Having been approached and agreeing to contribute I have been mindful of several things, not least the absurdity of attempting to select 50 Greatest anything; I have contributed in excess of fifteen hundred and fifty reviews to imdb.com and I enjoyed far more than I disliked and I disliked far more than I actually regretted wasting time watching. I have also been mindful of something that seems to be totally forgotten in some quarters today, that when those pioneers projected a flickering image onto a sheet, now well over a hundred years ago, they had no greater aim than to inspire child-like wonder in adults. I don’t know about you but I go to the movies primarily to be entertained not to be preached to and/or bombarded with propaganda. I like to believe that I’m a reasonably intelligent adult capable of making choices and if I feel strongly about social conditions I can join an applicable political party – or found one if it comes to that – instead of being conned into watching dogma masquerading as entertainment. I am, of course, in danger of opening a can of worms here for one man’s entertainment is another man’s banjo pics; I wouldn’t see anything entertaining or even mildly funny in say Police Academy, Animal House or the Carry On series in England whilst I would and did find both humour and entertainment in both versions (straight and musical) of The Producers. I’m also aware of the foibles of human nature; asked to nominate the Ten Best Films of all time one person, with a perfectly straight face will place Gidget Goes Hawaiian at number one followed by nine titles from the vineyards of Samuel Z. Arkoff’s AIP, whilst another, with equally straight face will opt for Breathless followed by more new wavelet dross. These are two extremes of a spectrum in which I think of myself as somewhere in the middle, amongst those who put Citizen Kane in first place. I have tried to include every decade since the advent of Sound even though I have only seen examples from the first decades on tv/Festivals/Revival Houses or dvd. I have also tried to include at least one example from every genre including westerns and musicals but excluding sci-fi/horror/cgi. I either own all my selections on dvd, am planning to buy them in that format or would buy them if they were available. I buy dvds of films that I want to watch at regular intervals and that I feel will stand up to multiple viewings rather than flavor-of-the-Oscars (The English Patient, for example) or films cynically aimed at the Festival circuit (Atonement) that quickly lose any appeal they once had, nor have I included those titles that I loved as a child but grew out of as an adult. I’m also aware that for every title on my list I could easily have nominated ten more – and I have ‘cheated’ mildly by counting five titles written by Marcel Pagnol (Marius/Fanny/Cesar and Jean de Florette/Manon des Source) as two films in total so that technically my list contains 53 separate films. There are, of course, several options available to the list-maker; Chronological, Alphabetical, or order of preference. I have gone for a fourth option and listed them in the order they came to me.
- Citizen Kane (1941)
Writer(s): Herman J. Mankiewicz, Orson Welles
Director: Orson Welles
Actors: Orson Welles, Joseph Cotton, Everett Sloane, Agnes Moorhead
This is, of course, a knee-jerk response when someone mentions the top Ten Best films let alone top Fifty, Hundred, etc. Even those like myself too young to have caught its initial release quickly become aware they need to seek it out sooner rather than later; first, to see what all the fuss is about, second to gasp in astonishment and third and subsequently forevermore to savour what remains the Best Total film of all time.
- Marius (1931)
Writer: Marcel Pagnol
Director: Alexander Korda
Actors: Raimu, Pierre Fresnay, Oriane Demazis, Charpin
Chronologically this is the earliest film on my list, part one of the great Pagnol trilogy celebrating the Human Condition as do all great movies, as does all great literature. It began on the stage where it was a triumph for writer-director Pagnol and the cast, all of whom appeared in the film. With no experience of cinema Pagnol hired Alexander Korda to direct Raimu as Cesar, the bar owner whose son Marius (Fresnay), is torn between his love of the sea and love for his sweetheart (Demazis), who is loved in turn by the much older sail-maker Panisse (Charpin). Having established the principals the film ends with Marius, unaware that Fanny is pregnant, signing on for a long voyage.
