Cinema of France
The cinema of France comprises the film industry and its film productions, whether made within the nation of France or by French film production companies abroad. It is the oldest and largest precursor of national cinemas in Europe, with primary influence also on the creation of national cinemas in Asia and especially in china.
The Lumière brothers launched cinematography in 1895 with their L'Arrivée d'un train en gare de La Ciotat. By the early 1900s, French cinema led globally, with pioneers like Méliès creating cinematic techniques and the first sci-fi film, A Trip to the Moon. Studios like Pathé and Gaumont dominated, with Alice Guy-Blaché directing hundreds of films. Post-WWI, French cinema declined as U.S. films flooded Europe, leading to import quotas. Between the wars, directors like Jean Renoir, Jean Vigo and Marcel Carné shaped French Poetic Realism. Renoir’s La Règle du Jeu and Carné’s Les Enfants du Paradis remain iconic, showcasing innovation despite war challenges.
From the 1940s to the 1970s, French cinema flourished with the advent of the New Wave, led by critics-turned-directors like Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut, producing groundbreaking films such as Breathless and The 400 Blows. The movement, which inspired global filmmakers, faded by the late 1960s. Meanwhile, commercial French cinema gained popularity with comedies like La Grande Vadrouille. Stars like Brigitte Bardot, Alain Delon and Catherine Deneuve rose to international fame. Directors like Bertrand Tavernier explored political and artistic themes. By the late 1970s, films like La Cage aux Folles achieved significant global success.
France was able to produce several major box office successes into the 1990s such as Cyrano de Bergerac, while certain film like La Femme Nikita and The Fifth Element reached an international audience.
In 2013, France was the second largest exporter of films in the world after the United States, and a 2014 study showed that French cinema was the most appreciated by global audiences after that of the US. According to industry tracker The Numbers, the fortunes of French film exports have since declined: in 2019, France had fallen to the position of 7th largest exporter by total box office revenue with a 2% share of the global market, and in 2023, 15th by the same metric with a 0.44% share. Overall, France sits fourth on the tracker's all-time box office chart behind the US, UK, and China.
History
Silent era
released the first projection with the Cinematograph, in Paris on 28 December 1895, with first public showing in the Eden Theatre, La Ciotat. The French film industry in the late 19th century and early 20th century was the world's most important. Auguste and Louis Lumière invented the cinématographe and their L'Arrivée d'un train en gare de La Ciotat in Paris in 1895 is considered by many historians as the official birth of cinematography. French films during this period catered to a growing middle class and were mostly shown in cafés and traveling fairs.The early days of the industry, from 1896 to 1902, saw the dominance of four firms: Pathé Frères, the Gaumont, the Georges Méliès company, and the Lumières. Méliès invented many of the techniques of cinematic grammar, and among his fantastic, surreal short subjects is the first science fiction film A Trip to the Moon in 1902.
In 1902, the Lumières abandoned everything but the production of film stock, leaving Méliès as the weakest player of the remaining three. From 1904 to 1911, the Pathé Frères company led the world in film production and distribution.
At Gaumont, pioneer Alice Guy-Blaché was made head of production and oversaw about 400 films, from her first, La Fée aux Choux, in 1896, through 1906. She then continued her career in the United States, as did Maurice Tourneur and Léonce Perret after World War I.
In 1907, Gaumont owned and operated the biggest movie studio in the world, and along with the boom in construction of "luxury cinemas" like the Gaumont-Palace and the Pathé-Palace, cinema became an economic challenger to theater by 1914.
After World War I
After World War I, the French film industry suffered because of a lack of capital, and film production decreased as it did in most other European countries. This allowed the United States film industry to enter the European cinema market, because American films could be sold more cheaply than European productions, since the studios already had recouped their costs in the home market. When film studios in Europe began to fail, many European countries began to set import barriers. France installed an import quota of 1:7, meaning for every seven foreign films imported to France, one French film was to be produced and shown in French cinemas.During the period between World War I and World War II, Jacques Feyder and Jean Vigo became two of the founders of poetic realism in French cinema. They also dominated French impressionist cinema, along with Abel Gance, Germaine Dulac and Jean Epstein.
In 1931, Marcel Pagnol filmed the first of his great trilogy Marius, Fanny, and César. He followed this with other films including The Baker's Wife. Other notable films of the 1930s included René Clair's Under the Roofs of Paris, Jean Vigo's L'Atalante, Jacques Feyder's Carnival in Flanders, and Julien Duvivier's La belle equipe. In 1935, renowned playwright and actor Sacha Guitry directed his first film and went on to make more than 30 films that were precursors to the New Wave era. In 1937, Jean Renoir, the son of painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir, directed La Grande Illusion. In 1939, Renoir directed La Règle du Jeu. Several critics have cited this film as one of the greatest of all-time, particularly for its innovative camerawork, cinematography and sound editing.
Marcel Carné's Children of Paradise was filmed during World War II and released in 1945. The three-hour film was extremely difficult to make due to the Nazi occupation. Set in Paris in 1828, it was voted Best French Film of the Century in a poll of 600 French critics and professionals in the late 1990s.
