French films are shit. Porquoi?

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.