- Fanny (1932)
Writer: Marcel Pagnol
Director: Marc Allegret
Actors: Raimu, Oriane Demazis, Charpin
Not fully satisfied with Korda and still lacking the experience to direct a film himself Pagnol hired Marc Allegret to bring the second part of the trilogy – also a success in the theatre – to the screen. Fanny is persuaded by her mother to marry Panisse, a man who truly loves her rather than merely lusting after her, and who is aware of her condition. He not only raises her son as his own but loves him as his own and all three are happy for several years. - César (1936)
Writer: Marcel Pagnol
Director: Marcel Pagnol
Actors: Raimu, Oriane Demazis, Pierre Fresnay
Pagnol wrote the third part directly for the screen and directed it himself. The story comes full circle; Panisse dies of natural causes and is truly mourned by his wife and child. Marius has long abandoned the sea and has established himself in a neighbouring town. Cesar contrives to reunite Marius and Fanny. I’ve attempted to state the bones of the story as barely as possible in order to stress the banality but the strength and Joy of this trilogy is in the humanity of the people, the richness of the community created by Pagnol and the almost (Demazis is the weak link) flawless ensemble playing. - La Femme du Boulanger (1938)
Writer: Marcel Pagnol
Director: Marcel Pagnol
Actors: Raimu, Ginette Leclerc, Charpin
There are those who claim Pagnol is a one-trick pony and it is true he tends to write about rural Provence but he has a gift for breathing life into even the most minor character. Here he creates an entire small town thrown into crisis when baker Raimu’s wife leaves him for a shepherd from a neighbouring town. Feeling keenly the lack of his bread when Raimu is so broken he cannot work, the townspeople conspire to return his wife to him. Again a classically simple story yet Orson Welles called this the finest film he had ever seen and named Raimu as the finest actor in the world. Put it this way, it is certainly fit to be mentioned in the same breath as both Welles himself and Citizen Kane. - A Common Thread (2004) / Brodeuses
Writer: Eleanor Faucher
Director: Eleanor Faucher
Actors: Ariane Ascaride, Lola Naymark
This is, quite simply, one of the finest films of recent years, certainly of the new Millenium. Faucher employs her central metaphor of embroidery to weave a tapestry in which two wounded birds, Ascaride and Naymark slowly heal each other. - Chimes at Midnight (1965)
Writers: William Shakespeare, adapted and compressed by Orson Welles
Director: Orson Welles
Actors: Orson Welles, John Giellgud, Margaret Rutherford, Jeanne Moreau
This is the best Shakespeare film I have ever seen. Welles skilfully abridges Henry IV Parts 1 and 2, touches on Henry V and for good measure plays Falstaff himself. This not only eclipse his own Othello and Macbeth but every other Shakespeare adaptation. A masterpiece. - Brief Encounter (1945)
Writer: Noel Coward
Director: David Lean
Actors: Celia Johnson, Trevor Howard
A prime example of what Terence Rattigan called the ‘English’ disease, repressed emotion. Apart from anything else it is a time capsule of an - The Browning Version (1951)
Writer: Terence Rattigan
Director: Anthony Asquith
Actors: Michael Redgrave, Jean Kent, Nigel Patrick
Rattigan’s stage version is the finest one-act play ever written by anyone anywhere and in writing his own screenplay he opened it out unobtrusively then he and director Puffin Asquith stood back and let a beyond brilliant Michael Redgrave lead a superb cast – Nigel Patrick, Jean Kent, Wilfrid Hyde Whyte (whose character wasn’t in the play) – to a triumphant celebration of a failure. Avoid the disastrous remake like the plague. - All About Eve (1950)
Writer: Joeseph L. Mankiewicz
Director: Joeseph L. Manciewicz
Actors: Bette Davis, Ann Baxter, George Sanders, Eve Arden
This isn’t all that much superior to Mank’s previous effort, A Letter To Three wives but in passing this is a celebration of the Theatre, chock full of pithy lines and great performances. - Le Quai des Brumes (1938)
Writer: Jacques Prevert
Director: Marcel Carne
Actors: Jean Gabin, Michele Morgan, Michel Simon, Pierre Brasseur
One of the great poetic-realism films of the thirties from the team (Prevert-Carne) who invented the genre. All four leads are beyond praise. - Le Jour se Leve (1939)
Writer: Jacques Prevert
Director: Marcel Carne
Actors: Jean Gabin, Arletty, Jules Berry
