French film: 'The Golden Age'

Five films you must watch

The ‘golden age’ of French film-making produced some of the great historical epics and possibly the finest French film of all time.

If you want to be able to hold your own in any discussion of French film, you need to know about this period, where satire and realism dominated.

The films

• La Kermesse héroïque (Jacques Feyder 1935)
  The French-made period comedy, directed by a Flemish realist, won awards in the USA and started riots in Belgium.

• La Femme du boulanger (Marcel Pagnol 1938)
  Pagnol’s stunning use of the Provencal landscape reaches its height.

• La Règle du jeu (Jean Renoir 1939)
  Vicious social comment forewarning of further war in Renoir’s finest work.

• La Belle et la bête (Jean Cocteau 1946)
  The poet pushes the boundaries of technology and surrealism in a film starring his male lover, Jean Marais.

• Les Enfants du paradis (Marcel Carné 1945).
  Frequently cited as the best French film ever made.

“I just wanted to make a movie, even a pleasant movie, but a pleasant movie that would at the same time function as a critique of a society I considered rotten to the core…” Jean Renoir on La Règle du Jeu

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