French films are shit. Porquoi?

Rogue agent, over and out.

In a total class of his own, geniuswise, pretention-wise, boringness-wise = Godard.

Grate Gilbert Adair story (which he tells against himself, I shd add). GA arrives at a screening late, asks bloke seated next to him what's happened. Bloke obliges with plot so far. Afterwards GA goes off on one as to why is to that, when asking what one has missed so far, you always get narrative, and no one ever obliges with the MISE EN SCENE? All critics and reviews present to hear this rant fall about, and NEVER STOP TEASING HIM about it.

Mmm, Les Nuits Fauves: French nymphs running through the woods, etc? The reference to J.Hughes is a bit alarming though.

Anyway, it should also be mentioned that when Fr. cinema tries not to be Fr. cinema and go for that mainstream-appeal thing it gets much worse i.e. Les Visiteurs, Asterix movies, any 'French action movie' etc.

I actually have a soft spot for a lot of French films, despite lack of dinosaurs and robots, though i do think they can sometimes settle into the similar problem of a lot of American indie films. Too much pointless and possibly substandard dialogue. Of course my only knowledge of dialogue is from the subtitles which will not get across the nuances. Films like Les Dinner De Cons actually do the dinner party thing well, whilst other French stuff I have enjoyed thoroughly over the last few years include The Girl On The Bridge, A La Place Du Couer and Resources Humaine.

I really dislike Claire Denis though.

"Stegosaurus? Je ne comprends pas. Il y a L'Éstegousauron.... Etc."

I feel that I have failed, as I cannot find any other ones.

Enter a word or words to search for: dinosaur

Notes: Searches are case insensitive. You can use a * as a wildcard. Boolean searches are allowed.

Result of search for "dinosaur":

No matching entries found.

= proof by science that French films are rubbish

Godard is champ, of course, the silly sexist old Maoist. Some of his recent work - esp. his video 'histories of cinema' - as brilliant and downright barmy as any of his 'classic' Nouvelle Vague stuff. Have sort've been taken aback by the anti-art flavour of some of the posts - we can have rockets and rayguns AND chin-scratching pseudery, we can have it ALL! Ok maybe we only get the 'cream' of French cinema - but what cream! And I haven't even mentioned Vigo, Renoir, Truffaut, Betrand Blier, etc etc.

Rivette also made OUT ONE (which is 12 hours long), which = a film I must see before I die (tho won't). The cut version, OUT ONE: SPECTRE is a mere four hours long. I keep meaning to go see some of the Godards at the Lux or the NFT, but can find no one to go with!!

Huh ? Dinosaures, brontosaures, tyrannosaures, etc. etc. What, do all other languages use the exact english words for dinosaurs? One translation thing that does get embarrassing is english movie titles turned into cutesy France slang, which never fails to sound incredibly dorky to Québec ears. Or worse, bad France translations of US TV shows where all the cultural references are turned into French ones - Family Ties in French is an all-time landmark of unspeakableness (unspeakability ?). However, translations of the Flintstones and The Simpsons = made in Québec, and they totally rox0r.

French film seen at young age and stuck with me permanently: "L'Atalante"

Aren't you making some awfully sweeping generalizations?

I am not an idiot, I am a dolt - as I explained somewhere else.

This is like..

Is that like the French version of Porky's?

you hate melies = you hate me

I would like to declare this the funniest thing any critic has said ever.

mark s loves melies = i love mark s (but you all know this)

ace french films (don't know if already mentioned up thread): la haine / nikita / rififi

Some classics for y'all to vibe with: pts 1 and 3 of 'The Trilogy' (tho you need pt 2 as well), 'Code Unknown', 'La Haine', 'Irma Vep', 'Read My Lips'....

The other day I actually saw a decent Francois Ozon film for once, too (8 Women).

Pete is surely trolling, as I can't even begin to list all my favorite French films.

le merde

I've not seen 39 but tbh there are a few things I just don't give a fuck about. Is Rozier any good? MUBI is hosting a couple of films of his and can't say I cared.

If I really had to include one of his films, it would probably be Code Unknown.

― birdistheword, Tuesday, 17 October 2023 bookmarkflaglink

I love Haneke a lot (none of his films were on the S&S poll, which rankled), but CU was the one I wanted to see here.

Yes, Code Unknown above all else, though I liked Cache and Time of the Wolf too.

I think probably a lot of the stuff on the list that ILXors haven't seen is French postwar popular cinema, there's a lot of films that are huge within France but have next to no exposure outside of it. Stuff like Le Pere Noel Est Une Ordure, La Classe Americaine, L'Homme de Rio...and La Grande Vadrouille, which features two comedians that are viewed as Gods in France (De Funès and Bourvil) and was the highest grossing movie ever in the country until Titanic took its spot (I've seen it - it's one of those 60's caper comedies that are best watched in an alcoholic haze over the holidays. Terry-Thomas is in it!).