The follow-up to Quai des brumes with the same leading man, Gabin, playing another doomed loser this time with the great Arletty and Jules Berry in support. - Meet Me in St. Louis (1944)
Writers: Irving Brecher, Fred F. Finkelhoffe
Director: Vincente Minnelli
Music/Lyrics: Ralph Blane, Hugh Martin
Actors: Judy Garland, Mary Astor, Leon Ames, Tom Drake
The best Musicals invariably have a solid ‘Book’ onto which words and music are then grafted seamlessly. Sally Benson wrote a series of pieces for The New Yorker based on her own childhood in - A Star Is Born (1954)
Writer: Moss Hart
Director: George Cukor
Music: Harold Arlen
Lyrics: Ira Gershwin
Actors: Judy Garland, James Mason, Charles Bickford
My second Musical and as different from the first as Cole Porter is from Elton John. Once again there is a strong ‘Book’, originally filmed as a straight drama but now with a brilliant score by Harold Arlen and Ira Gershwin. Judy Garland has come a long way from - Les Enfants du Paradis (1945)
Writer: Jacques Prevert
Director: Marcel Carne
Actors: Arletty, Jean-Louis Barrault, Pierre Brasseur
Like citizen Kane there is not much more to say about this masterpiece, long considered the Best film to come out of France. Carne and Prevert were at the top of their game and the cast, led by the luminous Arletty, was a dream. - La Grande Illusion (1937)
Writer: Charles Spaak
Director: Jean Renoir
Actors: Jean Gabin, Erich von Stroheim, Marcel Dalio
I prefer this story of honour and gentlemanly conduct in wartime to the much vaunted The Rules Of The Game, Renoir’s other film of social comment. Von Stroheim is majestic as the humane commandant and Dita Parlo is outstanding as the widow who harbours the fugitives. - Shane (1953)
Writer: A.B. Guthrie, jnr
Director: George Stevens
Actors: Alan Ladd, Jean Arthur, Van Heflin, Brandon deWilde
Before turning psychological westerns were about Good versus Evil, black and white issues with white/good invariably triumphing over black/evil. George Stevens went back to basics and found in Alan Ladd an actor who embodied decency and was prepared to take a stand against tyranny. At once ambiguous (Shane’s past would almost certainly not stand close scrutiny) and classically simple – decent, hard-working people are being oppressed and need a champion – it has superlative performances from Ladd, Heflin, Arthur and deWilde. - Sunset Boulevard (1950)
Writers: Billy Wilder, Charles Bracket, D. M. Marshman
Director: Billy Wilder
Actors: Gloria Swanson, William Holden, Erich von Stroheim
No list of 50 Best Films can omit Billy Wilder, indeed he could furnish a good half the list single-handed. Films about films, especially Hollywood films, are not new but this is the finest by a country mile and Wilder’s unique blend of cynicism and sentiment informs every frame. - Some Like It Hot (1959)
Writers: Billy Wilder, I.A.L. Diamond
Director: Billy Wilder
Actors: Jack Lemon, Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis
Another Wilder gem, indeed this could only be Wilder; he may have taken the basic plot from an obscure German film but no one else could have gathered together so many disparate ingredients and turned out such a dazzling soufflé. - The Apartment (1960)
Writers: Billy Wilder, I.A.L. Diamond
Director: Billy Wilder
Actors: Jack Lemon, Shirley MacLaine, Fred McMurray
Wilder again with a masterful comedy that switches effortlessly to near-tragedy halfway through. - The Shop Around the Corner (1940)
Writer: Samson Raphaelson
Director: Ernst Lubitsch
Actors: James Stewart, Margaret Sullivan, Frank Morgan
This is one of those films that define ‘entertainment’, at once a romantic comedy and a drama with outstanding ensemble performances all round. Lubitsch excelled himself here and that’s saying something. MGM remade it disastrously nine years later as In The Good Old Summertime but this is the one to see. - Les Diaboliques (1955)
Writer: Henri-Georges Clouzot
Director: Henri-Georges Clouzot
Actors: Simone Signoret, Vera Clouzot, Paul Meurisse, Charles Vanel
One of two outstanding suspensers that Clouzot made back-to-back (the other was La Salaire de peur). All four principals are outstanding and again one should avoid the beyond terrible - The Confession (1970) / L’aveu
Writer: Jorges Semprun
Director: Costa-Gavros
Actors: Yves Montand, Simone Signoret
Yves Montand is beyond praise and actually becomes rather than acts Artur London is this adaptation of London’s own account (London’s book L’Aveu, the Confession, was published in 1969) of his torture at the hands of his own Communist party in what was then still Czeckoslovakia. - Un Carnet de Bal (1937)
