Classic French Films To Watch If You Can't Go To Cannes
We're not physically going to Cannes this weekend, but we definitely are in spirit
The Cannes Film Festival kicked off earlier this week and will have premieres from some of world cinema’s greats, including Martin Scorsese, Wes Anderson, Todd Haynes, and many more. Our invite to Cannes must have gotten lost in the mail this year, but we still like to daydream about going to the south of France for the prestigious event.
Last year we recommended our favorite Palme d’Or winners at the festival, so this year we are recommending French films in honor of Cannes. There’s an abundance of classic French cinema to dig into, but these are a few of the crème de la crème.
Drew recommends…
Le Samouraï
Several years after the French New Wave reinvigorated cinema in France and around the world due to critics-turned-filmmakers like Jean-Luc Godard and Francois Truffaut, along came 1967’s Le Samouraï, which merged the American gangster flicks of the 40s with the contemporary cool of 60s French cinema. When I think of French film, I almost immediately picture Alain Delon as a hitman in a trench coat and fedora in this movie.
Delon plays Jef Costello, a stoic and near-silent hired assassin that lives by the code of the samurai. He’s very good at his job, but soon his employer wants him killed and the Paris authorities are also trying to catch him. Director Jean-Pierre Melville captures Delon in Le Samouraï as one of the coolest characters to ever grace the silver screen. His elegant look and unflappable demeanor are effortlessly iconic, while Melville stages the minimalist scenes of action and dialogue with similar nonchalant ease.
In the same way that Le Samouraï owes a debt to Humphrey Bogart and Japanese samurai films, many other movies have followed in the footsteps of this French hitman character study. John Woo and Quentin Tarantino have certainly taken a page from Melville’s playbook when it comes to criminals donning effortlessly cool attire, and you’ll definitely see more than a little Le Samouraï DNA in Ryan Gosling’s lone wolf character from Drive. If you love spending time in the world those movies create, then you will most likely find yourself drawn to Le Samouraï.
Streaming on HBO Max and the Criterion Channel
Billy recommends…
Belle de Jour
Director Luis Buñuel is a master that I didn’t realize influenced so many of the films I watch. You can say that about French cinema in general, but he has a special place in the middle of it all. Every era of film has an iconic disturber, but Buñuel was THE disturber. Every turn of his career disturbed the country he sought shelter in. Born in Spain, studied in France, exiled from France, back to Spain, exiled from Spain, travels to the US, exiled from the US, lands in Mexico, disturbs Mexico, and then finally reluctantly embraced by the film world.
That is where Belle de Jour comes in. His most successful commercial movie is no less provocative than his earlier films, but comes at a time where world cinema was more willing to embrace its promiscuity. The movie follows newlywed wife Séverine (Catherine Deneuve) in her double life as a proper high society lady and acting on her secret desires. We open with a serene carriage ride with husband and wife bickering at each other. After one too many combative remarks from Séverine her husband Pierre (Jean Sorel) banishes her from the carriage and violently punishes her.
Shocking the senses right away and has the audience immediately enter a violent and oddly tantalizing world that allows its lead to act on desire. Belle de Jour explores our deepest depraved desires in shocking and hilarious ways. Buñuel creates an environment for the audience that is absurd but not alienating. It welcomes all of us to acknowledge that these thoughts have crept in our mind before. Maybe there is a positive in repressing certain desires, but with the strength of our director and leading actress, we can release that apprehension and see a world that acts on what most of us do not.
Streaming on HBO Max and the Criterion Channel
From the DYLA Archive
Links
It was a titanic week for trailers of highly anticipated movies! Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One (we can only hope the action is as epic as that title) got a full trailer and we could not be more fired up.
Right before its Cannes premiere we were treated to a first teaser of Killers of the Flower Moon, Martin Scorsese’s historical epic starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro. If you’re hungry for more about the movie, read this excellent recent interview with Scorsese. We’d be lying if we said we didn’t get a bit emotional at the end.