coronavirus best to stay in, surf the net....again YouTube. IMDB is a great film site.

 

Ya, there are very few available online (atleast compared to the length of my watchlist), and we'd be lucky to find ones with subtitles.

 

Some films are very visual guess go with that. I always watch in original language but yeah if it’s strong on dialogue.. subtitles are a necessity

 

hmm, any recommendations? : )

 

Tati?

 

Premières vacances (Our Happy Holiday) (2018)- a pleasant romantic comedy about a new young couple going on vacation
Les Beaux Jours (Bright Days Ahead) (2013) - an ok drama about an older woman played by Fanny Ardant starting a relationship with a younger man

 

thanks, haven't seen any of his films yet.

 

Les Vacances De Monsieur Hulot.(1953)

 

thanks

 

It’s a comedy, don’t know if thats what your looking for.
Also non Tati...
The Red Balloon ( 1956).

 

It's okay, I like all genres mostly. I've seen The Red Balloon, thanks

 

There’s a few red balloons. But .. no biggie.

 

Glad to have found this thread. My daughter was taking French last spring and hating it, so I suggested we watch some French New Wave films to make it less dry. This was secretly to open both of our horizons--I associated French films with the badly dubbed versions TV always seemed to play on Sunday afternoons in the U.S. way back when.

So far, we've seen (pardon the English titles; if I look up all the French ones I'll forget what we've seen):

Breathless
Cleo from 5 to 7
Hiroshima Mon Amour
My Life to Live
The 400 Blows
Antoine and Collette
Stolen Kisses
Bed and Board
Love on the Run
La Chinois
Two English Girls

Non-New Wave: Plein Soleil, Irma Vep

I watched The Mother and the Whore by myself; figured she can wait on that one.

As you can see from the list, I became fascinated by Truffaut and Jean-Pierre Leaud--such an unusual and rare partnership. Leaud himself is a trip.

I find almost everything either on the Criterion Channel or YouTube. It's a shame there isn't a wider outlet and that so many well-known titles aren't available, unless Criterion can pick them up.

 

Which did you enjoy most? 'The 400 Blows' my favourite from that list.

 

In my opinion, 400 Blows is the best movie on the list.

My favorite is Bed and Board, though it probably looks pretty slight on this list. I appreciate the juxtaposition between physical comedy and the less funny sense of being stuck that can arise in the early years of marriage and kids. I think Truffaut did a great job of keeping that tension.

 

We spent the past decade nearly-exclusively visiting our local independent movie house and, IF I could come to some conclusion about French cinema from as many contemporary ones as we've been fortunate enough to screen in an auditorium because of that, my conclusion would be not that just the filmmakers see "cinema" differently from North Americans, but, French audiences must still tend to have different expectations of how to process the cinematic experience than we do. Many are quite aware of their abilities to "play" with the art of the craft, above and beyond the simple exposition of plotlines and expository economies of storytelling; I suppose the American "studio system" has bred that playfulness out of our up-and-coming craftemen over the century.

Even the appearance of a Studio Canal or Pathe logo brings a smile to my face, knowing I'm in for something a little different.

 

There is a wealth of French cinema available on BD and DVD, but, unsurprisingly, you will need to expand your horizons beyond North America and Criterion in order to avail yourself of it. A region-free setup is essential in this regard. Look to U.K. and European labels like StudioCanal, Artificial Eye, Eureka Masters of Cinema, BFI, etc. If you can speak French, Carlotta put out some excellent stuff; unfortunately, their releases are rarely English-friendly.

 

MUBI is a great streaming service for world cinema, and it’s available in the U.S. They routinely offer French films, past and present.

MUBI’s set-up is different than most streaming services. At any given time, they offer about 30 (or so) movies. Each day, the oldest film they offer, in terms of availability (so, about 30 days), is dropped, and a new one added. It’s a constant movie-in, movie-out rotation, very different than Criterion (or almost any other streaming service).

 

Fair play. I am not American, and I prefer physical media over streaming, but this sounds like a reasonable choice for @Tanx.

 

Thanks, @stepeanut and @SmallDarkCloud, for all this information. I will explore these options.

 

If you're in the US, I highly recommend signing up for a library card and using Kanopy, which allows you to stream 11 films per month for free. Lots of international and independent cinema, classics, new stuff, old stuff -- just a great range of movies to choose from. I'm going to watch Wild Strawberries tonight.

You can also check DVDs and Blu-rays out from your local library. I had been wanting to see the 1981 film Diva for years but it doesn't appear to be streaming anywhere, but my library has it, so I watched it last week. Really enjoyed it.

 

Pardon me to bump here this very old post of mine, but its subject is worth this insolence of mine...

"Anyone into both Louis De Funès and comédie noire and who has never seen "Carambolages" by Marcel Bluwal (1963) owes it to him/herself to seek this one out... Also starring the splendid Jean-Claude Brialy, Sophie Daumier and Michel Serrault. Rewatched it last night: totally out-of-this-world, first class De Funès, screenwriting and film making! An incomprehensibly forgotten gem, influenced by Jacques Tati and to some extent by Jean-Luc Godard, and in return quite highly influent, in the end, on some modern, popular film stuff...

This DVD was discovered by my wife at the national library. As big a fan of prime De Funès and early 60s cinema in general as I am, and now in my fifties, I would have been otherwise completely ignorant of its existence!"

 

I would really like to know the last line of Juliette Binoche in Lovers On The Bridge/Les Amants du Pont-Neuf.
The English sub reads 'Let Paris rot.' What did she say exactly in French? Thanks.

 

alphaville is one of my favourite films by godard.

the sonic quality of the VO, in that film .... i mean ..... what else do you need ? LMAO

i find it a hilarious, and at the same time, terrifying, sci-fi, romp lol. it's actually an extremely beautiful film. to me.

 

But that guy’s voice. Turned me off. Hard to take. Great film, though. Week End. If you have the patience, very funny.