Writer: Julien Duvivier, Henri Jeanson
Director: Julien Duvivier
Actors: Marie Bell, Raimu, Louis Jovet, Fernandel
Just as Cole Porter invented the laundry-list song so Julien Duvivier invented the portmanteau film with this story of a newly-widowed woman coming across the Dance Card for the very first ball she attended and deciding to trace all the men who signed it. Each episode is magical in a different way. - Casablanca (1942)
Writers: Howard Koch
Director: Michael Curtiz
Actors: Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Claude Rains
Like Citizen Kane this is difficult to omit from any list. Crammed with quotable lines and cult performances in which even the smallest roles (‘What watch’? ‘Ten watch’) punctuate the most romantic doomed love story of them all. - Burnt by the Sun (1994)
Writer: Nikita Mikhalkov
Director: Nikita Mikhalkov
Actors: Nikita Mikhalkov, Nadia Mikhalkov
A gorgeously lyrical melancholic film with a definite Chekhovian feel. A lovely summer day in a dacha, a loving family, an old acquaintance, a new order. Unmissable. - Bringing Up Baby (1938)
Writers: Dudley Nichols, Hagar Wilde
Director: Howard Hawks
Actors: Cary Grant, Katherine Hepburn
A list like this wouldn’t be complete without at least one ‘screwball’ comedy and this is right up there with the best. As in the best farces one character is deadly serious and single-mindedly pursuing a goal only to be constantly thwarted by a completely frivolous character. Grant and Hepburn were never better and the support is first rate. - The Wages of Fear (1953) / Le salaire de la peur
Writer: Henri-Georges Clouzot
Director: Henri-Georges Clouzot
Actors: Yves Montand, Charles Vanel, Vera Clouzot
Clouzot’s previous film to Les Diaboliques. Four men, two trucks full of nitro, roads full of potholes and other sundry hazards. Will they make it. We still care 56 years later. - Beautiful Memories (2001) / Se souvenirs des belles choses
Writer: Zabou Breitman
Director: Zabou Breitman
Actors: Isabelle Carre, Zabou Breitman, Bernard Campan
Undoubtedly one of the finest films to emerge from - Casque d'Or (1952)
Writer: Jacques Becker, Jacques Companeez
Director: Jacques Becker
Actors: Simone Signoret, Serge Reggiani, Claude Dauphin
Signoret thought of this as her best role and she is luminous as the prostitute ‘Golden Marie’ who finds true love, enjoys a mayfly moment only to see it snatched away. Jacques Becker lovingly recreated a lost period and Signoret’s bravura performance is complemented by the entire cast. - Jean de Florette (1986)
Writer: Claude Berri, Gerard Brach
Director: Claude Berri
Actors: Yves Montand, Daniel Auteuil, Gerard Depardieu
Berri had already turned Truffaut’s childish insult (le cinema de papa) against him by directing Le Cinema de Papa in 1970. Now he addressed Truffaut’s other charge (‘older’ filmmakers spent too much time ‘adapting’ novels instead of creating originals) by adapting Marcel Pagnol’s novel into an International hit. Everything, performances, setting, soundtrack, gels into a magnificent whole. - Manon des Sources (1986)
Writer: Claude Berri, Gerard Brach
Director: Claude Berri
Actors: Yves Montand, Daniel Auteuil, Emmanuelle Beart
Sequel is the wrong word here, rather this is the second part of Jean de Florette and except for the fact that we lose Depardieu and gain Manu Beart it’s the highly successful mixture as before. - High Society (1956)
Writer: John Patrick
Director: Charles Walters
Music/Lyrics: Cole Porter
Actors: Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Celeste Holm, Grace Kelly
The third musical on my list and once again it benefits from a strong ‘Book’, adapted as it is from Philip Barry’s The Philadelphia Story, the play he wrote for Katherine Hepburn’s return to Broadway and which was adapted for the screen in 1940 (if you watch the non-musical film first and then this musical version you’ll notice that about 75% of the dialogue has been retained). The sophisticated dialogue is complemented by Cole Porter’s sophisticated lyrics, indeed, there was no one more fitted to write about high society than socialite Porter. A Faberge egg. - Ninotchka (1939)
Writers: Billy Wilder, Charles Brackett, Walter Reisch
Director: Ernst Lubitsch
Actors: Greta Garbo, Melvyn