Post–World War II
1940s–1970s
During the post-War period, one of the most prominent actors was Gérard Philipe, who rose to fame during the later period of the poetic realism movement of French Cinema in the late 1940s. His best-known credits include Such a Pretty Little Beach, Beauty and the Devil, Fanfan La Tulipe, Montparnasse 19 and Les liaisons dangereuses. During his career in 1940s and 1950s French cinema, he performed with some of the most famous French leading ladies of the era including Jeanne Moreau, Michèle Morgan, Micheline Presle, Danielle Darrieux and Anouk Aimée.File:Louis Jourdan - Leslie Caron - Maurice Chevalier - Gigi, 1958.jpg|thumb|right|upright|Leslie Caron with Louis Jourdan and Maurice Chevalier on the set of Gigi. After World War II, the French actress Leslie Caron and the French actor Louis Jourdan enjoyed success in the United States with several musical romantic comedies, notably An American in Paris and Gigi, based on the 1944 novella of the same name by Colette.
In the magazine Cahiers du cinéma, founded by André Bazin and two other writers in 1951, film critics raised the level of discussion of the cinema, providing a platform for the birth of modern film theory. Several of the Cahiers critics, including Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, Claude Chabrol, Jacques Rivette and Éric Rohmer, went on to make films themselves, creating what was to become known as the French New Wave. Some of the first films of this new movement were Godard's Breathless, starring Jean-Paul Belmondo, Rivette's Paris Belongs to Us, starring Jean-Claude Brialy and Truffaut's The 400 Blows starring Jean-Pierre Léaud. Later works are Contempt by Godard starring Brigitte Bardot and Michel Piccoli and Stolen Kisses starring Léaud and Claude Jade. Because Truffaut followed the hero of his screen debut, Antoine Doinel, for twenty years, the last post-New-Wave-film is Love on the Run in which his heroes Antoine and Christine get divorced.
Many contemporaries of Godard and Truffaut followed suit, or achieved international critical acclaim with styles of their own, such as the minimalist films of Robert Bresson and Jean-Pierre Melville, the Hitchcockian-like thrillers of Henri-Georges Clouzot, and other New Wave films by Agnès Varda and Alain Resnais. The movement, while an inspiration to other national cinemas and unmistakably a direct influence on the future New Hollywood directors, slowly faded by the end of the 1960s.
During this period, French commercial film also made a name for itself. Immensely popular French comedies with Louis de Funès topped the French box office. The war comedy La Grande Vadrouille, from Gérard Oury with Bourvil, de Funès and Terry-Thomas, was the most successful film in French theaters for more than 30 years. Another example was La Folie des grandeurs with Yves Montand. French cinema also was the birthplace for many subgenres of the crime film, most notably the modern caper film, starting with 1955's Rififi by American-born director Jules Dassin and followed by a large number of serious, noirish heist dramas as well as playful caper comedies throughout the sixties, and the "polar," a typical French blend of film noir and detective fiction.
In addition, French movie stars began to claim fame abroad as well as at home. Popular actors of the period included Brigitte Bardot, Alain Delon, Romy Schneider, Catherine Deneuve, Jeanne Moreau, Simone Signoret, Yves Montand, Jean-Paul Belmondo and still Jean Gabin.
File:Avant-première L'Amour en fuite Luxembourg Cinéma Marivaux 18 avril 1979 Photo Carlo Hansen Luxembourg.jpg|thumb|right|Director François Truffaut and actress Claude Jade at the première of their third common film Love on the Run in Luxembourg, April 1979
Since the Sixties and the early Seventies they are completed and followed by Michel Piccoli and Philippe Noiret as character actors, Annie Girardot, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Jean-Pierre Léaud, Claude Jade, Isabelle Huppert, Anny Duperey, Gérard Depardieu, Patrick Dewaere, Jean-Pierre Cassel, Miou-Miou, Brigitte Fossey, Stéphane Audran and Isabelle Adjani. During the Eightees they are added by a new generation including Sophie Marceau, Emmanuelle Béart, Jean-Hugues Anglade, Sabine Azema, Juliette Binoche and Daniel Auteuil.
In 1968, the May riots shook France. François Truffaut had already organised demonstrations in February against Henri Langlois's removal as head of the Cinémathèque française and dedicated his film Stolen Kisses, which was being made, to Langlois. The Cannes Film Festival is cancelled – on the initiative of Truffaut, Godard and Louis Malle. Jean-Luc Godard no longer works in the commercial film business for years. Political films such as Costa-Gavras' Z celebrate success. Chabrol continues his vivisection of the bourgeoisie and Truffaut explores the possibility of bourgeois marital happiness.
While Godard disappears from cinema after the Nouvelle Vague except for a few essays, Truffaut and Chabrol remain the leading directors whose artistic aspects remain commercially successful. Other directors of the 1970s in this effect are Bertrand Tavernier, Claude Sautet, Eric Rohmer, Claude Lelouch, Georges Lautner, Jean-Paul Rappeneau, Michel Deville Yves Boisset, Maurice Pialat, Bertrand Blier, Coline Serreau and André Téchiné in purely entertainment films, it is Gérard Oury and Édouard Molinaro.
The 1979 film La Cage aux Folles ran for well over a year at the Paris Theatre, an arthouse cinema in New York City, and was a commercial success at theaters throughout the country, in both urban and rural areas. It won the Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film, and for years it remained the most successful foreign film to be released in the United States.