Yeah, there's some o_0 titles littered throughout this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-grossing_films_in_France

No desire whatsoever to see the films of the Asterix & Obelix series

Code Unknown
The Piano Teacher
Caché
Amour

^^ all the Haneke I need

I don't know if it's that o_0 really, every nation has its equivalents - not like Japanese box office is all Naruse or Italian box office all Antonioni.

One of those Asterix movies is good but I don't remember which one.

True, every national cinema has its own terrible, unfunny comedies

Carry on Films hello

Yep, which reminds me that someone voted Holiday on the Buses the best movie of all time in the Morbsies

From the o_0 list above, Le Diner de Cons still holds a special place in my heart

God I love to see people sharing my love of Code Unknown, one of my favourite movies and certainly my favourite Haneke

we need to decide who the french martin scorsese is and get him to express mild disdain for the asterix/obelix franchise

mild exasperation in fact

I once was hanging out with a guy who’d just spent several days with Haneke for the purpose of writing a profile, and said it was very funny to hear Haneke speak at length against bourgeois conceit and aesthetic, while his extremely lovely wife produced an endless supply of homemade delectables from the kitchen. Him: “we must reject everything the bourgeois stands for”, her: “who wants some pie?”

Both are true. We must reject it all, and we must have pie

that's funny but we must not allow the bourgeoisie to appropriate pie

let's have our pie and eat it too

"who wants pie" is really not a bourgeois conceit

I once was hanging out with a guy who’d just spent several days with Haneke for the purpose of writing a profile, and said it was very funny to hear Haneke speak at length against bourgeois conceit and aesthetic, while his extremely lovely wife produced an endless supply of homemade delectables from the kitchen. Him: “we must reject everything the bourgeois stands for”, her: “who wants some pie?”

― Preach The Crapen (flamboyant goon tie included),

Buñuel understood.

Just to be clear, this house is both anti-bourgeois and pro-pie

the discreet charm of the bourpiesie.

Yep, which reminds me that someone voted Holiday on the Buses the best movie of all time in the Morbsies

This genuinely made me laugh - and I really can't remember if that was my vote or not. After all, it is a Hammer film.

The website for the above table lists La Grande Illusion (1937) with an estimated 12.5 million admissions but the actual admissions are unknown.[3]

really, Renoir outsold Star Wars?

Haneke is like Cronenberg and Greenaway for me - all over the map in terms of quality. The more the films open up, the better he is, and I'd recommend 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance as one of his most interesting and least didactic.

Very nice to see Buffet Froid and Le Feu Follet represented, the former is like if the 70s Buñuel films were actually funny. I was also under the impression that Je t’aime, je t’aime was basically forgotten, it's a strange choice for a Resnais.

Sorry not to see any André Téchiné, is he too bourgeois even for the French? Or too many good movies with no major standout to collect votes?

even here only Armond White, in his only moment of sanity, gets Téchiné.

No Assayas either?

So I saw the Eustache features this weekend. And right now I am so pissed off at male sexual entitlement I'm beginning to think Valerie Solanas had a point. But I'll listen to arguments otherwise.

Hmmm. I've only seen The Mother & The Whore, but felt v much like the Leaud character is supposed to be seen as an irredeemable prick? Not that that's a get out of jail free card or anything.

I agree with you that Leaud is supposed to be a chauvinist (who happens to have come through the events of 1968 with some very retrograde ideas about sexuality). But do viewers recognize that? Or that Veronika is less a whore or slut, but rather a target of men's sexual opportunism?

As for My Little Loves, it's overwhelmingly a coming-of-age piece--and coming of age defined very much in terms of accessing females, with no consideration of consent on their part. French society, either before or in the immediate wake of 1968, probably didn't think too much about recognizing a woman's right to say no, but sitting through these films was exhausting.,

The Mother and the Whore (1973)
Holiday on the Buses (1973)
Do you see?

"(who happens to have come through the events of 1968 with some very retrograde ideas about sexuality)"

The film is very much about the failures of '68.

But I say this as a man xp

Didn't just happen in France either.

But do viewers recognize that? Or that Veronika is less a whore or slut, but rather a target of men's sexual opportunism?

Is "some do, some don't" too flippant an answer? I try not to think much about what audiences might think, as the internet has shown me ppl can be super dense even about the clearest of messages. Which is not to say feeling the vibe of ppl reacting in certain ways doesn't sometimes affect me negatively in the cinema - grimmest example of this was some old chuckling appreciatively as the protagonist of "Thunder Road" berated the corpse of his drug addict ex-wife.