Was there ever a more delicious and potent combination than Wilder and Lubitsch. The jokes may be dated but the comedy is timeless, the cast flawless, the whole, an unalloyed joy. - Cinema Paradiso (1988)
Writer: Guiseppe Tornatore
Director: Guiseppe Tornatore
Actors: Philippe Noiret, Jacques Perrin, Salvatore Cascio
Arguably the ultimate film celebrating Cinema. A wonderfully warm evocation of a lost world when the flickering shadows on a screen could transform a harsh reality into a Utopian paradise. French actor Philippe Noiret made two films in - Marty (1955)
Writer: Paddy Chayefsky
Director: Delbert Mann
Actors: Ernest Borgnine, Betsy Blair
This could be summed up by paraphrasing the Frank Loesser lyric, i.e. Two Lonely People by dawn’s early light, but too much awake to say goodnight. Having stumbled serendipitously across each other Ernest Borgnine and Betsy Blair learn to overcome shyness and parental and peer disapproval and embark on a relationship. - Le Grand Chemin (1987)
Writer: Jean-Loup Hubert
Director: Jean-Loup Hubert
Actors: Richard Bohringer, Anemone, Antoine Hubert, Vanessa Guedj
An outstanding example of the bildungsroman. Writer-director Jean-Loup Hubert based his screenplay on his own childhood then boldly cast his son, with no acting experience, in the central role of the urban child packed off to the country whilst his mother is having a baby. You can, of course, write it yourself from there but it’s all in the wrist and Hubert extracts magical performances (Best Actor/Actress Cesars for Bohringer and Anemone) all round. Proof positive that even contemporary films don’t need sex and violence to entertain. - Roman Holiday (1953)
Writer: Ian McClellan Hunter, John Deighton
Director: William Wyler
Actors: Gregory Peck, Audrey Hepburn, Eddie Albert
A wonderfully bittersweet Romantic Comedy with the three principals dividing acting honours evenly despite Audrey Hepburn winning all the raves due to her gorgeous breath-of-fresh-air persona. Still holds up 56 years on. - Midnight (1939)
Writers: Billy Wilder, Charles Brackett
Director: Mitchell Liesen
Actors: Claudette Colbert, Don Ameche, John Barrymore, Mary Astor
Billy Wilder claimed that Mitchell Liesen ruined many of his screenplays so much so that he decided the only thing was to direct them himself. It’s difficult to see how Liesen screwed up this delightful confection in which even the usually wooden Ameche contrives to appear humorous. Colbert was never better as the penniless Eve Peabody who lucks in to a Fairy Godmother in the unlikely shape of John Barrymore. - La Buche (1999)
Writers: Daniele Thompson, Christopher Thompson
Director: Daniele Thompson
Actors: Sabine Azema, Emmanuelle Beart, Jean-Pierre Darroussin
Beginning with the smash hit La Grand Vadrouille Daniele Thompson had written some of the finest screenplays in French cinema before turning her hand to directing. It’s difficult to believe she didn’t have her tongue in her cheekhov when she made this story of three Russian sisters living uhappily in - Un Coeur en Hiver (1992)
Writer: Claude Sautet, Jacques Fiescha
Director: Claude Sautet
Actors: Daniel Auteuil, Andre Dussollier, Emmanuelle Beart, Brigitte
Cataillon
Whilst he was equalled several times it’s probably true to say that no filmmaker got more out of exploring the Human Condition that Claude Sautet and this exquisite Chamber piece – Auteuil makes/repairs violins, Dussollier sells them, Beart plays them - is among his finest with all four players on top of their game. - The Army in the Shadows (1969) / L’armee des ombres
Writer: Jean-Pierre Melville
Director: Jean-Pierre Melville
Actors: Simone Signoret, Lino Ventura, Paul Meurisse
Arguably the finest film to date about the Resistance made by someone who was himself a member. Reeks of authenticity and the entire cast is outstanding. - Le Cercle Rouge (1970)
Writer: Jean-Pierre Melville
Director: Jean-Pierre Melville
Actors: Yves Montand, Alain Delon, Bourvil
Melville followed a Resistance movie with a heist movie and this is amongst the very cream of the genre with an irresistible set-piece, a robbery in a jewellers on Place Vendome that is entirely silent. - This Happy Breed (1944)
Writer: Noel Coward
Director: David Lean
Actors: Robert Newton, Celia Johnson,
Super-patriot Coward wrote the play in 1939 as a morale-booster, filled it with laughter and tears and unashamedly made the Gibbons of Clapham a metaphor for - The Way to the Stars (1945)
Writer: Terence Rattigan
Director Anthony Asquith
