Here’s a poll listing the best 100 French films of all time:
http://www.timeout.com/paris/en/film/100-best-french-films
Here’s a long essay about some classic French films:
I suppose my personal favorites are these:
Fantastic Planet (1973, France, dir. Rene Laloux)
Jules and Jim (1961, France, dir. Francois Truffaut)
La Jetée (1962, France, dir. Chris Marker)
I had the same idea of watching French films to improve my understanding of spoken French. It hasn’t worked very well so far, but I’ve seen some great films I might otherwise have missed. They are roughly from best to worst (though the worst I’ve listed is still pretty damn good):
Les quatre cent coups (The 400 Blows). A kind of teen angst movie, except that the main character isn’t yet a teen. The best film of its kind that I’ve seen. Semiautobiographical story based on director Francois Truffaut’s youth. The character’s further life is explored in a series of movies but this is the only one I’ve seen.
Le fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain (Amélie). Delightfully bizarre story of a delightfully bizarre young woman. If you like the TV series “Pushing Daisies,” you will like this movie.
Trois couleurs: Rouge (Three Colors: Red). A kind of anti-romance in which the romantic partners don’t meet until the very end.
Intouchables (The Intouchables). A rich paralyzed man hires as a home health aide a young African immigrant with no healthcare experience. Based rather loosely on a true story.
Un homme et un femme (A Man and a Woman). Hauntingly beautiful romance between a man and a woman who meet because their children attend the same school.
La Mome (La Vie en Rose). The life of singer Edith Piaf.
Entre les murs (The Class). Semi-autobiographical story of a teacher in Paris whose students are mostly poor, undisciplined, and lacking in ambition.
Nikita / La Femme Nikita. A criminal is captured and retrained as an assassin.
Au revoir, les enfants. During WWII, priests at a Catholic boarding school in occupied France are hiding a boy who is secretly Jewish. Based on the true experiences of director Louis Malle.
Rififi (1965) a classic heist movie
Ooops, nm
(Damn typing on a tiny iPod Touch keyboard! I can’t link either.)
I have a girl-crush on Sandrine Bonnaire that started when I saw her (then) most recent film Queen To Play at a film festival a few years ago. Sandrine plays a happily (but somewhat bored) married woman with a teenage daughter who works part-time as a maid in a getaway hotel on the island of Corsica. She sees a loving, affectionate couple bonding over a game of chess and decides to try that with her husband. She buys a beginner’s electronic chess set and figures they can learn the game together. Her husband is a nice (but somewhat oblivious) guy who has no interest in chess but she decides to teach herself the game anyway. It turns out that she’s a natural and develops a passion for the game. She soon outgrows the beginner set and asks a cantankerous recluse (played by Kevin Kline, speaking what I hear is very passible French) to teach her, in exchange for her cleaning his house. She soon outgrows him too.
It’s a lovely story that I enjoyed even though I don’t know the first thing about chess. I enjoyed seeing someone find a passion later in life. I enjoyed Sandrine’s performance and the beautiful Sandrine herself. The script is funny and sweet. It’s not a comedy but there are many smile and chuckle-worthy moments. Kline is a hoot even though you want to slap him, often, and if nothing else, the scenery of Corsica is mind-boggingly breathtaking. I saw it 4 times in the theater.
Recently a theater here had a Sandrine Bonnaire retrospective and finally got to see some more of her films, my favorites being East-West and Vagabond, though I loved Queen To Play far more than either of those.
Something else you might consider to supplement your French movie watching is to put on the French captions when you’re watching movies in English, especially movies you’re really familiar with that are dialogue-heavy. That way, you’ll be coming at it from both directions.
I didn’t see any mention of Amour, which was the 2013 Oscar winner for foreign films. An outstanding film in all regards.
Yes I do do that. And English subtitles also work well. Strange how the subtitles many times use different French words or English versions of those words than what is spoken on screen.
I assume that the subtitles are the less accurate version which has to fit in a small space at the bottom of the screen. Either way if I don’t get the spoken French, I can glance down at the subtitles and think "OK, got it, that’s what they said in French
Just realized what you really posted. Yes that is a good idea.
Paris, starring Juliette Binoche. Saw this a couple months ago and I’m still thinking about it.
Right now it’s all about The Returned - tv miniseries.
Outstanding drama. Really outstanding:
All the ones I was going to suggest have been mentioned, so I’ll just second Le Trou, Rififi, Delicatessen, and The City of Lost Children.
Actually, there’s a question I’ve always had about a bit of dialog in The City of Lost Children. One (Ron Perlman) is rather despondent over having lost Miettte. He’s having a conversation and it seems to be taking his mind off things, but then someone says something like “it hasn’t happened to me yet.” And those last two words, “me yet” remind him of Miette again.
But it only seems to work in the English subtitles. Is there any likely French dialog that would have ended with those same two syllables?
I’ll add Wasabi, a Jean Reno thriller directed by Luc Besson.
Based on a film that came out a few years ago (2004), also called Les Revenants.
Haven’t seen the film, but the series was pretty good.
In terms of more TV, specifically cop shows- Engrenages (Spiral). Much better than Braquo- we couldn’t get past the first episode of that.
It would be easier to help if we knew what do you consider “good”, OP… are you looking for action movies, light comedy, drama, or what?
I enjoyed the already-mentioned The Untouchables; also Romeald & Juliette. I tend to enjoy anything with Catherine Deneuve in it, but that’s just me. Oi vey, I almost forgot Les Choristes, which was an international success and rightly so.
A Belgian movie L’Iceberg (The Iceberg). It’s a comedy where a woman is locked in a freezer room overnight. After her employees find her the next morning and she goes home, she sees that her family hadn’t even noticed she was gone. Feeling under-appreciated she takes off to the seaside and meets several more characters.
It’s been years since the last time I saw this movie, but in French, miettes means “crumbs,” so it’s possible he said something like je tombe en miettes (“I’m falling into crumbs”).
Anyway, how about some comedies? You might want to check out films by Francis Veber. Le dîner de cons is possibly one of the funniest films ever made. See also his older La chèvre starring Depardieux and Pierre Richard as the world’s unluckiest man. Also, Claude Lelouch’s L’aventure c’est l’aventure.
For those who think that all French movies are talky living-room dramas, check out the thriller Les rivières pourpres and its sequel. Both are somewhat in the vein of Se7en.
Everyone beat me to the Jeunet/Caro stuff, so I’ll just second everything here, particularly Amelie. The first time I saw this movie, I was so happy at the end that I literally got up and danced for joy. I do not exaggerate here. If you like the Jeunet stuff, there’s also MICMACS; perhaps not the strongest, but has his usual style and stable of actors.
The Valet (La doublure) is a fun comedy, friendly to American sensibilities.
Rust and Bone (De rouille et d’os) is a good recent drama.
Yes! See all his films.
I really liked Danton which is a historical drama about an important person in the French Revolution.
I have heard **The Grand Illusion **is very good.