Actors: Michael Redgrave, Rosamund Johns, John Mills
Coward and Rattigan were the two great masters of the well-made play in England and here Rattigan skilfully adapts and opens out his West End success Flare Path making it one of the two finest – the other being Coward’s In Which We Serve – English films about the second world war. - To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)
Writer: Horton Foote
Director: Robert Mulligan
Actors: Gregory Peck, Mary Badham
Gregory Peck spent a lifetime being woefully underrated and finally got the Oscar he should have got for Twelve O’Clock High for his portrayal of the liberal lawyer and humanitarian in thirties Alabama. His Atticus Finch remains one of the most lustrous characters in film. - Twelve O'Clock High (1949)
Writers: Sy Bartlett, Beirne Lay jnr
Director: Henry King
Actors: Gregory Peck, Millard Mitchell, Dean Jagger
Peck and Henry King made two fine films back-to-back in 1950, The Gunfighter and this one. At the time the Stress of Command took second place to battle fatigue among enlisted men as a diagnosable Medical Condition and Peck excels as the martinet turned one of the guys who drives himself to exhaustion. The support is equally excellent and Dean Jagger’s Best Supporting Actor was well deserved. - Orchestra Seats (2006) / Fauteuils d’orchestre
Writers Danielle Thompson, Christopher Thompson
Director: Daniele Thompson
Actors: Cecile de France, Suzanne Flon, Valerie Lemercier
Daniele Thompson followed La Buche with Decalage Horaire, basically a two-hander for Jean Reno and Juliette Binoche but her true metier is the ensemble piece and she returned triumphantly in her third film in which Cecile de France moves to Paris, finds work in a restaurant on Avenue Montaigne and links the world of the Theatre, Auction Room, and Concert stage seamlessly. Unashamedly feelgood. - Au Hasard Balthazar (1966)
Writer: Robert Bresson
Director: Robert Bresson
Actors: Anna Wiamzenska
I don’t as a rule get on with Bresson but this is an exception, a breathtakingly lyrical, simple, heartbreaking film about the short and largely unhappy life of a donkey. Unforgettable. - Le Goût des Autres (2000)
Writers: Agnes Jaoui, Jean-Pierre Bacri
Director: Agnes Jaoui
Actors: Agnes Jaoui, Jean-Piere Bacri, Alain Chabat, Gerard Lanvin
Like Daniele Thompson who began a decade earlier Agnes Jaoui and Jean-Bacri wrote and acted in several plays and films – Cuisine et dependences, Un Air de famille – before Jaoui moved behind the camera and came up with a multiple Cesar winner. Like Thompson the partners specialise in ensemble pieces and no one in this large cast puts a foot wrong making it churlish to single out any one person. - Vanya on 42nd Street (1994)
Writers: David Mamet – based on literal translation of Chekhov
Director: Louis Malle
Actors: Wallace Shawn, Julianne Moore, Larry Pyne
An outstanding version of Uncle Vanya played by a group of actors who actually spent several years rehearsing the play in the abandoned New Amsterdam theatre. The camera follows the actors as they converge on the theatre, exchange small talk and then, imperceptibly and magically, they are performing the play in street clothes. A gem. - The Lace-maker (1977) / Le dentelliere
Writers: Claude Goretta, Pascal Laine
Director: Claude Goretta
Actors: Isabelle Huppert, Yves Benyton
22 year old Huppert was outstanding as the shy, fragile girl who sets up home with a student, Benyton, in the wake of a holiday romance, only to find social and educational differences too big a barrier to overcome. A truly fine film. - Laissez Passer (2002) / Laissez-passer
Writers: Bertrand Tavernier, Jean Cosmos
Director: Bertrand Tavernier
Actors; Denis Podalydes, Jacques Gamblin
Arguably the best evocation of Paris during the Occupation and based on real events this is a great film from a great director. It throws a fascinating light on Continental, the German-owned film company that turned out 31 films between 1941-44. Jean Aurenche (Denis Podalydes), who wrote a couple of Tavernier’s early films, and Assistant Director Jean Devaivre (Jacques Gamblin), actually worked for Continental but not on the same projects and in telling their stories Tavernier studs his film with references to and glimpses of films, actors, writers and directors of the time so that whilst first and foremost a gripping story it is also an invaluable recreation of an important period in French Cinema.
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